Patience is a virtue that escapes many. As your career grows and horizons expand, you quickly realize the importance of patience and how it aids your progress. My tourism and hospitality career began with hotels. I was a young sales manager focused on driving business to the hotel in the quickest manner possible. Booking business was an obsession. I was aggressive and hungry (good traits for sales) and eager to maximize my time to book business. Singularly focused on this task, nothing else seemed to matter.
Often, when I did not get the business, I did not understand why nor try to find out why. That is being young, naïve, and unseasoned.
There are many stories that I will remember throughout my life and this is one of them. I was a young Director of Sales at the Shangri-La Hotel Singapore (very young), smitten with the job and the prospect of climbing the management ladder. One day, I met with a prospect in my office to discuss his needs for a group. It was a large group with a substantial number of room nights. Surely, I should have paid close attention to him, valued his time, and valued his business.
While I welcomed him to the office with a smile, courtesies, and an offer of tea, somehow, I did the unthinkable. As he sat down across my desk, I continued with the paperwork on my desk that preceded his arrival. What could have been so important that I could not drop it all and focus totally on my prospect? NOTHING! It was a grave mistake, and I did not even know it. I was so wrong, so unprofessional, so un-caring, and simply put, so rude.
If I were the prospect, I would have turned around, and walked out - that would have been the end of any business or any relationship. Instead, he sat quietly with a smile showing me his professionalism and patience. He did not open his file to read or show any signs of being upset and being ignored.
After several long and uncomfortable minutes, he remarked with a smile, “Finish your work first, and then we can talk. It seems that is more important to you.”
Wow, those words were sharp, and painful and woke me up immediately. My lack of respect and rude behavior flashed rapidly in front of me, and my only thought was how to proceed.
Miraculously, we did close a deal that day which was a surprise and a real highlight for me. Throughout our meeting, I apologized profusely while realizing that the time could have been much better spent selling than apologizing. His tremendous patience with my behavior saved my day and my young career. At the end of our meeting, I asked him with great honesty and sincerity to help me understand my shortcomings.
With a smile, he said, “Patience has led me to my success, being patient with myself and with others.”
He was not only patient but eager to accept that what I was distracted with was for whatever reason, important to me at the time. He wanted to respect that. I was humiliated but ever so humbled and appreciative for learning the importance of patience from him. I should do the same and be equally patient with everyone around me in whatever I do. There were no words in my vocabulary to thank him for this valuable lesson and I vowed that this would never happen again. It never happened again.
Learning to be patient leads us to the success we strive for in our professional and personal lives.
Lacking patience will surely take us in the opposite direction. From that day on, I practiced and practiced being patient with everyone and every action. It made me a better salesman, manager, leader, and certainly, a better person, husband, and father.
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