Five good things

Five… it’s a magical, mythical number 🙂

Last year, I was having all sorts of challenges at work. As a result of a restructure, I ended up with a manager who had great difficulty translating his ideas and thoughts into relationships with people. His views, his ideas, his way of doing things, his personality, his ego had to be navigated carefully. Suffice it to say, our values were so different that I was forced to find another job, and moved to another department after a few months of working for him. Lucky for me it worked out well and I am very happy.

But my old manager had warnings from me – lots of them! – that he was failing miserably at getting me (and others) on board. And that’s not because I didn’t want to be a part of a new workgroup. I looked at the restructure as an opportunity to work in an area I’d always wanted to: organisation development.

After about a month, though, it was obvious that it was not going to work out. He knew he was buggering up, and even when I threw him frequent lifelines, he just kept digging himself into a hole. He was so consumed with exerting his way of doing, thinking, and being that he lost me.

So what has this got to do with the title of this post?

Think of Five Good Things as a new language for making amends. Of being redeemed for our bad behaviour. It’s an escape from the hole we’ve dug for ourselves when our ego reigns supreme.

Let me explain. My good friend – and very wise woman!- Rommie Corso from Hardshell Publishing told me about Five Good Things a couple of years ago (yes, that’s how long it’s taken me to get around to writing this post!). The premise is: every time you bugger something up with someone, you need to do Five Good Things for that person in order to make up for the one stuff up.  Doing Five Good Things is what it takes to rebuild faith and trust, and put positive currency back in the emotional bank. Five Good Things is needed to make up for (in many cases) and void one bad thing.

I like this concept very much, and it is my contention that the world would be a much better place if everyone adopted Five Good Things as a life motto. Think how much better our friendships, relationships and workplaces would be if everyone spoke this language. If we all knew that Five Good Things was a Standard Operating Procedure. A behaviour benchmark. We could start a countdown if someone was behaving badly, and they would know exactly what had to be done. Either stop stuffing up, or do Five Good Things. The concept works because it’s marrying accountability with action and it has the potential to be truly powerful.

Five Good Things, people. It’s what the world needs.

Last word

I love that when I write a post, I often read about something that marries with my subject. This is one of those times. For one day, The Generous Shop in Denmark allowed people to pay for their chocolate with good deeds. More please!

Did this post resonate with you?

If you liked this post, then you’ll love my collection of essays about work.

Part memoir, part analysis of workplace culture, I consider the world of work and the definition of career success. And anyone who has found themselves disillusioned about the progress of their career—and that’s a lot of us!—will relate to this book.

Grab your copy of Collection 4: Working is Out  from the Amazon Kindle Store for .99c.

(If you want even more value for money, you can now get all 6 books from the Love & Other Brave Acts series for $4.99. Just saying.)

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