Raise Your Standards.
Many years ago, when I began my working life, I joined Forte Hotels’ management training programme, and for the following four years, I received the best education I think I have ever had.
One of the principles drilled into me from day one was always to maintain your standards.
In hotels, this meant the newspapers in the café were folded correctly. The saucer’s teaspoons were always placed in the same place, and white wines in the restaurant were always served in the correct glass and at the right temperature.
Even now, I will judge a hotel I stay in by the standards I see when I use the hotel’s facilities.
Your standards are a set of behaviours you live your life by. It’s how you frame your life and determine what is important to you.
Back in the days when we wore suits to the office, I remember making sure I buttoned the top button on my shirt and never allowed my tie to hang loose around my neck. It was a personal standard. I cared about my appearance. My shoes were another area where I maintained a high standard, ensuring they were clean and polished.
Today, while I rarely wear a suit, I still maintain a high standard of dress whenever I go out. I don’t have to do it, but it is important to me, and it is a standard I have for myself. For me, it is about showing respect to the people I am meeting.
With the recent sad death of Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh, I have read many articles about who this remarkable person was. One story, written by a journalist who had covered the Royal Family for over thirty years, reported that of all the Royal Family members, only Prince Philip would respond to letters and emails within twenty-four hours. That’s a standard the Prince set for himself and his team.
And that got me thinking, what are our standards?
Your standards are the absolute minimum standard of behaviour you will tolerate from yourself. That could be how you respond to your messages and emails, like Prince Philip, or it could be the minimum standard you will accept on your work’s quality or the minimum amount of time you spend exercising each day or week. Your standards are the behaviours you follow every day. They are, in effect, who you are.
The thing about your standards is you get to set them. You are free to have standards (or not have them) in any area of your life. But when you live your life by a set of standards, you set an expectation and, rightly or wrongly, you will be judged by those standards.
If you don’t care about how quickly you respond to your emails and messages, what does that say about your standards? If you are inconsistent here, would it not be fair for your colleagues and customers to judge you by those standards?
If you are in a position of authority, what example are you setting for your staff? If you are not responding to your messages quickly, if you do all the talking and none of the listening, how can you expect the people who work with you to respond promptly to your messages or listen carefully to what you have to say?
One of my standards is to always arrive on time for an appointment. I do not know where that standard came from, but I have always felt that being on time was necessary for as long as I can remember. To me, it shows you care for and respect the person or people you are meeting.
Your standards can be anything at all. You may decide that doing your weekly and daily planning session is something you will never compromise on. Or it could be the way you dress.
Standards are essential in life because they are the values by which you live your life. Without a set of standards, there’s no consistency, there’s no benchmark by which you can measure improvement, and there’s no driver for how we do our work.
Your standards ensure you are doing the critical work and maintaining your areas of focus. You live your life in balance and, more importantly, your standards, by which the world will judge you.
Now you could argue that that is not fair, and people should not be judging. And that is a good point. But the fact is all humans judge. It is part of what makes us human. Other people do not care if you are having a ‘day off’ from your standards. People judge you by what they see, not by how you behaved last weekend in your private home.
If you live your life in a disorganised mess, where you are always late with your commitments, don’t return calls or keep your promises, what kind of standard are you living your life by? How do you think other people will treat you if your standards treat them poorly?
If you want to be a leader and a person people respect, look at your standards. How do your standards reflect on the world? If you are not happy with how you do your work, then perhaps it is time to raise your standards and not tolerate anything less from yourself.
Thank you for reading my stories! 😊
My purpose is to help as many people as I can live the lives they desire. To help people find happiness and become better organised and more productive so they can do more of the important things in life.
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