Today I want to talk about Business Ethics and how you can use it to improve your interpersonal communication and, why not, be happier with your business.
I studied marketing in college and while most of the classes where a bunch of BS and I went over that in my ‘Don’t go to college’ post. There was one class that I took that was amazing and it was called Business Ethics.
That probably doesn’t sound like that great of a class, like the type of class where you hear things that would change your life BUT it did change my life and mostly because of this one book that we’re going to review on this blog post:
How The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz can help with your Business Ethics:
Check the video:
It’s basically four agreements that you make with yourself in order to live your life better and be a better human being.
Let’s jump to it.
Agreement #1: Be Impeccable with Your Word
The point of this agreement is to make sure that you’re not lying to yourself or to other people.
Basically, he means that if you tell someone that you’re going to be in a coffee meeting at 11 AM, you’re always going to be there, no matter what.
I found out that the most successful people will always show up regardless of whether they want to be there or not.
There were so many occasions… recently even in the last couple of weeks where I didn’t feel like showing up to meetings. The ones I usually feel reluctant to, are the most game-changing.
For example, there were a couple of people that put themselves on my Calendly for X27 Marketing. If I’d looked at their website from a negative instance I would’ve said: ‘this isn’t a good fit for us’.
But talking to them it was either that was just the placeholder website and they had some other company that wanted to talk about or it was just a good opportunity, either way, it’s been great.
Taking the final decision to discard them from my schedule would’ve resulted in the loss of some potential deals and some potential new contacts.
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Agreement #2: Don’t Take Anything Personally
My Business Ethics teacher said this works both ways, when somebody says really bad things about you, trying to take you down, you don’t think about that feedback. You try to get the grains.
For example:
If you get a feedback that you can actually use to improve, then take it. But if it’s something out of order or a personal attack that won’t improve your delivery process, that’s the type of feedback you don’t want to listen to.
Also, don’t listen to good feedback either because if someone gives you a very nice compliment that’s that person giving feedback really to himself, whether it’s good or bad, that’s really his opinion and his lifestyle and his whole world coming into that comment.
So really you can’t listen to either way whether it’s good or bad, the only person you can really listen to at the end is yourself.
Agreement #3: Don’t Make Assumptions
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In life, business, and in general, try your best to not assume that you understand how somebody else feels just because you’ve had some interactions with them or you’re seeing actions.
A bunch of times in the past I had the impression that people were malicious or that they were just making stupid mistakes, but what really happens is they don’t understand or I’m not getting the full picture.
If I had jumped on those people and got angry on those situations that would’ve just made me look pretty stupid at the end of it once it’s all figured out.
Don’t make assumptions!
It’s pretty important when it comes to interpersonal communication and also for feeling happy at the end of the day.
I feel happy when I think everybody is just trying to be their best in the world, that’s the kind of frame that I always see things through, everyone is trying to be their best and if they’re being malicious or mean I just dig deeper and try to figure out why that is, but not making assumptions about it.
Agreement #4: Always Do Your Best
That means in everything you do you’re trying as hard as you possibly can, whether you’re going to succeed or not is kind of up to life.
Recently, we did a pitch for a client in which the whole team contributed amazingly. We built this amazing pitch deck, we showed a bunch of results, a bunch of our case studies.
We customized the whole thing for this client, and at the end of it, they said they didn’t want the business, they didn’t want to work with us right now.
The very important thing to remember about Business Ethics is that I didn’t blame on my team, I didn’t fault myself because, literally, we did every single possible thing to make it work, everything was customized, the pricing was right, the packages were fair. Everything was good!
In such a situation I cannot let myself to feel sad and consider the experience a failure because we learned a lot about how to put together a presentation.
So, in Business Ethics always do your best to the final point because if you always do your best you’ll always succeed somewhere, even in your heart.
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Do you need further information? Check these posts:
- How Can You Start a Business If You’re a Wantrepreneur Without Experience?
- Go Into Debt and Optimize for Happiness – 3 Business Lessons from Director Kevin Smith
- 3 of The Best Business Books All Entrepreneurs Must Read
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