In our continuing series on John Maxwell’s book, Becoming a Person of Influence, we find chapter six on mentoring and enlarging other people. John explains that we must build others up and help them reach their goals. We should share our time and talents with others and motivate them to do better.
Joel Osteen in his book, Become a Better You, brings up a great point about enlarging people. He says..
Remember your thoughts do not bless anybody but you…
The idea of this statement is that we need to let others know what we are thinking. We need to make the phone calls and write the e-mails to let people know when they are doing a great job. If we keep it to ourselves, the other person is not built up and consequently does not receive the blessing.
Building Up People
If I see you doing a great presentation, I need to stop by afterwards and give you a word of encouragement. If I read your blog post, and it captures my interest, I need to comment that you did a great job.
Simple words of encouragement can really help someone move to the next level in their career. They can help others take a leap of faith and start a new business.
This is an area that I have been focusing on in the past few weeks. Trying to learn how to better communicate with people. I realize that time commitments and my perfectionist streak hinder me from making quick replies to e-mail or leaving a quick comment on a blog.
Joel’s statement got me thinking… isn’t it better to send a short note saying “great job,” than not sending a more elaborate note because I don’t have time to write it.
Rather than a two paragraph work of literary art, how about if I just leave a one sentence comment on someone’s blog? I can’t tell you how many of those two paragraph masterpieces I’ve had in my head that never were written.
Hmmm… how about a paraphrase… A few words written are much better than a perfect paragraph in my head…