July - All Star

July Customer Service All Star

“When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” I was reminded of this recently while learning a new job in the Electrical department of Home Depot.

After almost 30 years of working in the jewelry industry, I found myself overwhelmed this summer with: new training materials, employee names, technical terms, acronyms, advice, procedures, passwords, and of all things - locker combinations.

Developing a readiness to learn is the art that all good teachers practice. I’m afraid people tend to forget what it’s like to be a beginner. I know I do at times. Let’s face it, you tend to take for granted the things you do by habit. In hindsight, it’s easy to explain experiences based on your level of knowledge and understanding, rather than a student’s level of mental preparedness. There’s the key - mental preparedness.

Learning a new job is not just having the right attitude towards the job; it’s being able to process the information and DO what’s expected on demand. People selectively remember what they’re ready to when their experience, confidence, and skill levels balance. I call this selective absorption. In the book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell refers to this phenomena as "stickiness."

According to Gladwell, stickiness means that a message makes an impact. You can't get it out of your head. It sticks in your memory. When Winston filter-tip cigarettes were introduced in the spring of 1954, for example, the company came up with the slogan, "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should." At the time, the ungrammatical and somehow provocative use of "like" instead of "as" created a minor sensation. It was the kind of phrase that people talked about, like the famous Wendy's tag line from 1984, "Where's the beef?”

How do you make a memorable impact on a new employee? It’s not just remembering More Saving. More Doing. Or is it? Company facts, projection figures, and department details, can set up mental roadblocks for employees who think they must memorize these things to understand the corporate culture. Memorization does not lead to understanding, in my experience, it’s - doing - that solidifies understanding and builds confidence. Doing means being willing to make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, without a loss of self-esteem, and move on.

So, the teacher is the student in you. Students learn best when a mentor challenges them to teach themselves. Like sunlight is to plants, the teacher is a catalyst for the student to discover their goals and then set out a path to achieve them. This requires drawing out what an employee knows in relation to what they need to understand to perform the job.

Being a rookie is a humble reminder that you must create a blueprint to learn new tasks. It’s simply a matter of establishing a plan, trusting the procedure, and building the confidence to be yourself.

By practicing the art of being a student, you can rest assured the teacher in you will appear.

Comments

The Yellow Legal Pad

In this episode, the Art of Refiring July 1st is staring me in the face, less than two weeks away. For years, retirement seemed like something that happened to other people. Suddenly, it's on my calendar. I've been thinking a lot about the dreaded "R-word" lately. Not because I'm worried about having enough to do. Quite the opposite. What fascinates me is this strange paradox: Why does retirement make so many of us nervous, while having a job—even one that regularly drives us crazy—somehow feels comforting? Let's be honest. Most of us spend years complaining about meetings that should have been emails, reply-all disasters, impossible deadlines, and that one coworker who insists on microwaving leftover fish in the breakroom. Yet when the idea of walking away finally arrives, we hesitate. I think I've figured out why. A career isn't just a job. It's a highly structured coping mechanism. For forty-plus years, somebody else has basically decided what I...

The Big Rip and the First Tee

The telescope (Celestron) sits quietly under its cover, temporarily blinded by Southern California's annual meteorological hostage situation – June Gloom. Somewhere above that thick gray ceiling, photons that began their journey before humans appeared are streaming across the cosmos, only to be intercepted by a marine layer that seems to have veto power over astronomy. Instead of observing the universe, I find myself imagining – The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) by physicist Katie Mack. According to modern cosmology, the universe may eventually end in a Big Rip, a Big Crunch, Heat Death, Vacuum Decay, or some other catastrophe that sounds suspiciously like a rejected heavy-metal album title. Astrophysicists spend their careers calmly discussing the possibility that reality itself could suddenly cease to exist because a quantum field had a bad day. It's a remarkable way to start a Saturday morning. One moment you're contemplating the ultimate fate of spacetime...

Epictetus, Ego, and Acronyms

In this episode, Destroy Communication, One Three-Letter Acronym at a Time This week, I want to explore a deeply relatable, universally feared workplace character: the "know-it-all." Now, I’m not pointing fingers here. If we are being completely honest, we have all played this role. We've all uttered some version of, "Yes, absolutely, that aligns with our strategic objectives," while our internal monologue is screaming, "I don't even know what the objective is, let alone the strategy." What got me thinking about this was a chapter in Ryan Holiday's book, Wisdom Takes Work . Holiday leans on a powerful piece of Stoic truth from the ancient philosopher Epictetus: "It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows." It's a brilliant quote that strikes right at the heart of the human ego. You can't learn what you already know, and you certainly can't learn what you pretend to know to save face. Though to be ...

The Places You'll Go . . .

Well, the time has arrived. Yes, July's drawing near, And somehow I've managed to last seven years! I've analyzed forecasts and studied the trends, While spreadsheets multiplied without seeming to end. We've planned for the sunshine, the storms, and the load, while Mother Nature kept changing the code. But through all the numbers, the forecasts, and charts, the best part of Cenergy's always been hearts. The people beside me, year after year, Made even the toughest challenges clear. To the bright, talented folks reading this today, The future is yours now—you're well on your way. And unlike my era, here's the key: You’ll work with AI just as smooth as can be. The reports that took hours may take only minutes. The models you build with intelligence in it. The data will flow faster than ever before, While AI handles tasks that are mostly a bore! But here's my advice as I head out the door: Technology changes, but people matter more. AI can predict, calcula...

On The Fly

Search This Blog