Seek Excellence and Share It - Be a "Miracle" Worker

People are often more impressed with excellence than what you are excellent at.

Even if you're not a basketball fan, you can be impressed by LeBron James or Kevin Durant. Even if you weren't a fan of Steve Jobs or of technology, you could be impressed with his visionary abilities.

I am a seeker and purveyor of excellence and if you want to win friends and influence people, especially the discerning ones, you might want to try being those yourself.

I am blessed and honored to know and be able to call friends some highly influential and admired people. One of the reasons I believe they spend some of their most valuable and cherished resource -- "their time" (which they can't stand being wasted) -- with me is because I feel a duty bound responsibility to make then aware of people, products, services and resources that I deem to be excellent. By "excellent," I mean consistently beyond "very good" and this can be anyone from a veterinarian to an oncologist to a cardiologist to a handyman to a private investigator to an IT specialist. I communicate this to them and also reassure them that I haven't mentioned the possible introduction to the excellent person I am thinking of introducing.

In fact, whenever I find someone that is excellent at something that I am merely very good at, I will preferentially suggest that person.

For instance, I'm very good -- and possibly even excellent -- at helping people become better listeners, more influential and impactful, but there are people who are far more excellent than I at speaking to and training sales people where the focus is to close more business. So when I am sought out to do a training for a group of sales people I refer the excellent people I know.

And as an executive coach, I am possibly excellent at drilling into the core and unlocking something within individuals that is holding them back from success, but it becomes clear in a nanosecond that my "business chops" are less than excellent. So when a potential executive coaching client is looking for someone with both excellent skills in the interpersonal and business areas, I have excellent resources to recommend instead of me.

Some of you may think it's crazy to turn down people that want to buy you or buy from you, but I have found that when you really are dedicated to being of greatest service and value to someone and then recommend someone or something better than you, you become a resource to others even rarer than "time." You become a person they can freely trust, respect and someone they can trust to not hurt or take advantage of them. And as MasterCard would say, "That's priceless."

I was going to call this blog, "The Miracle on Yale Street" (Yale is my office address) as a throw back to the Miracle on 34th Street movies where the Kris Kringle character caught the ire of his employers at Macy's when he recommended to customers to go to Gimbels.

However, I didn't think my being excellent at being cutesy would serve me very well with you.