Never Assume - You May End Up "Mopping" Up After Yourself

One never knows what life lessons will come from the simplest events.  Often if we look, these small life mishaps have lessons for our business lives as well.  I had such a lesson this last week and wanted to share it with others.

While visiting my daughter in-law for the week, my 12 year old daughter and I were helping clean up while she was doing some errands. We don't have a dishwasher at home. I have always just done the old fashioned hand washing because I was unwilling to sacrifice my precious cupboard space for a dishwasher. However, I had made the mistake of assuming that despite this, my daughter understood the basic mechanics of one.

She had finished loading it and I checked it real quick, making sure that plastic items were up top - etc. It looked good. So without further thought, I told her. "Great Job, now add the soap and start it." That was it. It was all I told her to do. Unbeknown to me, she grabbed the dawn dish soap beside the sink, filled the dispenser completely and turned it on. About fifteen minutes later, I entered the kitchen and shouted with surprise. It was knee deep in suds. Despite three rinses and scooping out what we could, below is the status of the dishwasher on the fourth rinse.

                                                            
                                                                                On the Fourth Rinse

This got me thinking about two things as I was working to clean up the mess. How many other messes in my life had I been forced to clean up because I had assumed that the listener knew what I meant?  Almost all major problems in relationships and in business teams comes from miscommunication and the primary one is making assumptions. Don Miguel Ruiz teaches, " Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life. " this is from his book, The Four Agreements. I highly recommend this book by the way. Small and a quick read, but awesome. Anyway, I know this agreement and yet I catch myself doing it all the time. Mostly, in that the listener is understanding what I am saying.

When running a team whether in MLM, Marketing or in face to face Sales, you must never assume that your instructions are clear. It will save you hours of "cleaning up the floor" so to speak if you just take the time to stop and ask, "is that clear?" or "Have you been shown how to do that yet?" In busy lives and businesses, it is easy to make the assumption that someone else has trained the individual on that task or project. If you are not careful, your instructions might be followed to the letter. Which is great if you included all the letters but disastrous if you skipped a few. Remember always communicate clearly, check in now and then to make sure that your instructions were understood and be sure to own the error if you didn't give all the instructions. This will lead you far in being a great team leader. Most importantly to you personally, this extra little time will save you a lot of headache and stress. It might even save you an hour of cleaning up soap suds.

Have a prosperous day.
Cheryl
www.balancedfreedom.com