Get Out of Your Foxhole
© By Pamela A. Scott
www.WeKnowEngineers.com
For those readers who know me, this piece might not come as much of a surprise. For those of you new to our community, who don’t really know me, this piece may make you run for the hills. I ask you to take a deep breath and hang in there with us.
Life is tough out there right now. Even if you haven’t been threatened by foreclosure or job loss, you at least know of people who are hurting–and hurting significantly.
“How are you doing?”
I recently caught up with one of my two closest friends. “How are you doing?” I asked. She and her husband are not likely to lose their jobs, but they are dealing with her elderly parents who both suffer from Alzheimers. Her two oldest kids are through college and employed, and one more is getting ready to go to college. But my friend’s attitude was still upbeat and had a hanging-in-there mentality.
When I checked in with my other closest friend, what I feared might have happened had, indeed, come true. They had to file for bankruptcy. Their older child graduated from a top university in May and is gainfully employed, though in an industry that is threatened. Their second child has three semesters to go to graduate from college.
This friend and her husband are old hippies. They will weather it.
They will come out on the other side.
What about your clients?
All of which made me wonder about my clients. I try to stay in touch with those of you that I have worked with, but may not be working with now. Truth be told, some of you fall through the cracks, though not because I don’t think about you. And not because I don’t care.
We’ve all gone into hunker-down mode–a term that makes total sense if you live in Georgia. What that translates to for the rest of you is that we dig a foxhole, pull something over our heads, peek out occasionally, and hope and pray for the best. Rather a reactive approach at best.
I was talking with a client the other day and asked how his clients are doing–who is going to make it and who isn’t. He told me he didn’t know. He hadn’t talked to them.
Egads.
“Heck if I know.”
I also have a friend/client/adviser who had fallen off my radar for the last few months. I’ve emailed and left voicemails. This is someone I know well, who has had illness within his family that his associates are aware of.
I hadn’t heard from him–email, voice mail, or smoke signal–in a few months.
Last week, I ran into several folks who know I know this client well.
“How’s Joe doing?” they asked with genuine concern.
“Heck if I know,” was my response.
I went to a networking function where a lot of Joe’s associates were. “How’s Joe?” they asked.
“Heck if I know.”
So I emailed Joe and gave him grief.
“People care about you. They care about your family. They want to know you are OK,” I said.
A couple days later Joe called. “I’ve been really busy,” he said.
And then went on with the explanation of why he hadn’t returned messages–all of which was legitimate.
Reach out and touch someone
But what Joe was forgetting is that we are all people, that we care about people, that–at a basic level–we want to reach out to those we care about and help them if they need it.
The point of all this is: Now is not the time to crawl into a foxhole and pray the world will be there when you ease out.
Call your clients. Call clients you haven’t done business with in a while. Let them know you care. Call vendors. Talk to people. Put yourself out there and show you care. You are only human and so are they.
When the smoke clears and things start to improve, your clients, your potential clients, your associates are going to remember who cared enough to talk to them in the tough times. That’s when they will pick up the phone and call you.
And if they don’t, you can go to sleep at night knowing that you have been a good friend.
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Originally published in
ENGINEERING YOUR POTENTIAL, a biweekly ezine from www.WeKnowEngineers.com.
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