Main Idea
Have you ever worked for someone who loses her temper? Or is there a coworker who has no control over his spending habits? Do you have an office meeting scheduled at 10am and one or two people show up 10 minutes late?
Expansion of Idea
Most of us have a general idea of who Rod Blagojevich is. I suspect that he is guilty of most of what he has been charged with. However, the part that I want to focus on is his complete lack of self-control. It was pretty humorous when the press interviewed him during his trial and his only real comment is that he learned that he needs to keep his mouth closed more. This is after he acted like a complete buffoon on Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice and the rest of the circus that is called Chicago politics. He achieved some level of success making it to be governor of Illinois. (I would argue that is not very prestigious considering how many of them have been convicted of crimes.) But he could not maintain that success because of his lack of self-control.
To be successful in the long term, self-control is a requisite. This includes having the discipline to show up for work or meetings on time. It means keeping control of your emotions. This is critically important. All of us have things thrown at us on a daily basis that if we don’t control our emotions, we will lose the confidence of our team or our customers. Last year, I lost a major account (which is a good thing in this case). If I started moaning and worrying about it, I would probably have lost my team. They might look at the situation and say it is all over. Instead, this loss opened up some other opportunities that allowed us to focus on the clients that we serve best.
Self-control allows us to learn from situations and to constantly improve. If you are the leader, it gives your team the confidence to go out and do what is necessary. This may include learning about mistakes. If you have no self-control, how likely is it that your team is going to tell you about a mistake? The answer is pretty close to zero because no one wants to get their head chopped off. Yet, when a mistake has been made, it is critical that you learn about it as soon as possible and that may give you some alternatives.
Questions to Ask Yourself
Do I have self-control?
Do I make decisions impulsively?
When confronted by bad news, do I overreact?
Do I need to work on this area of my life?