Have you ever been stung at work or at home? Have you ever been in a conversation or overheard two other people talking or a group of people talking, and something that was said hurt you so badly? How often do you hear it happening in your office or work place? That creates conflict. At least 70% of the time, the person that said something that hurt you is also hurting. Hurting people hurt people. They don’t mean to, but they’re an internally hurting vessel and they’re lashing out without even knowing. Understand there are so many hurting people walking this earth. Our job is to see if we can help them. Learn the three-step process that will allow them to see what they said to help heal the relationship and make it stronger.
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Hurt People
Growing business today, we could grow business financially. We could grow business in number of sales. We could grow business in number of employees. There are many ways to define growing a business. One of the ways to grow a business is to make sure you limit the retractions. Meaning, most people can understand that personal growth and business growth is two steps forward, one step back. Two steps forward, life’s lessons, that hurt, step backwards, learn, repair, get better, grow again, two steps. Bumped into a wall, hit my head, etc. I want to talk about a method that can limit the steps backward.
I witnessed an event this past week where, no question, 100% of the people listening to this podcast have felt this. You’re going to feel it the rest of your life and it is going to retract you and retract your businesses possibly more severely than any one event per se. As I go through this like death by a thousand cuts, death by a thousand razor cuts. You could see how these could take down a business, stop a division or hinder growth. I’m going to start and you’re going to all get it.
The title of this podcast is Hurt People. I’ve definitely touched on this subject in the past but certainly not the way I’m going to talk about it now. Have you ever been stung at work or at home? Meaning, have you ever been in a conversation or quite frankly, you even overheard two other people talking or a group of people talking, and something that was said hurt you so badly. It stung you so deeply, you had to retract from that room and either go home, go to your hotel room. You needed to turn on some music and think. I want you to pay attention and see how often this happens to you. Hopefully you’re not on the other end of this causing it to happen. How often do you hear it happening in your office or work place?
I’m going to start over. Have you ever been stung at work or at home? Has anybody ever said something where you said, “Did they really say that? Even WTF what the frick? What just went down?” Business growth, even family growth, involves communicating on spoken or unspoken goals. Usually, these goals or working towards or up to something getting accomplished or something getting what’s called quitted. You set a goal for a division, we’re going to move ten units a month. You realize within 90 days you’re moving three units a month and there seems no hope, so you quit that division. You shut it down or you realize, “We hit ten very quickly, let’s communicate.” That’s the key. Move the goal up to fifteen.
Let’s say, a division started eighteen months ago. A goal was to set to move ten units. There are five people in division. There’s someone in sales, someone in accounting, someone in engineering, someone in product fulfillment, customer service and these five people meet on a regular basis. What would happen if in one of those meetings, somebody on the product fulfillment side heard something that was said by anybody else in that meeting, and it personally offended them at literally a molecular level like they said, “I can’t believe that person just criticized or condemned that other person to their face in this meeting? That other person has got to be so embarrassed. How do they even stay in this meeting?” As I’ve seen a few times, the person doing the deep thinking that gets stung is the person receiving the condemnation.
I want everybody to pretend they’re sitting in a meeting or they’re sitting over lunch and someone says something that hurt you so badly, and normally the average person would sit there and take it. They would absorb it and they will not actually even say something, but they make a mental recording. They begin to get angry. Their anger grows throughout the meeting and they rush out of that meeting. They’re not pouting the rest of the day. They’re in a state of deep pain, even anguish, and they’re considering their courses of action. Do they ignore this person for a few weeks? Hopefully they’ll forgive them. Do they go to their boss? Do they confront them direct? There is conflict.
Here’s what I want to say from 25 years of personal experience, from getting mentored and counseled by mentors in this exact area of communication, I’m going to say I don’t know the exact percentage, but 80%, 90%, at least 70% of the time, the person that said something that hurt you, they were hurting. Hurting people, hurt people, people that are hurting internally, they don’t mean it but they often say things that hurt people. They often physically touched people in a way that hurts people. They don’t mean to, but they’re an internally hurting vessel and they’re lashing out without even knowing. They’re ignoring people without even knowing it. They’re avoiding people because they’re hurting. They often become what’s called wounded avoiders and they avoid people which hurts people. It hurts people and they don’t even know it.
Here’s the key. After getting off of this podcast the next time you get stung, the next time you get hurt physically, emotionally, I want you to consider an alternative. I want you to say to yourself immediately, I want you to try something and say, “Ken says that there’s an 80% chance this person that deeply offended me is hurting.” They are deeply hurting. I want you to do a three-step process immediately. I want you to immediately forgive them and then I want you to encourage them and help them. It’s a two and a three, encourage and help, and it’s the same thing. I want you to walk up to them and say, “I’ve got to say something to you,” as soon as that meeting ends, you go right up to them. You don’t hold anything in and you say, “I don’t think you meant to, but you hurt me when you said this,” or, “I’m not sure you even realized what you said, but you said this and it stung and I saw the reaction on these other two people’s faces as well. Are you aware you did that?” I’m telling you, a huge majority of the time there are two responses, “I certainly did not mean that. I am sorry. I did not realize that hurt you. I definitely meant to say it, I didn’t mean to say it like that and I certainly didn’t mean to offend you.”
Here’s the best part. You just got stung. Your old self would go and stew for a week or a month. Your new self is going to walk right up to that person and use a one, two, three approach, forgive, encourage, and help, FEH, Forgive, Encourage and Help. What’s the help? The help is you’re going to open up the door of encouragement to them by letting them know and the help is it triggers something called the Law of Reciprocity. The Law of Reciprocity says, “To the person that did the stinging, they did the punching and the stinging, they are glad you exposed what they said to them that they want to reciprocate and help you.” Help doesn’t stand for you help them. Help stands for them helping you. You’re encouraging them to open up and they then want to help you. The Law of Reciprocity kicks in and for the next coming weeks, if not months, a year or lifetime, that strengthens the relationship. They see you in a leadership role in a different way and they know they offended you and they want to help you in any way possible and make it up to you.
This is episode 327. Understand there are so many hurting people walking this earth. Our job is to see if we can help them. How? We quickly forgive. We encourage them to see what they said and then we allow them to help us heal by the Law of Reciprocity. The relationship gets much stronger. This podcast is called Today’s Growth: Growing Business Today. Can you imagine when the two people that were once offended becomes stronger, they can work better, they can work faster, they can talk cleaner and then if anybody offends anybody again in the future, it’s done in two seconds. I’m telling you, I’ve been on the other end of this and seen some of the greatest relationships come from somebody instead of walking away in anger, approaching someone and saying, “I don’t think you meant to but can I share something that you said,” and watch what happens. Episode 327, Hurt People. Hope this helps.
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