Resist the Urge to Be Average

Resist the Urge to Be Average
Everywhere around you are average people. They entice you into being more like them by offering their acceptance and by leading you to believe that everyone else is already more like them than like you.
But the “average person sales pitch” leaves out that you will be sacrificing your goals, individuality, and unique ideas and that you will lead a life determined more by the preferences of the group than by you.
“A person who wants to be a leader must turn his back to the crowd,” says the sign on Ty Underwood’s desk. Ty runs a job placement service that works with laid-off and chronically underemployed workers.
“When I got here there was an attitude that this was all a show to keep the agency’s funding. We’d show up, have the clients come in to fill out some papers, then send them on their way. Nobody behaving as if there was important work to be done, nobody behaving as if there was potential to be tapped here.” His first task was to change everything. To two-thirds of the staff, he minced no words: “Here’s your resignation. Sign it.” Now each day begins with the premise that “Everyone who walks through this door can do more. That goes for the counselors and the clients.”
Two years later, Ty has taken an office he considered an embarrassment and turned it into a model, with a job placement record of 71 percent.
Psychologists have observed that bad habits can spread through an office like a contagious disease. Employees tend to mirror the bad behaviors of their co-workers, with factors as diverse as low morale, poor working habits, and theft from the employer all rising based on the negative behavior of peers.