The Benefits of Being Conscious with Customers,
Suppliers, Colleagues, Friends
Article by Corporate Coach Alchemist Anne Merkel, Ph.D.
How often have you met a person who was obviously not “conscious” about how he or she was in relationship with you? It happens all of the time, unfortunately, and it does not matter whether you are the customer, a supplier or vendor, a colleague, teammate, or a personal friend.
Not only do we all feel better about encounters with others when they approach us in a conscious way, but I know that business is handled more efficiently with better results, and personal relationships are much more enjoyable if we all “show up” and stay conscious in our dealings with others.
I see cases regularly where people enter into professional and personal relationships without a real conscious purpose. There is attraction, maybe a subconscious neediness to be in a certain kind of relationship, certain benefits to one or both involved, and a friendship/relationship begins. At a certain point “red flags” may come up concerning differences of approach, opinion, communication styles, lifestyles, etc., and often these are simply ignored. People in new relationships like the “glow” of getting to know somebody and the potential of what could come out of a relationship. At this time we often choose to remain in denial or unconscious of practicalities within the relationship. We can all look back with regret and identify exactly when we “went unconscious” and ignored the warning signals. Much time, energy, money, and love has been spent in such situations. If we can all maintain our consciousness and stay awake as we enter into future relationships, we will surely benefit in all areas of our lives.
There are many cases of unconsciousness in business where customers, vendors, colleagues have suffered gross mis-use of their time, energy, money, and good will. Let me elaborate.
I imagine that we have all encountered customer service personnel who have not given us the service we expected or desired. When a customer service provider does not support the service requirements of his or her job, then there may be several reasons for this.
- When they are preoccupied with too many tasks they may go unconscious in certain areas because they are overwhelmed.
- If they have a negative attitude about their work, certain tasks, or about serving YOU in particular, then they may consciously go unconscious about their responsibility to serve you.
- If their job is not a life priority, then they may not consciously focus on all of the details involved.
- When there is no loyalty to the organization or leadership, then employees can often function “adequately” in an unconscious state until a customer speaks up about it.
In any of these cases the inner person who basically wants to achieve, contribute, be liked, and be rewarded for a good job done, is not present, and instead, an unconscious version of that person shows up and does a mediocre job.
Often managers are just as unconscious as their subordinates. In one case a young manager accepted a discounted rate “donation” from a very experienced professional to do a certain job. He and his organization benefited greatly from the vendor’s time, energy, expertise, and it made him as a young manager look good to be working with such a high level professional. At the end of the project the young manager neglected to pay the vendor because he was preoccupied with some family events. When the facilitator later asked for payment the young manager acted surprised that the vendor had not been paid previously. He reluctantly offered some cash he had available at the time and said he would write a letter of reference as promised. Months later the manager had not followed up with updates from the project, had not answered e-mails from the vendor, and had not written the promised letter.
The vendor brought up this “glitch” between them prior to discussing doing another project, and the young manager explained that he divided his focus among an “inner circle” of priorities and an “outer circle” of priorities. Unfortunately, he told the vendor, he and his work were located in the “outer circle”, so the follow-up had simply been neglected. There is much that can be said here about management skills, planning, prioritizing, respect for vendors, professionalism. And, there is also the element of this young person simply going unconscious with his responsibilities when he had too many details surrounding him at once. His values of family and Spirit coming first are noble, however, he might not retain his management position much longer if he doesn’t show more consciousness as he deals with professional contacts – especially those who can greatly support his endeavors if treated with conscious respect.
In another case a mid-level manager was assigned the task of scheduling and supporting a strategic planning meeting for top management. She approached an outside meeting facilitator without doing her “homework” or preparing the details which would be needed by this individual. It took several e-mails and follow-up phone calls between the manager and the vendor to ascertain the basics of what was expected. After a short meeting with the top manager and others who really did not need to be in attendance, a plan of action was agreed upon. The session was carried out as planned, the strategic plans were assigned, deadlines were set, and nothing happened. The meeting and its assignments had not met the mark.
There seem to have been several areas of unconsciousness here. The top manager did not communicate directly with the vendor to share first-hand his vision, expectations, and background for the project. He did not get buy-in from his direct reports around the project before it was planned, he did not share with his employees the importance and practicality of creating the plans, and he delegated all project planning to someone who didn’t know what she was creating. The mid-level manager started the communication with the vendor without enough information, was not well-versed in her mission, and was more involved with mundane tasks of scheduling the food vendors and space than in supporting the essence of the project itself. The vendor was assured that the project was well-supported and that all participants were aware of the benefits of the process. He took this at face value rather than creating his own project orientation information for the participants. He focused on aspects of the project that actually needed to be built on a firm foundation, and was not aware that the foundation did not exist.
The meeting participants were enticed by a nice lunch and an afternoon away from the office, and, knowing that the top manager would not penalize anyone for not performing the assigned task, which was normal for him, they went unconscious and did not respond to the project. The top manager didn’t want to make waves, so no negative consequences were imposed on those not following through with the assigned task. The top manager was not conscious of his own management style, his communication and its impact or lack thereof on direct-report managers, and delegated unconsciously to someone who did not know what she was organizing. The mid-level manager organizing the event was so tied up in small details that she was unaware of the big picture and never bothered to look for it. The vendor thought he had all of the information and took too much for granted.
The results are that the top manager was disappointed; the facilitator was frustrated that his work did not hit the mark; the mid-level manager went from handling mundane tasks around this meeting to working with more mundane tasks around another project and never bothered to follow through as she was directed; all participants felt like the meeting was fun but a waste of their time and organizational resources; and there was no tangible result. If conscious attention had been focused on this project by ALL concerned, then it would have taken less time, would have been easier to organize and facilitate, and there would have been clear and tangible results. Instead the top manager is in denial that he played any part in the failure of the project, his mid-level manager is not receiving guidance to develop into a skilled future leader, and the vendor is reluctant to do any more work with this organization until it becomes conscious of where it is wasting energy – its own, that of its people, and that of outside vendors.
I invite you to look into your own life and its surroundings.
- How often are you unconscious in relationships with others, in performing tasks, in “showing up” in your life?
- Can you identify others around you who are there physically but are really not “present”?
- How often is your life affected by others who would play strategic roles if they consciously “showed up” for them?
- How much time, energy, money, love have you lost because you or others were not conscious in the NOW to take care of details, to make decisions, to show the right amount of focused attention to a person or a project?
Isn’t it time for all of us to focus more on living and working consciously?
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