Be Yourself, Unless You’re A Jerk

  • 0 min read

shutterstock_281560097There WILL be stress in your business life. The heat of the moment can cause you to do something that un-does years of good work. So be really careful in the following when the going gets tough:

-Don’t be overly convinced of your own importance.
-Don’t think you are the “exception to the rule” in doing whatever you want to.
-Don’t act only to please yourself.
-Don’t break your word.
-Don’t be dishonest. (You can go to jail for it.)
-Don’t be mean or nasty.
-Don’t kick people in the face anywhere along the way.
-Don’t yell and scream.
-Don’t embarrass others.
-Don’t turn supporters into roadkill when the going gets rough.
-Don’t be arrogant no matter how much of a right you think you have to be arrogant.
-Don’t get good at being bad.

Again, in the words of my mentor, Curt, “Be yourself, unless you’re a jerk.”

Picture of Debra Benton

Debra Benton

D.A. (Debra) Benton has been helping great individuals and organizations get even better for over 20 years. Just as exceptional athletes rely on excellent coaching to hone their skills, Debra's clients rely on her advice to advance their careers. She focuses on what is truly important to convert what you and your organization want to be from a vision into a reality. TopCEOCoaches.com ranks her in the World's Top 10 CEO Coaches noting she is the top female. And as conference keynote speaker she is routinely rated in the top 2%. Her client list reads like a “Who's Who” of executives in companies ranging from Microsoft, McDonald's, Kraft, American Express, Merrill Lynch, United Airlines, and PricewaterhouseCoopers to the Washington Beltway and U.S.Border Patrol. *She is the author of ten award-winning and best-selling business books including The Virtual Executive and CEO Material. She has written for the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Fast Company. She has been featured in USA Today, Fortune, The New York Times, and Time; she has appeared on Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, and CBS with Diane Sawyer. To learn more Debra advising leaders, coaching, facilitating a workshop, or speaking: www.debrabenton.com

TRENDING AROUND THE WEB

A national health survey found workers whose sleep shifted by more than 2 hours between weekdays and weekends were 50% more likely to rate their own health as poor, even though nothing about their actual diagnosis had changed

A national health survey found workers whose sleep shifted by more than 2 hours between weekdays and weekends were 50% more likely to rate their own health as poor, even though nothing about their actual diagnosis had changed

The Blog Herald
A boundary delivered without an explanation usually isn’t coldness — it’s someone who’s learned that the explanation is exactly what invites the negotiation they were trying to avoid

A boundary delivered without an explanation usually isn’t coldness — it’s someone who’s learned that the explanation is exactly what invites the negotiation they were trying to avoid

Global English Editing
Psychology says people who are happy on the surface but lonely underneath usually aren’t hiding anything dramatic — they’ve simply become so good at being pleasant company that nobody has thought to ask them a real question in years

Psychology says people who are happy on the surface but lonely underneath usually aren’t hiding anything dramatic — they’ve simply become so good at being pleasant company that nobody has thought to ask them a real question in years

The Vessel
Every alternative platform is a quiet bet about who you’d be somewhere else — a cleaner feed, a kinder algorithm, a version of you that finally sticks. The bet rarely pays out because you’re the one thing that migrates with it

Every alternative platform is a quiet bet about who you’d be somewhere else — a cleaner feed, a kinder algorithm, a version of you that finally sticks. The bet rarely pays out because you’re the one thing that migrates with it

The Vessel
Someone who lets a frazzled stranger go ahead of them in line isn’t necessarily being generous — they’re picking up on small shifts in tone and posture that most people only catch when told to look for them

Someone who lets a frazzled stranger go ahead of them in line isn’t necessarily being generous — they’re picking up on small shifts in tone and posture that most people only catch when told to look for them

Global English Editing
The difference between the words you recognize and the words you actually use — and what that gap says about how you learned them

The difference between the words you recognize and the words you actually use — and what that gap says about how you learned them

Global English Editing
Load more
CATEGORIES
Explore