Living by a code of conduct.
The other day I was at the office when a call got put through to my desk. It was a call from one of our suppliers – a girl who had been chasing me for a couple of weeks about a new feature in their software. Frankly I had no interest in the new feature and was ready to make another excuse not to take the call.
But then I thought to myself “Hang on, you make sales calls for a living. How would it make you feel if this happened to you?” And then I remembered something from the past about a code of conduct I created for myself. One of the primary points was: -
· Make someone’s day, don’t break someone’s day
If I didn’t take this call would I be living by my code of conduct? No is the answer – so I took the call.
Another point on the code of conduct was: -
· Inject humour into my day at every opportunity
So I have here a girl chasing me about a feature of the software I wasn’t really interested in. “How can I make her laugh so hard it makes her whole afternoon?” I won’t go into the details but lets just say that my willingness to be playful and ability to slip ‘double entendres’ into almost any sentence – made her day! Even though she didn’t come away with the result she wanted she thanked me for the enjoyable conversation. And it brightened up my day too, I had fun, I felt alive! And I went back to the task I was doing with renewed vigour.
But it got me thinking about my code of conduct again. For me the code of conduct defines you as a person. It sets how you will act or your default behaviour for situations and can help you enormously when making decisions. I also find it useful to focus on when you in difficult or tiresome situations.
My code of conduct is as follows: -
· Inject humour into my day at every opportunity
· Always ask the questions; Where can I add value? And How can I add value
· Smile at anyone who makes eye contact with you
· Make someone’s day, don’t break someone’s day
· Never waste a moment
· Never be afraid to ask a question
· Question everything
· Try to think out of the box
· Make every day a school day
It’s a simple task that should take less than an hour, but here’s the kicker – EVERONE HAS ALREADY DONE THIS AT A SUBCONSCIOUS LEVEL.
By taking the time to look at your code that you have and consciously focusing on whether the code is helping you or hindering you, you can take out the points that don’t work for you and install new points that will help you.
From now on I will be looking at my code of conduct every morning before I start the day. And living by it.
So, take the time out to create your own code of conduct and if you live by yours I can promise you, you will feel alive too.
