A woman walking down a busy street, talking on her cell phone, was oblivious to her surroundings on Saturday. She stepped off the curb to cross seven lanes of traffic, just as the light turned green. The driver in the third lane was not paying attention and barely managed to stop as the pedestrian literally jumped out of the way. Despite being only half way across, the pedestrian continued to hold her phone to her ear, look over her shoulder, and make angry gestures at the driver that almost hit her as she blindly forged ahead. Ignoring the perils in front of her, she was running past moving vehicles while still looking behind her!
The incident spawned thoughts on a number of different levels and inspired me to look up an old article on leadership written by Jack Welch. The former CEO of GE discusses several categories of poor leaders including (among others) the know-it-alls, the distant and disengaged, and the just plain jerks and concludes with, “part of being a lousy leader, no matter what the category, is lack of self-awareness.” Being a good leader starts with self awareness and so does being a happy, successful (insert your own definition of “success”) and responsible person.
We make decisions everyday, which by degrees become habitual and automatic, about whether to respect the interests of others’ and try to add value to their lives (with no thought or expectation of reward) or to be selfish, rude and follow the creed of “self first, self last, anything left self again.” Those decisions become part of you, a way of being, which is insightfully illuminated (positively) in the book by Bob Burg, “The Go-Giver”.
The choice is ours whether to be unaware, preoccupied, self absorbed and angry with the past or forward looking, happy and enlightened to the potential the future may hold. “The more we expand our focus to include others' interests alongside our own, the more securely we build the foundations of our own happiness.” While, this quote is by The Dalai Lama, it is a non-secular universal concept.
So, what lessons did I teach my kids, who witnessed it all and summed it up with “she is an idiot”? It was foolish of her to not be paying attention, rude of her to expect that the world revolves around her, and most importantly sad that she chose to blame others and focus on the past instead of admitting and learning from her mistakes and moving forward in a positive way. Be aware of what is going on around you and be self-aware of how others view you. There are lessons here for everyone - professionally (whether in the multifamily industry or any other) and personally. In case you are wondering - we were not in the third lane. We saw her swaggering down the street when she was still ten feet from the curb.
For related content see Jack Welch article at http://tiny.cc/r6z0f
Dalai Lama video on awareness of inner values at http://tiny.cc/89qh3
