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In the world of sports, coaches and players have often said, “never underestimate your opponent.” Unfortunately, most folks have restricted that advice to the sports arena.  My practice has been to never understimate people, in general.  Honestly, I have never seen any benefit in expecting people to have limited opportunities or looking forward to below average production from any person.

I took seriously the words of the psalmist, David, who wrote, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”  In my opinion, only the prideful, selfish, or low key insecure have restricted God’s ability to disperse talents and gifts to a singular group of people.  I embraced the genius of a God wise enough to spread the wealth of gifts and talents, thereby creating a need for a village.  The plethora of gifted and talented folks necessitated the creation of villages.  The villages created networks of people equipped for seed planting, week pulling, and nurturing friutful crops.

Writing and building social capital were always my strengths.  I never claimed to be technologically savvy nor did I possess a green thumb.  My skills as an electrician were limited to changing light switch covers and flipping the breaker switch when there was a power overload somewhere in the house.  My heating and air cooling resume stopped at setting the thermostat and resetting the hot water heater when it blinked.  Each time my family moved I was presented new opportunities to expand my appreciation for the handyman who computed fractions in his head.  He impressed with his ability to add and subtract fractions without paper or a calculator.  Who ever heard of using a leveler to hang pictures?  I always thought the eye test was sufficient until I met our midwestern handyman.  My midwestern village was so amazing that they offered advice even when I travelled and they supported me after I moved from the areas until I established a new band of villagers in my new city.

In my professional life, I searched for diversity of personalities and skill sets. My perfect work villages have been comprised of people with demonstrated passion for their particular career fields.  The best work villages have been filled with a community of strong personalities who loved their work and who were enthusiastic about performing at a high level every day.  Seeing my staff and community partners be great doing things I couldn’t do encouraged me to praise them and to invite them to connect with students who needed to be supported or inspired by them.  I knew that my faith in my villagers breeds positivity and promise for the person who may underestimate their own potential for greatness.

Affirming others motivates most people toward service.  Additionally, it encourages them to work harder to perfect their skill sets and to invest more in the community.  Whether you call it networking or village building, like me, the villages (networks) are stronger when each person respects the strengths of the other members. Respect for the brilliance and potential of others should not be interpreted as a personal indictment on you.  Celebrate the members of the village and figure out how to collaborate with other folks to make the community function at a high level.  Finally, remember that there is no respect in underestimating those around you.  If you do, you weaken the network and suppress the potential of the village as a whole.

“She’s a workaholic,” said one person to another about me.  “Why do you come to work so early?” asked another person.  “Go home, you work too much,” was another statement I heard this month.  This work ethic may explain why at the end of the last two school years I wrote about being hung over.  Hung over described my physical, mental, and emotional state at the end of each school year.  Village keeping and building, by definition, proved demanding work regardless of my community.  Historically, the success of all communities has been predicated on people concerned about ideals, objectives, and goals of the populace.  Moreover, the concerned members possessed more than a notion or appreciation for the communal values.  These folks, who I called villagers, were passionate about the positive impact these principles might have on the individuals in the community that the villagers were driven to action.  In this context, action equaled work.

For about a month, I have been prompted to talk about and think about my impassioned work. I considered why I chose to work more than forty hours a week, what the amount of time invested in my work said about me, if anything, and whether the work produced expected and favorable outcomes for my community.  My work product equaled time and consistency.  As I thought about my successes and shortcomings as a leader, I realized that any person or organization experiencing success logged hours of consistent and committed work.  My personal feelings or opinions about the sports team, the politician, or the leadership style had no release in the conversation.  Successful leaders also used their passion to energize and define their purpose and to energize their pursuits.

Here are a few things I learned about myself last month:

1. I love my work!
2. I believe in the work that I do.
3. I believe in the potential of the people, the groups, and institutions impacted by my work.
4. I believe that my work is enhanced by my village network.
5. I tend to align with other folks who demonstrate passion through energetic work-related performances.
6. I am frustrated by lazy people.
7. I am aggravated by unmotivated people who impede the work and progress of others.
8. I believe in rewarding and praising my team for their investments into the community.
9. I need to improve on my work-life balance.
10. My village is stronger when I am rested and prepared when I show up to work.

Nothing in the post is groundbreaking, but there should be a return to the foundation of my use of time, energy, and resources on a regular basis.  Additionally, I need to be mindful of the reasons that that hang over effect happens and how to lessen the probability that I repeat the things that have led to that outcome twice in the recent past.  Finally, my self-flection may ensure that I am mindful of the demands on my staff and my obligation to engage in behaviors that uplift my staff and my village. Take thirty minutes to an hour or so every month to think about your work ethic and how it contributes to or diminishes your life and that of the community you serve.  Then, figure out how to balance all of the interests so that all receive some benefit from your work.

My journey as a blogger started because I wanted to encourage people who parent.  All of my life I have chosen opportunities that connected me with young people without considering the consistent theme each time I made the choice.

A few months ago a good friend and mentor heard me say that my body of work over my lifetime has been in service to young people.  She asked, “Has it really?”  I responded, “Yes.”  My mentor’s question begged a response that was more than a “yes” so I explained.  A few weeks later I was thankful that I had a practice run with my mentor because life offered me an opportunity to apply the reflective moment shared with my mentor with a student having difficulty understanding how to use elements of a seemingly imperfect, temporary situation as preparation for the thing you think you would rather be doing with your time. The student’s frustration and confusion was not foreign to me so I shared my journey with the goal of demonstrating how a winding, bumpy path can lead to a really cool space.

When I was very young, I wanted to be a pediatrician so that I could take care of children.  Then, life brought me a couple of family members who spent a lot of time in hospitals and I decided that I wanted children to receive excellent health care, but not from me.  When I was about ten or eleven, my mother decided that I was a good babysitter so she volunteered me to watch young children so that her friends who were single moms could go take care of things they couldn’t manage with children in tow.  Those unpaid babysitting gigs were good, but failed to spark any desire in me to spend the rest of my life with more than a handful of little people in my personal space for eight hours a day.  As a fourteen-year-old, I volunteered at a community center one day a week during the summer before I started high school.  I escorted children to the movie theatre that offered free movies to children when school was not in session.  I loved animated movies so I enjoyed these trips to the cinema as much as they did, but this work reinforced that I enjoyed short stints with larger groups of little people.  It was something about having to count heads on a regular basis and hold sticky hands that made me think this might not be the career field for me.  As a young adult, I continued to engage in volunteer work involving children and other young adults.  Then, I became a parent of two and chose the role of stay-at-home mom.  In that role, I worked on not-for-profit boards, in teen ministries, and used my kidkab to provide a safe haven to many children.  I demonstrated to my student that my roles and opportunities were all different, but yet the same.  The nonverbal cues meant that I needed to be more clear.  My passion motivated my performance. My passion motivated me to perform in all sorts of arenas.  Even the most unexpected venue can make room for your passion if you are a willing participant.

My message this week is very short and succinct: Let your passion motivate your performance.  Things don’t have to be just alike to be relational and relevant.  Use even what appears to be the most unrelated experience or frustrating encounter to enhance your ability to work within your passion wheel.  This decision will change your perspective and give you strength to survive the challenge of the seemingly unrelated or situation what probably feels like a speed bump slowing your pace to the good thing.  Pump your brakes and take in the details of the things around you.  Speed bumps exist for a reason.  Notice the cool blue color of the sports car on your right.  The blue will do what blue does; it will be a calming color.  Noticing the blueness will relax your countenance enough for you to notice the children on your left smiling and waving as you drive by them.  In your relaxed state, you can be grateful for the speed bumps that made the children felt safe enough to play ball or skate in the street.  You might even be thankful for a speed bump giving you opportunity to inhale and replace the stress of “adulting” with the aroma of childhood innocence.

Right now stop reading, close your eyes and breathe.

Breathing deeply will be your key to surviving the things that don’t seem to make sense on your road to your dream destination.  Breathing will fuel your mind and your body.  Every time you close your eyes and do some deep breathing cruise through a peaceful place and meditate on your passion.  See yourself living out your passion so that your body can remember the feeling.  Open your eyes, keep breathing, and live out the passion regardless of the speed bumps along the way.  Eventually, your passionate performance will take you to a wide, open road where you can enjoy the peace of living out your dreams and passions with your eyes wide open.

I did not plan to write about customer service again this week, but as life would have it recent experiences provided cause for another discussion on this subject.  By the end of the week, the tactics and intentional shifty business practices of the apartment and cell phone industries left me shaking my head.  I reflected on the meaning of homeownership and the necessity of cell phones today.  I will share my thoughts on each of them one at a time.

Historically, home ownership represented stability and success.  However, for any number of reasons, leasing has been a better choice for many.  For most folks, the rental option meant freedom of responsibility from landscaping, property maintenance, and general repairs in and around the property.  At least in my area, additional protections provided by cameras, gates, and on-site staff have attracted tenants and supported the higher asking prices by landlords.  In exchange for rental payments, landlords have promised high standards of professionalism and concern for tenants.  It has been my experience that landlords often expect perfection on the part of the tenant with contract demands for excellent care of their properties and timely rental payments, with no exceptions.  Unfortunately for tenants, landlords sometimes fail in the area of considering fact scenarios form the perspective of their tenants.  I wondered if these failures were due to lack of concern by the landlords, lack of knowledge about the subject matter on the part of the landlords or their agents, laziness and inefficiency, or if the goal of increasing their earning potential necessitated taking advantage of their customers.

One of my friends and I shared apartment failure stories mid week.  I told her my best tale that involved a broken air conditioning unit during the middle of summer and being told that living in a hot box was not an emergency after six in the evening.  The apartment representatives also told me that there was nobody to call for repairs over the weekend unless it was a water leak.  Really?! One would expect that the next thing out of their mouths would be “Let us make this better by discounting your rent or paying for a more comfortable place for you to stay until we can get the unit repaired.”  Well, that didn’t happen.  It took a few calls and a letter to get a portable, temporary unit to cool off my space.

My mother used to say, “If you put your problems on a clothesline with everyone else’s, you will go back and get your own.”  Mama was right.  When I spoke to my friend, she shared that representatives at her complex received a FedEx package on behalf of her husband.  There was proof of delivery from FedEx, yet no apartment representative could find the package which contained a check.  About two months later, she learned that someone from the complex attempted to deposit the check into the complex account without the knowledge or permission of her or her husband.  She had officially told a more shocking story than my story.  I told her that she won and we both laughed.

Before I could get too engaged in writing about the crazy apartment complex situations, I had an online chat with an AT&T agent.  She was fabulous and I told her so.  I also completed the end of session online survey because I wanted to inform the company about my experience.  The truth was that the availability of the online chat opportunity made connecting with the company easier and more convenient.  I loved that I could ask questions without being asked to purchase other great deals.  The problem came when I asked her to explain the mobile insurance package on one line and the insurance on another line.  We have four lines on the account.  I was told that the multi package insurance plan allowed for coverage of a maximum of three devices.  Therefore, in order to cover the fourth device I had to have a separate insurance plan.  It was confusing that the company didn’t offer a multi pack insurance plan for the family plan that included all four of our lines.  Since my inquiries were designed to reduce my monthly bill, the nice agent offered to change our insurance plan by attaching an insurance premium to each line instead of me paying for the two insurance plans.  I watched the computer screen anxiously waiting to see how much my monthly bill would decrease if she initiated this change to my account.  After all of her computations, she typed that she could save me $5.00.  Huh?  Speechless was all I had at that moment so I thought “Let me move on to discuss how I might save money on a change to the family plan.” I was offered two other options.  If I selected the less expensive plan, my data speed would be reduced and my savings minimal.  It seems that the invention of the bundle plans gave more benefits at a price just below the cost of the a la carte menu selections.  Like the housing situations, the company felt cold and heartless.  I understood at that moment that the profitable business motive took precedence over the family concerned about a household budget and saving.

When consumers have these sorts of experiences, the warm and fuzzy feeling vanishes and the company becomes a cold, stoic establishment lacking compassion and flexibility.  At that moment, it doesn’t matter how inclusive, how diverse, or how happy their advertising might have been.  Instead of making the company look like and feel like the folks in their pamphlets, online images, and commercials, the company look fake and phony and the customer feels deceived.  Companies ought to train their agents and empower their agents to deviate from their scripts.  As much as I prefer human conversations and interactions, the mechanical processing of the important needs of consumers aggravates me.  I encourage my audience to shop and compare because that is what I will be doing.  Finally, I encourage my audience to treat people with respect and empower anyone in your space to use respect, knowledge, and a consideration of the perspective of others in managing any moment of challenge or conflict.

There is no substitute for excellent customer service.  This week I found myself on the receiving end of some excellent customer service and some extremely disappointing customer service.  In both cases, the service was memorable and worthy of comments.  I generally repay excellent customer service with loyal patronage.  I return to the site of the wonderful service to spend my time and/or my dollars on the goods and services.  On the other hand, poor customer service frustrates me.  After voicing my aggravation about the deficiencies in the service, I intentionally work to inform others about the regrettable experience.  Then, I avoid future contact unless absolutely necessary.

When I experience sketchy service that borders on awful, I wonder why people struggle with the concepts of kindness, respect, and reliability.  I wonder why people fail to give competent service with a smile, a welcoming spirit, and genuine concern for creating a positive experience for the customer.  I understand that service may not be perfect.  As a result, the incidental challenges of the service provider or the challenges of a new staff members don’t immediately sever the consumer relationship.  However, the negative customer service experiences remind me of the better ones and what made the excellent experiences so positive.

The worst customer service experiences I had this week were reportedly the result of staff changes.  In two very different industries, the sources of my difficult experiences were attributed to new management and incompetent staff.  I asked the new leaders who were pitching the excuses to me why the incompetence of their staff became the problem of their customers.  I asked whether or not the provider would be expecting payment, in full and on time, or was there an accommodation for the customer when their staff failed to provide the services or goods promised.  In both cases, I had dialogue with at least four people at each place before I spoke to one person with the capacity to listen to the problem AND develop a plan of action to resolve the issues presented.  These situations also presented similar profiles for the not-so-helpful staff member.  The staffer was defensive when I didn’t accept their initial statement as the policy and final company response.  The staffers spent time deflecting their failures onto me and trying to convince me to just accept their policy or protocol as the standard even though there was no benefit to me.  There was no compassion or flexibility on their side of the challenging situations.  I felt underappreciated and used.

Thankfully, there were some really great customer service experiences this week.  Like the really bad ones, there were some commonalities between the really good ones.  In every excellent customer experience, the provider was polite and informed about their product or service.  I felt valued because the providers listened carefully and executed the services with prompt and efficient delivery.  I was treated with a respectful familiarity and professional concern that invited my return visits for service.  Additionally, those with excellent customer service secured a place in my contact list.  At no time was there an excuse for a failure to meet a request.  At no time was I made to feel responsible for any shortcomings of the provider.  In fact, there were apologies and accommodations made to ease the burden of my expenses of time and finances.

The not-so-great experiences frustrate me, but provide valuable teaching moments for me as a leader.  It is important to work to be better than the best customer service experience and never close to the standard of the worst.  I encourage all of the members of the teams I work with to be informed and concerned about listening, offering appropriate guidance, and creating a supportive, inclusive environment for those we service.  I want my team and myself to keep our conversations and actions fixed on providing the desired outcomes with professionalism and courtesy.  Excellent customer service begins with a leader who cares about projecting passion about the product or service to customers.  The leader’s ideals about customer care must be adopted by the team and woven into the fabric of the team or organization.  A provision of excellent customer service is not accidental.  I hope that others will use negative customer service experiences to enhance relationships with customers in their own environments.

Last week I spent time with participants in the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders program.  I was asked to share my thoughts on “sustaining your vision.”  The timing of the ask and the topic were perfect.  For about a month, my subconscious thoughts centered around the meaning of and the future of the “sisterintheshadow.”  The invitation to share my story and my journey as a writer and storyteller was an honor.  It was an honor because time is a valuable commodity and I had been included in a very busy schedule of inspired African young leaders.  The goal was to share a message that would encourage, educate, and enlighten young entrepreneurs to keep their visions alive.

I think we were all born with the ability to dream.  However, somewhere along the way, likely due to external influences, many folks elect comfort, compromise, and/or complacency.  Choosing to dream means setting your sights on something that might only be seen by the dreamer.  Choosing to dream means believing in the possibility that the thing you see can bless others by meeting a need in the targeted community.  The fellows inspired me to remember how my global young adult dream of “saving the world” became a vision to empower villages to build supportive communities for young people. Regardless of the discipline, the dreamers must work to sustain their visions.  Here was my advice:

1. Don’t forget why you are passionate about the thing you are doing. I speak because I remember feeling that nobody could see me when I was a child living in the shadows. In my existence in the shadows I felt that nobody cared to hear me either.

2. Don’t forget the foundational principles upon which you rely in your personal life that have application in your vision life. I have three principles:

a. The African proverb that “It takes a village to raise a child.”

b. “Work every day to make somebody’s world better.” A statement inspired by a conversation           with my father.

c. “Leave it better than you found it” was my mother’s rule.

3.  Don’t forget that everyone will not share your vision. Become fine with that reality as long as your target audience finds your vision and delivery relevant and a valued resource.

4.  Don’t miss opportunities to build your network. Save names, contact information, websites, and areas of expertise for those you meet.

5.  Don’t let your dream or vision be stunted by your lack of flexibility.

6.  Don’t leave your mentors and partners out of the plans for personal and professional development, especially if you are experiencing challenges in either area, or both areas.

7.  Don’t forget the lessons of one of my closest friends (who also happens to be a mentor):

a. Be comfortable with never being caught up or ahead. AND

b. Remember that even moving slowly is progress.