Fred Factor
The Fred Factor by Mark Sanborn is about creating passion in your life and how that can make your life extraordinary. The book begins by explaining what the “Fred Factor” is and who it was named after. It then gives some guidelines on how to become a Fred by following a certain way of thinking. The book also goes over how to seek out and develop other Freds in your life. It concludes by giving an update on the original Fred, Fred Shea. In the first section of the book where Sanborn describes the original Fred and examples of other Freds you are really drawn into learning more about this specific kind of person.
One of the main points of the book is how anyone can be passionate about their work no matter what they do. The original Fred story is a great example of this. Learning about a US postal service worker and how he was able to affect so many of his customers in such a positive way is such an encouraging story. Being a postal worker is a position that most anyone could attain and using something as non-glamorous as this position illustrates the main point that anyone in any position can be inspirational.
One of my favorite things from the second part of this book is the idea that everyone can make a difference and nobody prevents you from being extraordinary. You hold everything you need to be an exceptional person – you don’t need the extra education or income to make a difference – anyone from any background has the ability to be passionate about what they do. By realizing this you are also able to see that relationships are the building blocks that success is built upon. Without nurturing both professional and personal relationships it will be difficult to succeed at being a Fred.
Sanborn explains why it is important to create value for other people and why one of the most important questions you need to ask yourself is what can you do for others. A great example of this is when Sanborn suggests when you see a group of people with one person taking the picture offer to take the picture so that everyone can be included in the shot. This is a simple way of creating value and helping others. The last principle that is important to your road to becoming a Fred is that you should continually be reinventing yourself. There is always an opportunity for you to become what you have always believed you could become.
There is always opportunity to become a Fred. In the third part of the book it is explained how to find and develop other Freds. One of the first steps to finding other Freds is to let them come to you. I do think that like attracts like and if you are a Fred you are more likely to attract other like-minded people. You can also discover dormant Freds. These are people that might just need some motivation or to be around other Freds. Lastly is to hire them. It can be difficult to search a lot of candidates for a Fred but he or she should stand out.
To help assist you the book has a list of interview questions to ask potential candidates to help you gauge whether they are Fred material or not. After reading this book of course I was curious to see how the original Fred had fared in his life. It was important to me that Sanborn found out why Fred Shea believed what he believed. Fred had a few concise answers one of the most important being that you should live the golden rule. Sometimes finding out why someone does something is just as important as what they are doing. It was a nice touch to end on such a positive note about such a positive man.
This book is a great book about leadership. It encourages people to do what they think is best even if it is different from what ever everyone else is doing. By encouraging individual thought you are encouraging people to become leaders. I think that Fred Shea is a great example of a person who is a leader without even knowing it. The only thing I had a hard time wrapping my head around about this book was the section that discussed how being Fred like will encourage others to also be like Fred. I do think that this can be true at times but I have experienced certain professional situations where I do not think this would be true.
The economy right now is not in the best place. This has led to a lot of changes around my workplace – there have been budget cuts, layoffs, and overall huge unexpected changes have been occurring for the past few years. This does not do a lot for workplace moral. While having an attitude like Fred’s would be nice to have around there is a certain point where an environment can become toxic. There is only so much that one person and their great attitude can do. I would never stop trying to be a Fred but you must acknowledge that is not always possible to get a group or a majority on your side just by your actions.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone and especially people in the customer service industry. Working with people all of the time can be frustrating and this is a great book to show you how you can make a difference working with people. That is one of the most importance lessons in this book – that every day you can make a difference in the world. This is something that is easy to forget when you get wrapped up in budgets, spreadsheets, and meetings but it is very important. Remembering something as small as this can make a huge difference in both your life and others lives.
