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Everyone is a balloon, and every word we say to them, everything we say to them either
adds helium into their balloon or it takes helium away from their balloon. We're either
getting these great people who are floating with happiness in our business, or we're deflating
them and they're working down here. We want them to reach the bar, right? This is all
about growing your people, developing them -- and it's not about giving fake praise,
because they can smell that. People know when they deserve praise and when they don't.
When you're back into the routine of things, then you want to make a point of adding helium
to somebody's balloon every day for 7 days. Write their name down on the list, and then
in that box at the end of the 7 days, just reflect back on it and just put some comments
to yourself about how you feel. One of the clients that I had when I was first putting
this all together, he was not a very, very happy person, let's put it that way. So for
him to add helium to people's balloons, that was just too feminine for him and ridiculous
and all that stuff, and he said, "Like who? I can't say it to my guys. They'd think that
I'd gone off my rocker or something. Who can I say it to?" I was just asking him, "Who
do you cross paths with?" and all that stuff. We couldn't do it with his family, either,
just because he felt so "at risk" of not being lovable, because he's very control-driven.
He actually did it. We didn't actually come up with anybody in particular, because I said
"It'll just happen. Just focus on it and it'll happen." So that day at the end of the day,
when he was on his way home, he stopped off at the corner store or little grocery store
or something like that, and the cashier, when he went through the cash, he realized that
he never really said anything to her except "Hi. Thanks," that sort of thing, on his way
out. He said, "Hey, did you do something different to your hair? I really like it." He said she
actually stood up bigger, chest out, shoulders back, that sort of thing, and she said, "Thank
you."
He said he was surprised that he said that because he doesn't like all the colors in
the hair and stuff like that, and then he thought, "Maybe I do like it." So then he
He's looking and he's going, "You know what, I really do like that," and he said he actually
had a conversation with his wife about it later, that he said that he liked her hair
and he would've thought he didn't, because he didn't like all the weird things that kids
do to their hair. But how did it make her feel? He saw how it made her feel.
So yes, you guys are all positive and you say positive things; up the level. Just raise
the bar. Add that much more helium. Because if you're always saying this, then it's not
really helium. So you've got to add it, gotta do a little more. The thing is that that makes
you more attractive. You're raising your own standards. It will make you more attractive
and you will feel the energy from the people to whom you're adding the helium. You will
feel their energy, and then that boosts your energy, and then you can be attracting better
people into your company. The more helium you add to other people's balloons, the more
helium you get in your own, and you're all rising up like this, and then you're attracting
people at this new level.