Pay the Yes Forward | Creative Altruism
When your dreams are not coming to fruition as you had planned, extend a yes to someone else. As a matter of fact, have a yes day! A colleague, mentee, or even a mentor may need your assistance. Collectively working on other people’s goals increases the chances that you will obtain success. This is particularly true when it comes to working for a company.
Your ability to effectively serve your employer provides you with experience in managing people, projects, conflicts, and stress. In your current position, you have an opportunity to gain specialized information and contacts while utilizing and enhancing your skill set.
Outside work, take the time to assist a family member with a few simple tasks. Offering your time may bring you a sense of joy or satisfaction, which can be used to fuel the momentum that you’ll need to accomplish a goal.
Even if a task seems beneath your skill level, such as drafting a handwritten letter or selecting a flower arrangement as a gift, successful leaders value projects completed by their team. No one achieves greatness alone.
Blockbuster movies are a prime example of massive collaboration. You’ve seen the ending credits. No matter if you were Tom Cruise’s driver or the director, you receive credit on the film. One of my first tasks as an assistant after I moved to Los Angeles was to purchase ballet slippers for my boss’s daughter. At the time, I had recently earned my bachelor’s degree in industrial and operations engineering from the University of Michigan. Although I was genuinely excited to shop for the slippers because I worked for an admired company, you can imagine how my parents felt at the time.
Active Support
Not everyone who needs help will ask for it. Play an active role in a person’s support system, whether it’s serving as an occasional caretaker, sending motivational texts, proofreading a colleague’s work presentation, offering advice about a serious conversation that a friend is going to have with their boss, or serving as a silent sounding board for those with an important speech, sales presentation, or pitch meeting.
Forwarding a newly posted job opening may be life altering to a struggling coworker. Emails that read “FYI, you may be interested” are often well received, even if the person decides not to apply. Opportunities sometimes arrive in your inbox for you to tap forward.
When prominent executives are tapped for C-level opportunities, such as running a start-up that’s heavily backed or overseeing a new division at a competitor, they often hire a team of people who have stood in their corner throughout various stages in their career. Loyalty starts from the initial interaction. It is the enduring commitment through seasons of a person’s life trajectory that deems a person trustworthy.
Everyone believes that lending a helping hand and charity work are altruistic. But when you receive a yes, pay it forward within the specific area where you want to thrive, whether that’s in the community or workplace.
Creative altruism within your profession will reward you with unpredictable opportunities. Helping others to achieve their dreams will bring you closer to your goals. Invest in a mentee’s career, even if it seems pointless. Even simpler, try a new food item on a menu that the waiter suggests so that he hears one less rejection. Advocate for someone else’s yes.
The Coffee Test
I once conducted a survey by texting sixty people the same question.
I asked, “If you were a barista and you were required to sell the next customer a cup of coffee, but they didn’t drink coffee, what would you do?”
Fifty-eight people said some version of trying to convince the person how amazing coffee is, whether because of its health benefits or the taste of a new flavor. One person said they would beg the customer to purchase a coffee because their job was on the line. Finally, one person said that she would tell the customer to buy it for the next customer. Bingo!
The financial guru who suggested that answer had a yearly sales performance of $1.5 million in volume as an individual effort, and she’s also my mother. That explains our #YesDNA. Just as charitable donations come back to you on tax returns, the recipient of a paid-forward yes may be your greatest advocate in helping you achieve uber success.
After the Breakthrough
When you create your own opportunities, you rarely have a ceiling. In fact, the opportunities are endless without restrictions. Be careful not to spend too much time in the planning phase. Entrepreneurs spend enormous amounts of time and energy on how to achieve a breakthrough and a significantly shorter amount of time on what to do after accomplishing a benchmark.
When you achieve breakthrough success, the hardest thing is to repeat it or surpass it. One-hit wonders are widely referenced in music. The phenomenon happens not only in entertainment but equally in business and technology. Success is not a final destination. NBA teams view success as the momentum needed to three-peat it.
To succeed beyond expectations requires planning for the breakthrough and beyond. When you think of your inchstones and milestones, account for what success will look like in your life when it arrives. What steps will you need to take? Do you have a financial planner or an attorney in case lawsuits arise?
Entrepreneurs are thrilled when an investor says yes, but then they aren’t prepared for how to maintain the relationship with their investors or financing entities throughout the business’s development process. It’s difficult to prepare for something you have never experienced, such as managing people or business partnerships.
You are not expected to predict every life turn or business fail, but this is what makes advocates incredibly valuable. They can offer suggestions based on their failures and successes. Always listen to them, then decide for yourself the actual solutions for your challenges. Looking through the lens of leaders, you gain insights of what work-life balance looks like in motion, not in theory.