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Informative Articles

Courtesy In The Workplace--"Can You Say, Thank You?"
”Thank You” is such a beautiful phrase. When you say, thank you, it makes a world of difference. Recent research suggests that discourtesy in the workplace is rapidly becoming an increasing dilemma for businesses and organizations. Workplace...

Introduction to Performance Coaching
Not too long ago ship captains could actually whip sailors who disobeyed orders; managers could fire workers on the spot for virtually any reason, or even no reason at all; and students could be expelled from school for any minor infraction of the...

People Skills Drive Leadership Success
Most people aspire to be effective in their work efforts. They get a good education, learn important technical skills, and stay up on the latest industry trends. These are all important steps to a person’s success in business and yet,… As a...

Recruiters Prefer Someone They Know
If a recruiter has a position open, guess who their first move is when they want to fill it. If you guessed posting a job on a job site, you're wrong (at least most of the time). Recruiters are like any other human being and they want to get their...

Team Building: Developing A Team To Rely On
Team building is very important when it comes to managing people. People are simply more willing to work together, when the atmosphere encourages it. For many organizations this is quite necessary for the business to run well. When everyone gets...

 
Don't Settle

Chuck was the best of the twenty-four candidates. Still, he didn't have exactly what I was looking for and my instincts warned me of his unusual personality. Yet the skills required for the job were specialized and he had most of them, and I'd been interviewing for five months, and my boss wanted the position filled before the budget process started. No, he might not be perfect, but he would be ok.

So I hired Chuck. As a new manager, it was a decision I came to regret. Chuck turned out to be a marginal performer, never grew into the job, and drew frequent complaints from his teammates. It might have taken me five months to hire Chuck, but it took me eighteen to fire him. Still, I'm grateful for the experience. Chuck taught me a lesson I applied in my next twenty years in management: don't settle.

When you settle, you choose mediocrity. Don't settle for the best of the worst. Keep looking. Don't settle for something that's barely okay. Push to make it better. Don't settle for average work from others when exceptional is needed. And don't settle for delivering good when you're capable of better. Expect more from yourself. Then expect more from others.

Whenever I've settled, the work or decision comes back like a boomerang, reminding me to keep my standards high. As W. Somerset Maugham says, "It is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it." I know that's been my

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experience.

There's a story I like about Phidias, a Greek sculptor working on the Acropolis. As he was finishing a statue of Athena, which would stand a hundred feet high next to a marble wall, an onlooker asked, "Why are you chiseling strands of hair on the back of her head where no one will see them or even know they're there? "I'll know," replied Phidias.

I wish I would have found a cabinet maker with that same attitude when we were building our home. When we moved in, we discovered tops of cabinets uncapped and unstained. It's true no one would see them. But, it was not the quality of work we expected, paid for or wanted. The cabinet maker had settled for mediocre. But we didn't. We had him do them over.

People who are winning at working know when good is not good enough. They operate like Phidais, not our cabinet maker. They understand that quality work is not an accident. It's a deliberate focus that starts with high personal standards. People who are winning at working don't settle for mediocre. Not in others. And not in themselves.

(c) 2005 Nan S. Russell. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Sign up to receive Nan's free eColumn, Winning at Working, at http://www.winningatworking.com. Nan Russell has spent over twenty years in management, most recently with QVC as a Vice President. Currently working on her first book, Nan is a writer, columnist, small business owner, and instructor.