Hub911 - Emergency Services Information for all First Responders; Fire, EMS, LEO
LIKE us ->
  • Home
    • Free Medical Information Card
    • Contact Us
  • EMS
    • EMS Dept. Links
    • EMS Sponsors
    • EMS Classified Ads
    • EMS Events
    • EMS Forum
  • Fire & Rescue
    • Fire & Rescue Dept. Links
    • Fire & Rescue Sponsors
    • Fire & Rescue Classified Ads
    • Fire & Rescue Events
    • Fire & Rescue Forum
    • SOS Supply
  • Law Enforcement
    • Law Enforcement Dept. Links
    • Law Enforcement Sponsors
    • Law Enforcement Classified Ads
    • Law Enforcement Events
    • Law Enforcement Forums
  • Towing & Utilities
    • Tow Equip
    • Towing Company Links
    • Towing Company Sponsors
    • Towing Classified Ads
    • Towing Events
    • Towing & Utilities Forums
  • More
    • Dispatch
    • Explosives
    • HazMat
    • Lifeboat
    • Search & Rescue
    • U.S. Military >
      • Army
      • Navy
      • Air Force
      • Marines
      • Coast Guard
      • National Guard
      • Air National Guard
  • Forums
    • EMS Forums
    • Fire & Rescue Forums
    • Law Enforcement Forums
    • Towing & Utilities Forums
  • Info
    • Contact Us
    • Advertising >
      • Rate Page
      • Classified Ads
      • Links
      • Sponsorship
    • Resources
    • Disclaimer
    • State Listings
    • Site Map
  • Design
    • Website Design
    • SEO
    • Social Media Marketing
    • Hosting
    • Branding
    • Graphic Design
    • Printing
    • Signs and Banners
  • Blogs
    • Health Blog >
      • Mold Test Sale
    • Hub911 Blog
    • EMS Blog on Hub911
    • Fire Blog on Hub911
    • LEO Blog on Hub911
    • Towing Blog on Hub911 >
      • Positive Spin on Covid-19
      • COVID-19 and Isolationalism
    • PSA Blog
    • Hub911 Products Blog
    • Contests
    • Hub911 Recipies
  • Store
    • Service Animal Memorials
    • Contests
  • Print ID card
  • Parts Department Managment
  • New Page
  • New Page

Reading what Your Brain Sees - Good Stuff! Plus Baseball references!

11/2/2016

2 Comments

 
Picture
I got some spam the other day from a training materials firm that I once bought something from, and I glanced at the email without reading it closely.  The subject read, “5 Dumb Ways to Kill Employee Morale – and 5 Great Ways to Improve it.”  I read only the first part, and I thought it read, “5 Ways to Kill Dumb Employees.”  Maybe my brain read it that way because I’m dysfunctional – who knows?  My first thought was:  Only 5?  Just kidding.  I love employees.  If I had any, they’d back me up on that.  I really enjoy other people’s employees.  It really is so much fun to hang around the periphery of a deteriorating supervisor-employee relationship, doling out unsolicited advice to both parties.  Mostly, I try to wait till the advice is solicited.  It is so much easier to have a positive perspective on employee issues when you are not immersed directly in the issue, when it’s someone else’s issue.  This is why we need peer relationships with coworkers or friends with a corporate stature similar to our own.  Let’s not confine it to professional relationships, either.  Husbands talk to other husbands, and wives talk to other wives, about the challenges of marriage.  Parents to other parents, and kids talk to other kids, about the challenges of intergenerational relationships.  We’re wired to sometimes see things more clearly at a distance.
​
I like being a grown up.  I don’t always act like one, but I like being one.  I like the privileges, the freedoms, the responsibilities, the challenges.  One of my brothers is going through a divorce, and the circumstances of the separation and his activities immediately following required some painfully honest discourse between members of the family.  One of the feelings he expressed to me was that he didn’t want to be judged.  I heard the same thing from one of my other siblings – we shouldn’t judge others.  People who are religious sometimes suggest that only a higher power can judge humans.

This got me to thinking.  I’m very fond of pragmatic activity.  What if we really tried to not judge others?  How could this possibly be a good idea?  Think about it.  You start teaching your kids at an early age to be wary of strangers, a stark and subjective judgment that has no basis in fact.  Why?  For their protection.  It’s not about the person being judged.  It’s about your kid being safe.  Volumes have been written about how important it is to make a good first impression.  Malcolm Gladwell wrote a whole book about how right we usually are when we form that first impression.  News flash:  first impression = snap judgment.  In the business world, when we interview a job applicant without any more information than the resume, references, a look at their Facebook page, and the content of the interview, we are judging based on very limited information, something many of us later rue when the dysfunctions start multiplying.  Judging others is pragmatic, and necessary. 

And think about a courtroom judge.  Should they go a little easier on the guilty?  Maybe we should change their title to “Advisor.” 
I think most of us would qualify my brother’s statement to say that we don’t want to be unfairly judged.  But what most of us really mean by that is that we don’t want to hear the unfair judgments of others.  The reality is, we all judge others constantly, and often unfairly.  I say, let’s bring the judgments out into the open, where they can be judged themselves.  We were just discussing in a staff meeting the other day how it wasn’t really fair for a recently-hired employee to be surprised about being let go before his or her training period was up.  I agree.  I see it in business all the time, treating everything as if it is a pop quiz.  Listen, if you are testing your employees, you want it to be an open-book test.  You want them to have all of the necessary information at their disposal all the time.  You want training to be an ongoing process, and you want it to be an endless loop:  demonstrate, drill, provide feedback, rinse, repeat (the lather-rinse-repeat instruction, by the way, has got to be one of the most brilliant marketing ploys ever devised).  That’s teamwork, that’s leadership.  If an employee sits through a performance review and is legitimately shocked about how poorly you assess their performance, you haven’t done your job as a supervisor.  You should scrub clean the record and start over with that employee.

It really is an egocentric fault to demand that others not judge you.  That sentence reminds me of another reason why people don’t want to be judged – the inability to separate self from actions.  Anyone who has read good parenting guidelines knows that you criticize and correct a child’s actions, not the child himself.  You affirm your love for the child, then explain why you disapprove of his actions, and give an example of what action you would have preferred.  Life is messy, and linguistics are doubly messy, so when we hear someone tell us that they are unhappy with us, we need to hear it as, “I love/like you, but not what you did.”  Why interpret a judgment in the most personally threatening way?  And remember, also, that the Judge, in this case, is another person just like you, trying to get through the day with limited data, subject to the same misconceptions and insecurities.  Like Crash tells Nuke in “Bull Durham,” when Nuke is nervous because his father is at the game:  “He’s just your dad, he’s as full of crap as the next guy.”  Guess what?  We’re all as full of crap as the next guy.  If I make a judgment about your tobacco addiction, or your taste in “music,” or your inane ramblings, I don’t expect you to engrave it in gold and make it your mantra. 

And, finally, let’s not forget the nature of judgments:  they don’t have to be bad.  What about the good judgments?  What about when I tell you you’re smart, pretty, funny, trustworthy, inspirational, and you smell good?  What about when I tell you that I like you, that I love you?  We want to get rid of that?  Hell, no, we don’t.  We all have the power to tip the scales, to make 60%, 70%, 80% of our judgments positive judgments, to look for the good in others and celebrate it.  So let’s tip.
I love you guys.  Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Nick Kemper
www.TowPartsNow.com

2 Comments

    Hub911.com

    Please tell us your story!

    Archives

    March 2020
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012

    Categories

    All
    2013
    911
    9/11
    Accident
    Amanda
    Anger In The Work Place
    Animals
    April Fools Day
    Auto Trans
    Bathroom
    Beer
    Being Chased By Car
    Briefcase
    Broken Wrecker
    Ca
    Cab Mess
    Cars
    Catch 20
    Catch 21
    Catch 22
    Changing Tire
    Chasing Car
    Claw
    Close Calls
    Clown Car Towing
    Commission
    Crash
    Datsun
    Dirty Shirt
    Dispatch
    Driving
    Drug Screen
    Drug Test
    Drunk Driving
    Eagle
    Emergency
    Emergency Disneyland
    Emergency Service Information
    Emergency Services
    Emergency Services Info
    Emergency Services Information
    Employee Drug Test
    Employees
    Employees Caring
    Employee Turnover
    Equipment
    Escape
    Fall Back
    Federal Building
    Finding Something Lost
    Fixing Your Truck
    Friends
    Frustration
    Funny Tow Story
    Gatecrasher
    Handle Angry Employees
    Harley
    Hate My Job
    Hib911.com
    Hiring Ems
    Hiring In The Towing Industry
    Hiring Nightmares
    Hiring Warm Bodies
    Hook And Book
    How To Motivate
    Http://www.essentialnow.com
    Http://www.hub911.com
    Hub911
    Hub 911
    Hub911.com
    Hub911.com
    Humor
    Impaired Driving
    Impound
    Impound Lot
    Info
    Information
    It's The Law
    Jobs Are Like Boats
    Kids
    Late
    Law
    Lazy Co-worker
    Lonely Road
    Lot
    Love Hate Relationship With Job
    Love My Job
    Luck
    Mad Customers
    Mad Man
    Management Difficult Employee
    Messy Truck
    Mi
    Motorcycle
    Municipal Contracts
    N
    Newsletter
    New Years Eve
    Nick Kemper
    Night
    Nissan
    Not Short
    Offended By Drug Test
    Oklahoma City Bombing
    Olds
    Painted Truck
    Paint Job
    Parking Violation
    Pets
    Police
    Police Tow
    Priceless
    Pride In Your Ride
    Professional Dress
    Respect Tow Truck Operators
    Restuarant Parking
    Road Party
    Rtto
    Runaway Car
    Sheriff
    Sherry Wood
    Shortcut
    Slow Down Move Over
    Spilling Pop
    Spring Forward
    Stolen
    Subaru
    Tactic To Cope With Anger
    The Hub
    Tickets
    Time Change
    Tire Friction
    Tires And Suspension
    Tow-agencies
    Tow Call
    Tow-company-managers
    Tow Crash
    Towing
    Towing And Equipment
    Towing Complaints
    Towing Mishap
    Towing Wrecker
    Towpartnow
    Tow Part Now
    Towpartsnow
    Tow Parts Now
    Towpartsnow.com
    TowPartsNow.com
    Tow Show
    Tow Truck
    Tow Truck Mess
    Train
    Trains
    Trick Or Treat
    Tricks Crossrails
    Trucks
    Uniform Compliance
    Vacation
    Vacationers
    Vehicle Owner
    Work
    Wreck
    Wrecker
    Wreckers

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.