I was watching the finale of the Celebrity Apprentice last night. I must admit it was the first time in years. (I would commend the first few seasons to anyone trying to understand characteristics of a team though – both the good and the bad.)
I had watched it all the way to the start of Season 6, when they came to LA and made the losers sleep in tents on the lawn. The boardroom cat fights grew in length and the “reality” kept ebbing. It seemed to become ways to pitch product placements by the seat of your pants.
Anyway it came down to Annie Duke, the world champion poker player and comedy legend Joan Rivers. Don’t worry, I won’t give the end away. I will say it was interesting, after a design firm pulled out of Annie’s plans and said it was due to Joan’s abuse of their designer, that Annie repeated that fact to everyone she talked to -all the way up to the final moments of the finale. Implying that if the designer hadn’t quit, she would have done better.
I flashed on the scene in Rocky Horror Picture show when Janet Wise says three times, “If only we hadn’t ______” and the audience would yell back each time at the screen “but you did!’
For Annie, the obstacle became a badge of honor. She may have thought of it as a way to get people to her side but it made her look weak. In sports they call it a “losers limp.”
How many employees do you know who blame the customer for them not making a sale? I used to hear it from salespeople on my team. The customer was a “jerk,” “too cheap,” “not ready to buy,” the list goes on and on.
The important thing to take away from this is to hire people that can take responsibility for their own actions. And if an employee screws up, it is up to us to make sure they 1) are able to admit it, 2)they know it is better to accept that responsibility and 3) not reward blame.
To change the dialogue after a missed sale, I would ask the salesperson, “Do you think you could have done anything better?” Many times, by asking this question, they were able to focus on the harder work of taking responsibility for the things they could change, not the easy way out of blame and “if only.”
Once the salesperson does that though, they have to let it go. Encourage them to learn from it, but not beat themselves up over it; just prepare to do better the next time the door opens.
