Mirza Yawar Baig – Lessons for life #03 Keep your word

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filarmonica Al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen

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wa salatu salam ala Shara freedom be able to study and Muhammad Rasul Allah is Allah Maharani he went early, he was

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the Steven cathedra.

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Brothers sister, the third lesson

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from life

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and lessons in the context of how to win

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is

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to keep your promises.

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And this is a blanket statement without any

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boundaries and without any reservations. And without any qualifications.

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Keep your promise.

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If you promise something, do it. The only way that can come, the only thing that can come in the way of fulfilling your promise is your death.

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Now, you might say what about if I have an accident or something? Well, okay, may Allah keep you safe. But that is also part of that.

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What is ever What about, I was doing my best. But something out of my control went wrong. And so I couldn't keep my promise. Well inform the person who you spoke to who you promised before the due date of the promise.

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So I'm not being unreasonable. I'm saying that if you say you will do something,

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then ensure that you will do it.

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There is no way that you promised to do something, and you don't do it. And you don't inform the person that you promised. And that person is now wondering, this thing which was supposed to be done, hadn't been done, will it be done? Ever? Will it be done? When this obviously, was not done when the person promised it? So when will it be done?

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Are they having difficulties? Have they decided not to do it?

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Or what is the situation they have no clue, because you don't bother, inform them.

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Keep your promises. Because believe me, it is of course it is highly disrespectful, on your part, to promise somebody something and not to deliver. And then not to follow up on that. That is hugely insulting and disrespectful. When I'm not even talking about that I'm talking about the destructive effect of that on yourself. Because when you break a promise, you lose the most credible, the most valuable asset that you can ever have. And that is your word.

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Your credibility as a man or woman. Your credibility as a human being your credibility as a Muslim is gone. Remember Rasulullah Salem his title given by the Koresh long before he became the Prophet of Allah Allah Salah was What a sad they call Amin, the truthful and trustworthy

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the two are linked is somebody who lies cannot be trustworthy. So the true two are linked,

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truthful and trustworthy.

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Trust is based not on claims, but on actual action. Trust is based on deliverables. Trust is worth money. Trust is deniability. Trust is brand brand as a value.

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Right? Even if you think only in terms of money, trust has a brand trust has value.

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It's extremely important think of I'm giving you these commercial examples because they're easy to easy for you to think about and they are there in our face the whole time. Think about the brands that you

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trust the most. And then tell me why do you trust them? Think about the restaurant that you will always go to when you want a certain kind of cuisine and you go to that restaurant because you're sure that every single time they will give you quality cuisine it's not that the if you're going there for biryani it's not that one day the biryani is absolutely supreme and the next day it looks like dog food. No, it will not be

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the trustworthiness of the restaurant is not only the taste of the food once but it is consistent quality. Take an airline the best airlines in the world are the ones who will give you consistent quality, not heroic service one day and then the dumps the next day. consistent quality throughout. You can shut your eyes and say if I bought this plane, this is what I'm going to get like clockwork

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There's no, there's no

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service failure, that's going to happen. And if there's a service failure, then they're going to make it up in such a phenomenal way

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that the failure is actually better for them than it would have been not to fail.

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I always fly Emirates for the same reason. Because it's consistent quality, fantastic quality. The only time that Emirates there was a service failure was I was in I was in Leeds.

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The flight was from Manchester, my wife and I were flying from Manchester to Hyderabad.

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So my job is to do by the way, habra,

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Emirates was picking us up from Leeds to bring us to Manchester Airport. It so happened that that day was the Leeds marathon. So the average driver

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couldn't take the direct route to our house. And he had to, he actually got lost. And later on the next few days, he told us, he hired a cab to take him to our place where the cab drivers they know all the inside routes.

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So he came, he picked us up, but we reached and we reached the actually, interestingly, we reached we reached Manchester Airport in time, but the security

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was extremely slow. Manchester airport security is very, very slow, and there's nothing at all that you can do to hurry up those people. If you try to hurry up, hurry them up, they just delay even more just because it was something. So security was extremely slow. And we missed the flight, literally, we missed the flight.

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By a hair's breadth, as we were both running towards the

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get,

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I could see the door shutting.

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I tried to wave I try to see if I could get them to leave the gate open for quite literally, if they had left the gate open for two minutes, we would have boarded the flight. But they didn't do that they shut the gates side left.

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So we

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went down to the

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chicken chicken counter. And I explained to the chicken officer, the chicken officer said to me, you have two choices. One is

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I will charge you for

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a change of flight. And I will give you a paper to say that your delay was our fault. It was not because of you because we didn't pick you up and bring you in time. And you can get a refund from Emirates or

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you can wait here and I will have to fax Dubai. And then Dubai has to give me an authorization and then I can put you on to the next slide without charging you the

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the flight ticket change fees. So I said look, I don't want to get in sit around here in Manchester Airport at the check in counter am I if I'm going to wait on the flight, the next flight was at two o'clock this this one was nine in the morning the expert was two o'clock. So it was so I said if you know I don't want to sit around for hours at the checkout counter instead of that. I can use the lawn so it's a noble Jasmine thing. And I'll apply so i They charged me gave me the he gave me this boarding pass and everything for the next flight. We went to the lounge we we had lunch we prayed and we did everything got on the flight went home. When we got home we sent the application for

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refund.

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It was I think 32 pounds each or something like this. He was supposed to get a refund of I think 64 pounds on the

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week got the refund. And along with the refund. We got 20,000 miles, frequent flyer miles each. My wife and I. Now this 20,000 frequent flyer miles was entirely from Emirates. We didn't ask for it. We didn't expect it. We were obviously delighted to get it. But we got 20,000 flat frequent flyer miles, each of us. And they said we're extremely sorry that this happened. Now. This is what I mean by recovering from service failure. So and that happens because Emirates values its reputation and minutes values. It's worked. And that's the reason why I'm sitting here in Burlington, Vermont in United States.

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Many years after this incident happened. And I'm broadcasting this information to the whole world who listens to this one

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in the context of as an example of keeping your word and the importance of credibility. And guess who gets free benefit from this? Emirates Emirates is not paying me for this

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but they get the free benefit of free publicity for being extremely good customer service people, right? So keep your word. That is the third

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secret, if you want to call it of success, third leadership lesson, keep your word. Never ever go back on your word, which also means never promise more than you can deliver basic rule in life

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over promise under deliver, you are sunk, under promise over deliver, you are a hero. Right? You know what you can do? Promise

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10% less.

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And deliver 100%

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You will always always win. But instead of that,

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because enthusiasts and because of XYZ, whatever you promise more than you can deliver, you may have done the promise with the best of intentions, right? No need to feel bad about it. You know, people say Oh, but you know, I really wanted to, Sure, no problem, you really want to do it, but you didn't do it and somebody has died because of that. They don't expect the other guy to be happy that thanks to you, he died. So no.

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Make sure that you promise within your capacity. Nobody knows your capacity better than you do. But promise within the capacity and ensure that you deliver beyond what you promise. Even if it is one cent more, it counts. You may not think it is something great, but the person receiving it, believe me that person it registers to them, they remember it, they pass on the word, your reputation spreads, your credibility improves your brand value goes up. The opposite is equally true. equally powerful, but in a negative way. Remember, when you give you a word and you don't keep it, you are saying to the world, don't trust me. I have no self respect. I don't respect myself. So please don't

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respect me.

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I have no value for my word. So have no value for my word.

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I'm untrustworthy. I'm unreliable. That is what you are saying. When you give your word and you don't give it. And don't think that giving you a word refers only to some great international agreement. If you say to somebody, I will meet you at 4pm that is your word. If you don't meet him at 4pm, you have destroyed your credibility. If there is a reason why you cannot meet him at 4pm, call in advance, let them know, don't just not show up.

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If you say that you will deliver something, deliver it. If you cannot deliver it, close the loop and tell them why the delay is happening. And what you are doing to make sure that the delivery will happen at the next point that you state or go back to them and say I'm sorry I took on this task. I am not able to complete it. I apologize. Here it is back to you. But if you don't do that, if you keep on

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not delivering and you force the other person to keep on asking you over and over again. Believe me as far as you are concerned. You are you have trashed yourself.

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Your choice was getting while he was a board member How To Get Away