It may surprise you, but I can be socially awkward.  Oh yes!

I recently typed “how to make friends with anyone” into Google.  Great tips popped up, like “hold eye contact” and “give positive affirmation” and “listen, don’t talk.”  All good things.

Then Steven Covey ruined my attempts to duct tape over my social weirdness.  In his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he talks about the character ethic versus personality ethic.   The personality ethic teaches you to put on a great face, smile, make eye contact, etc., without changing who you are within.  The character ethic teaches you to improve yourself.  For example, instead of trying to make the person you are talking to think you care about them by maintaining eye contact, try actually caring about them and acting accordingly.

This is extremely relevant when talking to customers.   If I try to sell our products to a customer, I actually need to care about whether or not they need them.  If I don’t care and I just try to make the sale, they will see through me.

Every list in my Google search was more of a Band-Aid.  It turns out I actually need to improve myself.

Pretty simple, right!  Except sometimes it is actually quite hard.

Rachel

My first job after college was on the “plug line” at a commercial greenhouse in Manhattan, Kansas. The plug line is as sexy as it sounds, a conveyer belt surrounded by college students, all aiming to “plug” seedlings into moving planting trays fast enough to avoid a pileup. Only I wasn’t a college student, but a recent college graduate. And I was making $6.25 per hour.

That would be quickly solved, I reasoned, once I applied my bachelor degree in horticulture to an epic greenhouse improvement program. I began taking notes, which I brought into the owner’s office, and asked him to take a seat. I would, in very short time, explain how he might repair the miserable business he had taken 30 years to build.

To my surprise, the proprietor had little interest in repairing anything. He didn’t care about my academic insight on synthetic plant hormones or their capacity to reduce his greenhouse space by eliminating the need for half his propagation materials. He didn’t care that he was wasting time on inefficient watering methods. He was, apparently, making a fine living and perfectly happy with it. To get that message across, he handed the next promotion not to me, but to a smiley dental hygienist who knew nothing about plant hormones, and was only there to make a few bucks for dentistry school.

I learned a lot of things that spring, but mostly that a good college degree is best used in combination with a lifelong dedication to understanding and appreciating people. I’m still working on that one.

Christian