The mirror is the center of one of my favorite movies, "Snow White". When the Queen is mirrored in a way she does not like she becomes filled with rage and jealousy. Which leads me to my point...
Was I the only one who caught Inside Edition where a male, real estate agent in Florida lost a listing to a female competitor? When he didn't get the listing he decided to "take out his competition" by assassinating her character in public.
He placed over 20 ads for sex on Craig's List, using the female agents real name, home and cell phone numbers. He included pictures of provocatively dressed women, that were not the agent. The State of Florida sentenced him to probation, I think it was 4 years. In the 30 or so days this went on she received over 700 phone calls from men looking for sex.
Granted this is a very EXTREME example of someone not working with in integrity. However, every day in our offices we see smaller, more subtle versions of this type of behavior. I remember sitting at an office happy hour and one of the top agents in the office had too much to drink and started gossiping and bad mouthing every other top agent in the area. I was used to this...I have been working with competitive sales people for 10 years.
This is the part that caught my attention because, this is an agent that constantly talks about how "un-professional" people are and how they don't have "integrity". The agent confessed to me that she had lost a listing to another agent in her office, many years ago and still held a grudge about it...(honestly I think it had nothing to do with the other agent other than she was 10 years younger and was a pretty girl).
The interesting part was when she told me what she did the next time she was in competition with that same agent. On a listing appointment a few months latter, when she asked the clients who else they were interviewing, they mentioned her competition. At that point, she launched into "smear campaign" to the clients, of course, she was completely justified in her own mind to do so...and boy of boy did she.
The result, neither of them got the listing (it took me some probing to get that out of her because then she recognized that in the process of throwing her competition under the bus...she went down with her).
We want people to judge us by our intentions. However, as a society, we judge on actions..not intentions.
What would your mirror say about you if it could talk?
;)
;)
;)
Dang, those are some nasty examples. I'm glad the lady who smeared her competitor didn't get the listing.
Four years probation seems like a slap on the wrist for character assasination.
I believe what goes around comes around. These people are in trouble.