Coach Corner: Are you that person?
By Marilou Butcher Roth, Master Coach
So, I was flying home yesterday and had a brief layover in Chicago where my phone was in desperate need of charging. As I looked around the gates, amazingly, I only spotted one outlet, as it seemed to be an older part of the terminal. The glorious outlet was situated between two rows of seats. On one side all of the seats were filled, and on the other, there was a woman on the end seat (closest to the outlet), and no other seats taken.
As I happily plugged in my phone, I made a comment along those lines and the woman turned her head and then turned away. Hmm, I thought, I would imagine it would be very easy for her to move one seat down to allow me access to the phone without getting down on the floor -- nope, didn’t happen! Well, you may say this was the perfect opportunity to make a request to her to move her butt just one seat over. You may be right, and somehow it didn’t feel right, so down I went onto the luckily carpeted floor.
For about the next half hour I sat there, responding to emails, etc. Her flight was called, and at that point she turned and asked “do you want my seat?” My insides said “well yes I do!!!,” and my mouth said “that would be great,” as I got my non-graceful self off of the floor.
Now, in the scheme of things, this is really no big deal. However, it did of course get me thinking. Are there times when I miss being the kind person I believe myself to be. She was obviously a nice person, albeit oblivious to my plight! It's so easy to get caught up in our own stuff that perhaps we miss the opportunities to lead with kindness and courtesy.
It was a great awareness for me and I plan on paying more attention to these opportunities starting now. How about you!
