Please Support My Dreams

author: Lee Buttolph

I recently got done listening to the Game of Thrones books and came across a great quote:

"Why must you mock my hopes? I have doubts enough without your throwing oil on the fire of my fear." - A Dance With Dragons (1)

How often do we:

1. Have a customer call us with an odd request and we proceed to find the many reasons why we can’t support them?

2. Have someone come to us with a new business venture and we proceed to tell them all the reasons why it can’t be done technically or why there is no funding or why customers will hate it.?

3. Have an employee come to us with a new idea to make their job easier but we quickly dismiss it because we would have done it differently or we don’t think they have the “smarts” to be right or we believe their pay scale doesn’t allow them to make such suggestions?

4. Have a kid come to us saying they want to be a rocket scientist and we politely pat them on the head knowing that being a rocket scientist is hard and this kid just isn’t up to the challenge?

It can take a lot of courage to tell someone else our dreams. And when we mock those dreams we have just stolen something very precious to that person.

(1) Martin, George RR, and Roy Dotrice. A dance with dragons. Random House Audio, 2011.