The Little Guy’s Cousin
You know about the little guys, right? One dresses in black the other in white. They sit on your shoulders. They tell you to do stuff.
The little guy in white has a cousin whose name is Curiosity. Curiosity lives in his neighborhood. Curiosity thinks you are the coolest and will hang out with you all day long - if you pay attention to him.
Curiosity can juice your work and jack your career. Like the little guys, Curiosity talks to you. He’s always asking you, why did it do that? Or, how does that work? Or, what would happen if it did that? Sometimes you listen to him and sometimes you don’t. You know you always feel good, when after listening to him, you dig in and find the answer to his questions. You know you feel pretty crappy when you let the little guy dressed in black talk you out of digging for those answers…you know you do.
A key towards your professional development is to let Curiousity ride along next to you in your pack (it goes without saying the little guy in white is already riding point – right?) Curiousity will need a little guidance and direction from time to time, but he is one of the most powerful friends you’ll ever have.
Practice
You know Tony Stewart does it. You know Tiger Woods does it. You know Lebron and Kobe do it. How can you get to be the best? How can you get to be recognized? How can you get what you want, if you don’t practice?
You know that you can’t. You know when you don’t, you are settling for less. And maybe you’re ok with that. I don’t have time, I have something else to do, I don’t feel like it.
You need to practice, to educate yourself and to study to develop and improve. You just don’t need to do it in one day. You don’t need to hit a thousand golf balls or shoot a thousand baskets a day. But you do need to spend time to develop your passion – even if it is just five minutes per day.
You can carve out five minutes per day, can’t you? That’s nearly one-half hour per week. If you blew each day off you’d have nothing. Zilch. Nada. You can work on figuring out when to study or practice skills, just remember to start small.
The double secret probationary key to making this work, is to approach practice, education and study with the attitude that you will get something out of it, you will learn and it will help you to be the best.
You wanna know something else. Come here a second, get a little closer. See that guy over there? And the one over there? And all the guys at that company and that company over there? Those guys aren’t spending five minutes a day. They have no desire to get better. Do you think you have a leg up on them? You bet you do!
You know this. You know that there aren’t that many people in your profession who are really serious about their career development. This gives you an edge. But it also gives you the chance to be an example to others who do want to get better but just need a little encouragement.
Five minutes a day. Not a thousand baskets. Five minutes a day.
Talk With Your Manager
The role that you play in your company could be like the role Tony Stewart plays for NASCAR – top driver. What do you suppose would happen however, if Tony was working in the pits and never let the team owner know that he wanted to be a driver? The same thing that could happen to you. If you didn’t talk with your manager about your work related passions, do you think you’d get the chance to drive the race car?
Competent managers understand that if they engage technicians with work that speaks to their strengths and passion, that work will be more productive and profitable. So sit down with your manager and let him know about your passions and where you might like to go with them.
Ok, let’s suppose that Tony sat down with his team owner and told him he’d like to be a driver. Do you think they suited him up and plopped him in a car the next Sunday and said good luck? Of course not. Tony had to go through extensive training and practice to become the NASCAR driver he is today. And to become the Tony Stewart of your company, so will you.
A good manager will listen to what you have to say and, if the work you are passionate about can be done at your company, begin to devise ways to engage you. At first, these ways might include learning and practicing fundamentals. That’s great. You will need to stay in close communication with your manager and make sure you understand the reasons behind his direction. Another reason to stay in close communication is to make sure your manager knows that you are serious about the pursuit of your passions.
Your manager can be one of your closest allies in pursuit of work that you love. But you are the driver and you need to keep this pursuit on the road.
Customer Service
Hey Dave, isn’t a lot of what you teach here to get us to give better customer service?
Great question. To explain, check this out. Lets say you have a beat up, bucket of rusted pieces-parts car. You want that car to run like a lean, mean street machine. Someone tells you to paint it. So you paint it, rust and all. But it doesn’t run any better.
Painting the car is like someone sending you to customer service training or watching a customer service training DVD or reading a book – when you’ve got other parts of your game in need.
At The Technician Shop, we want you to be right with you…the whole you. When your game is on; when you are working your educational plan, when your relationships with others produce support, when your image is clean and smart, when you are developing skills, when you’re a resource to others no matter you’re low man in seniority, when your family feels good about your work, when you have excellent dialog with your manager – when you have all this going on, you’ll be right there with customer service. Heck you might not even need a customer service class.
When your game is on, customers will ask for you, they’ll wait for you. Your coworkers will want to work with you. You’ll be a go-to person for your company. You’ll be known in your community, your town, your industry. When your game is on, that cherry paint job will be covering a lean, mean street machine.
