Patience
I can here it now. My grandma telling my mom when I was the tender age of 7 “we love her but she has GOT to learn some patience”…and my mom, exhausted, replying “we’re working on it. No really, we are trying…aren’t we sweetheart?”
It’s funny, I alway though patience was something you were born with or not. I never had it growing up, heck I struggle with it now. If I realistically listed all of things that try my patience we’d be here all day.
This has been exceedingly true in my journey as a communications professional. When I started out, opinionated (and mostly dumb), I had no patience for people who didn’t agree with me or who couldn’t at least see the value in what I was saying. I had no patience for annoying traditions and business practices from the 19 century. I had no patience for bosses whose jobs I could obviously do more effectively. I had no patience for people who couldn’t just understand what I was telling them the first time (Seriously, is it really that hard to understand that making all of your marketing materials with clip art and sales pitches isn’t go to work these days!?!?!)
I thought I knew it all.
I didn’t know anything.
I don’t know when it happened, but at some point I realized it wasn’t them…it was me. My so called “expertise” in my industry wasn’t ever going to matter if I didn’t take the time and have the patience to educate, listen and adjust my ideas to the needs of my organizations/clients. It can be a tough lesson to learn, patience. But it can be the reason you land that client, get that promotion and end with a better result.
I didn’t understand when I was 7, patience was just something my grandma said I would just have to learn in time. But, as it turns out, grandma was pretty smart: Patience is a virtue.
Do you find it hard to remain patient in your career? What processes do you use to ensure you are taking the necessary time for your endeavor? How do you stay patient with “hard-to-work-with” people?
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
-Arin
