Giving More Effort

One of the things I find I have difficulties with is giving my all in environments which are less than rewarding.  It is one thing, of course, to put your effort in where effort equals outcome.  It is quite a different thing to do where effort seems to go nowhere.

But I think I am viewing this incorrectly.

Jeffrey Gitomer at least got met to start thinking in another direction here with his article on customer service.  His point, simply put, is as follows:

"KEY POINT OF UNDERSTANDING: Once you understand that you’re serving for yourself, once you understand that your attitude will determine your communication excellence, and once you understand your personal pride will dictate your actions – at once you see your possibilities, and will have the ability to better improve your performance."

It is not about them.  That is something of a good reminder for me - them being the company, the client, the management, even other employees.  The amount of effort I put in should be somewhat divorced from any immediate results which I might not see because ultimately the level of effort (or service, as Gitomer puts it) that I put in is a benefit to me - whether from my sense of pride about how I act and what I output or from the longer return that may be realized from it )e.g. get trained, work hard, take the experience and move on).  It also allows me to work on improving my performance - that is, if I do not know where the edge of what I can do is, the change of me pushing that boundary is very limited.

There is also that indefinable quality that lets one go away from any situation like this and have the feeling that one did the best that one could, that one achieved something even if it was not recognized by anyone else.  That may seem a bit quaint for some and certainly may not yield any tangible rewards but it does give one the psychic boost of having worked as hard as one could.

So yes, effort is important even if the situation does not seem to immediately reward it.  I simply need to expand my vision to see all the possibilities.