Common Sense is Not Common

This week at Thrive was very eventful because business coach Clay said something that really made sense when talking and dealing with other people. The phrase was “Common sense is not common.” This was huge for me because what I think is common sense and seems like the normal thing to do is not what other people do. I thought back to my time at my last job, the time when I was working with the other employees and dealing with the customers. What I thought was a common sense when working, when interacting with the customers, was not common for them. I thought it was common sense to put up all the wood and make sure that everything was put up correctly. I thought it made perfect sense to make sure that you are working while you are at work and not hiding in the back doing next to nothing. 

Common sense is not common.

The fact that common sense is not common at all was a huge eye-opener for me in the other interactions that I now will have with other people out in the workplace and out in the world. Learning is a huge part of working here at Thrive, learning how to be a better entrepreneur, how to deal with rejection, and also what the real world is like. School and other places of education teach you how they want the world to be, they try and bend it to how they think it should be. Clay and Jon teach us business coaches what the world really is, they teach how to navigate the dangers that are out there. The fact that no one teaches common sense in a way that makes sense, or even knows that the world is not as they want it to be. 

There was another great learning experience in the form of how to deal with people when giving bad news. It falls under common sense is not common categories.  When giving bad news when interacting with people you must do the hug kick hug method, or the wind them up and knock them down method. This method is when you build the person up with humor, with honest compliments, and then deliver the truth in a way that is not ugly or hurtful, then build them back up with other ways you appreciate them. This is something that many great managers do in order to make sure that the feedback that they give is well received, and will be implemented. I never knew that this method was the best way to give hard truths until I started here. Not until Clay and Jon started to point out the way the world really works and what to do in order to get ahead and how to beat the people who try and force the world to work as they want it to. 

The knowledge that I have gained from working here as a business coach has been huge! Learning how the world works and learning how to use common sense to move around those who think they have common sense but don’t really is a huge advantage.