Love, Honor, Duty, Forgiveness
Four Extraordinary Business Strategies

The longer I work with executives and businesses, the more I realize the value of old-fashioned terms like love, honor, duty, and forgiveness. Here's a whirl:

Obviously I'm not talking about romantic love or touchy-feely, Leo Buscaglia hugfest love. In 1979, M. Scott Peck wrote the book, The Road Less Traveled, which was The Purpose-Driven Life of the 1980s. It was on the bestseller lists for 15 consecutive years. In that book, Peck defined love as supporting another person's spiritual growth. I'm going to change that a little. I'm defining love in a business context as "respecting the other person and supporting his or her growth."

With that definition, imagine "loving" your boss, peers, direct reports, staff members, customers, suppliers, and competitors. In doing so, you would respect each person and you would support his or her growth as an individual. If that were the case, would you have time or desire to bad mouth other people or take advantage of them? Would you ever try to manipulate them or exploit them in a financial sense? If you knew you could get the short-term financial upper hand, would you implement your advantage and take the money? I don't think so. Not if you truly loved the other person. You would always treat them fairly and always make sure they gained from the situation. As a boss, you wouldn't humiliate the person in front of their peers because you know that doesn't accelerate individual growth.

Honoring another person means remaining open to their input. It means not cutting them off or avoiding their perspective. It doesn't mean you always agree with them, but it does mean you would never intentionally embarrass them. I really, really encourage you to read the book, Leadership & Self-Deception (The Arbinger Institute). This is one of the seven best business books I've ever read. It is so powerful because it shows us how we all deceive ourselves on a regular basis, and how that self-deception ruins business relationships and weakens business results. (And, as an added bonus, it shows how we hurt relationships in our personal lives as well.)

To me, "duty" means "doing what you should do even when you don't want to." In a business sense, duty refers to calling back that pain-in-the-butt customer even when you don't want to do it. Duty means always, always, always being honest about travel reimbursements. Duty means never, ever, ever slipping in a little extra special bonus that wasn't agreed upon. Duty means showing up when you said you would show up. Duty means being honest with your boss, your peers, your direct reports, and even your customers when it is not comfortable or easy to do.

At a workshop last year I was asked a brilliant question. We were discussing how to build an effective business relationship. One person said, "What happens if your trust with another person has been broken? How can you ever move past that and rebuild the relationship?" Wow, imagine standing in front of 50 people with the person's boss in the room and being asked that question. I didn't need my Starbucks Hot Chocolate Grande to wake up. Without thinking very long I said, "Forgiveness. Unless you are able to forgive the other person, you won't be able to build trust with him or her. That doesn't mean you're going to ignore what they did, but if you can't forgive than you might as well move on." During the many reports on Pope John Paul II, I was reminded of how he forgave the man who shot him. If the pope could forgive a guy who planted a bullet in his chest, couldn't we all benefit from forgiving people for saying rude things, damaging our reputation, or dropping the ball with an important client? As I told the workshop participant, the person who benefits the most is the one who forgives the other person. When we forgive someone, we no longer have to carry around the incident and our associated anger.

If you want to accelerate your career, I encourage you to dial into the old-fashioned virtues that don't get as much attention as they used to get.

Take care and have a great month!

Dan Coughlin

Accelerate Update This section is always current to the current month

I suppose every book changes an author's life to a certain degree. My first book, which was self-published in 1995, was called Inside Out: A Catalyst for Conscious Living. It's out of print now for a number of good reasons. The layout, which yours truly did, looks like something a first grader could do today. And the ideas are very theoretical, which doesn't fit my approach anymore. However, I read the book a few months ago, and I was pleased by how clearly I had explained my early thoughts on improving performance.

My second book, Corporate Catalysts: How to Make Your Company More Successful, Whatever Your Title, Income, or Authority was published in 2005 by Career Press. That book was a step forward in clarifying my ideas on improving performance and understanding how to write a whole book. It's one thing to dream about getting a book contract and another thing to write a 70,000 word manuscript.

My third book, ACCELERATE: 20 Practical Lessons to Boost Momentum, which was published in May 2007 by Kaplan Publishing, has changed my business dramatically. Up until that book was published, I mostly did projects for four companies: McDonald's, Marriott, GSD&M, and Toyota. In the past 12 months, I've worked with business owners, executives, and managers within dozens of small, medium, and massive organizations in more than 20 industries ranging from boats to banks to software to financial services to trucking to lighting to home healthcare to hospitals to optometrists. It's been an exciting adventure.

If you want to see my speaking calendar for 2008, which we'll try to update every two weeks, please click here.

Currently, I have 66 speeches scheduled for 2008. If you would like for me to speak at one of your events in 2008 or 2009, feel free to contact me at dan@thecoughlincompany.com and I will be glad to see if we can make it work.

If you want to see my speaking topics and a video of footage from some of my keynote speeches, please click here.

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