2021_PWN_V3_No3_web

A Taste of
Humble Pie
Learning to Learn from
Your Professional Mistakes
EDITOR’S NOTE:
David Avrin will be one of the
speakers at PowerClean 2021,
the upcoming joint conference
of the Cleaning Equipment Trade
Association (CETA) and the
Power Washers of North America
(PWNA) to be held at the Hyatt
Regency - New Orleans in New
Orleans, Louisiana from Sept.
8 - 11, 2021. See more about the
conference in the “Industry Dirt”
section of this magazine.]
BY DAVID AVRIN, CSP
I just got my lunch handed to me
by a business prospect and will be
eating “humble pie” for months to
come. It was a humiliating lesson, exacted
upon a careless and overly-casual
“professional” by an astute and
thoughtful company leader. File this
under: “Do as I say – not as I did.”
I arrived this afternoon for my
third face-to-face meeting with a
strong prospect for my CEO roundtable
group. I’ll call him “Mike.” Assuming
that this was the final step of the
evaluation process with an impressive
company leader, I believed that
Mike and I both had found a strong fit
and would likely be progressing with
a formal membership application.
He would soon be joining the CEO
roundtable group and I would be his
executive coach.
After moving beyond the greetings
and pleasantries, we took our
seats in his office as Mike closed the
door. As he sat by his desk, he began
our discussion by explaining that he
had been struggling with an internal
dynamic at his company whereby his
customer service staff and administration
staff were “badmouthing” each
other. Worst yet, they were expressing
dissatisfaction with their coworkers in
conversations with customers. He explained
that when a customer called
with a complaint about their bill or
the service that had been provided,
Admin would say that the Customer
Service department had clearly
dropped the ball, or Customer Service
would throw Admin under the
bus by blaming them for whatever
the problem was. He was struggling
with how best to confront the situation.
Mike continued: “Then I got this
voice mail message last Friday,” and
he turned to the phone on his desk,
hit the “Speakerphone” button and
began to dial. To my surprise, the
voice on the recording was my own.
“Hi Mike,” I said. “This is David
Avrin and yes, you are correct, the
meeting place listed in the e-mail invitation
was wrong. Some ‘Bone-Head’
from the corporate office sent out
the wrong location.” Then, without
ever taking his gaze off of me, Mike
pressed a button on the phone rewinding
it slightly. “Some Bone-Head
from the corporate office…” Click.
“Some Bone-Head from the corporate
office…” Click. “Some Bone-
Head from the corporate office…”
I sat speechless as Mike leaned back
in his chair and after a brief pause,
looked me in the eye and said: “So
here’s my dilemma Dave, I’m looking
for an executive coach to help me
become a better leader and deal with
issues such as how to confront poor internal
behavior, and this is the message
I received from my leading candidate.
What the hell do I do with this?”
As he spoke, all I could do was nod
knowingly, acknowledging that everything
he was saying was true and
the concern he expressed was richly-deserved.
I had screwed-up – big
time. Not just because my poorly-considered,
off-hand comment had violated
my covenant with a trusted and
valued corporate partner, but because
I had damaged my credibility with
someone I respected. The resulting
challenge to my judgment and credibility
was no one’s fault but my own.
In the moment, I knew the worst
thing I could do was to attempt an ex-
4 | PRESSURE WASH NEWS | VOL. 3, NO. 3 | SUMMER 2021