So how do you start an epidemic in your business?
The key to creating an epidemic of enthusiasm is to turn your customer service inward. To create for your employees a career experience beyond their wildest imaginations. Epidemic enthusiasm comes from the experiences of the relationships between your employees and you. When they see their careers and their employer in comparison to those of their peers elsewhere, they cannot help but catch pandemic pride because their employer treats them so well.
There are two simple steps to enriching your employees' lives to the point where they know that they are valued and the infection of epidemic enthusiasm takes hold. Appreciation is the first of these two steps.
Robert is the CEO of a medium sized company. Every morning when Robert arrives, he walks through the entire building greeting every employee, from janitor to the managers, with a genuine, eye glinting smile and a hardy "Good morning." Bob regularly said, "Thank you for being here," even though nothing special had been done yet. His genuine enthusiasm and appreciation was warm, enveloping, and infectious. And it cost him nothing but a brief 20 minutes before his day began.
Robert is a living example of the first step to infecting your organization with epidemic enthusiasm and pandemic pride. The second step is to encourage resilience. There are six basic areas of human functioning:
- physical
- emotional
- intellectual
- social
- behavioral
- spiritual
Resilience is built by filling six "canteens of resilience":
- physical resilience
- emotional resilience
- intellectual resilience
- relationship resilience
- functional resilience
- spiritual resilience
Emotional resilience deals directly with what we feel and how we respond to it. The old saying "Attitude counts" was never truer than when filling your canteen of emotional resilience. On the other hand, if you have filled your emotional canteen with despair, self loathing, angst, and animus, then you will have nothing but bitter drags from which to drink when in the midst of a challenge.
Intellectual resilience is bolstered by the very act of learning and practicing the skills that you have learned. It is as we gain experience and knowledge that we slowly imprint new patterns, which we may later use to compare and ultimately recognize as familiar situations and events that unfold during an event. The more of these patterns that we have in our intellectual canteens, the more quickly we can recognize and adapt to the ever-changing business environment. When we can recognize these patterns quickly, we can respond quickly, thus bolstering our intellectual resilience.
Relationship resilience bolsters our social functioning. It is through our relationships with those that we hold dear that we fill our canteens of relationship resilience with memories and comforting mental images that carry us through our times of separation. It is also these relationships that safeguard our lives and our emotions. It is through these relationships that we not only fill our canteens but also keep them full and keep watch on each other.
Functional resilience bolsters our behavioral functioning. The skills that we have practiced in our day-to-day lives as we have moved through our careers are that with which we fill our canteens of functional resilience. Like the patterns in our canteens of intellectual resilience, the skills of our functional resilience are no different at times of adversity than they are at times between challenges. We need only to be able to access those skills more quickly and perform them more calmly.
Spiritual resilience is somewhat different because the canteen of spiritual resilience is not filled by what we believe but rather by the fact that we believe. Research in the area of resilience has shown that the very act of believing enforces intelligence beyond ourselves, a higher purpose for higher power; bolsters our resilience; and improves our functioning and our likelihood to master adversity.
By assisting your team in developing resilience and maintaining that resilience, you help them to perform better not only at work but also in every other aspect of their lives.
Thus, we see that epidemic enthusiasm and pandemic pride are infections created by those who own, operate, and lead the most successful businesses. It is this leadership and this attitude of employee service equal to customer service that creates employees who go on to turn loyal customers into raving fans who then spread the reputation and the name of your company.
About the Author
Dr. Maurice A. Ramirez is co-founder of Disaster Life Support International, LLC, a provider of disaster preparation and recovery education. He serves on expert panels for pandemic preparedness and healthcare-surge planning with congressional and cabinet members. Dr. Ramirez is the founding chairperson of the American Board of Disaster Medicine and serves the nation as a senior physician-federal medical officer in the National Disaster Medical System. Dr. Ramirez has written a new book: You Can Survive Anything, Anywhere, Every Time. His website is www.High-Alert.com.
