Hug Your People: The Proven Way to Hire, Inspire, and Recognize Your Employees and Achieve Remarkable Results by Jack Mitchell

Author:Jack Mitchell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9781401395469
Publisher: Hyperion
Published: 2008-03-03T18:30:00+00:00

PART THREE

Pride

The Power of All of Us

CHAPTER 17

Feeling You Are the Business

Often I’ll have just finished a great meal at a restaurant, and I’ll want to pay and leave, and yet when I try to locate my waiter it’s as if he had entered the Witness Protection Program. I’ll try to flag down another waiter or the maître d’, and you would think I had become invisible. I’m sure it’s happened to you.

Or I’ll drop into a deli and the two guys behind the meat counter will be talking about last night’s hockey game and not care a whit about taking my order for a half pound of roast beef and a quart of coleslaw. I think of these as “spiritless workers,” because they go through the motions without thinking or really caring about their jobs. What it boils down to is they have no pride in what they’re doing.

On the other hand, I believe we are “spirit full people”! We hear it all the time from our associates: “We’re proud to be working with you.” That’s because they feel great about the image of our business, and they feel that they are an integral part of the business. And they are proud of it.

They feel they are the store.

Pride follows Nice and Trust because when you work in an open environment where associates have the highest integrity and are very comfortable, then people develop pride. Big-time. And that pride exists on several levels, including the inner self-satisfaction of excellent accomplishments and the outer prestige of family, community, and friends. When we speak of pride, we mean pride in the company, pride in individual performance, and lots more.

Pride is a potent motivator. After all, are you going to work as diligently for a company you’re ashamed of? When you feel pride in an organization, you don’t tell new people you meet that you’re a banker, you say that you’re an investment banker at Lehman Brothers or a wealth adviser at Bank of America. You don’t say you’re a mechanic, but you’re a mechanic at Midas. You’re not a clothing salesperson, you work at Mitchells/ Richards/Marshs.

In other words, when you like to give the name of the company, that means you’re proud of it. You expect people who hear the name to be impressed that you work there. I confess that I haven’t worked in another environment in a long time, but I am told that at places where people don’t feel this sense of pride there is not nearly as much motivation and commitment. No one seems to want to go the extra mile or even hundred yards, and there’s more of a nine-to-five mentality. You notice this when you get to a grocery store at seven p.m. and the associates who can see you through the door wave hello but won’t let you in.

Everything stops dead at seven p.m.

Now, naturally, you can go overboard with the pride thing. I don’t think you need to have a framed photograph of the chief executive officer hanging over your mantel at home to feel pride.

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