I love management and leadership guru Tom Peters. I was first turned onto him by a rant in a Seth Godin book, “The Big Moo”, which I believe might have come from a free pdf download on his site Tomato, Toma[h]to! Tom also has some very cool stuff to download on the free section of his website that you can find here. I also recommend his books. Great stuff!

On his blog today I noticed two great posts “DNK”! and 100 Ways to Succeed #99: – Reward “DNK” When You DNK..

I was once called into an executive management meeting, which was very intimidating so there was added pressure to impress. In front of a room full of executives I was asked if I would go to Africa, Southern Sudan to be exact. I had absolutely no international production experience to begin with and they wanted to send me into a war zone. As always, I was honest and said “yes sir, I’ll go but I have never done anything like that before” basically I responded with a “DNK”!

The executives in the room didn’t think anything less of me. In fact, they appreciated my candor. They decided to team me up with another producer that had lots of international experience so I could learn. On my second trip to Sudan I was the more experienced person and I am so glad that I was truthful. If my pride had me to not be honest and say I could do it, not only would the project be a wash but people could have been seriously hurt!

See, I have learned that my ego and pride is not as important as doing the job right, even if that means the task gets assigned to someone more qualified. It is far better to be honest then to fail! 

I know it is not easy. When tasks get assigned to us it is a normal feeling to say “yes, I can do that” when the truth is someone else could do it far better then you. It is not easy to admit we “do not know”! We think if we are truthful then management will judge us as being a failure. Any good leader or manager will respect your honesty and actually be able to say “DNK” themselves.

If we are truly the body of Christ we have to do what is right for the body and not ourselves. We must know our own strengths and weaknesses and when we cannot do something we need to be honest about it. Everything should be about Him and not me!

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 at 7:41 pm and is filed under Blogs, Character, Community, Just Me, Leadership, Learning, Managment, Marketing, Ministry, My Big Mouth, Personal Growth, Remarkable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.