To Serve or To Take?
A loan officer in my state was working a loan with a client in another part of Tennessee. As they were starting to gather the information needed to help this client, working back and forth with them, they received a message from someone in corporate that asked for permission to “transfer” this loan over to another loan officer. This other loan officer was in closer proximity to the client and also indicated the client was working with one of their preferred realtors.
What made me sad about this story was that instead of the loan officer reaching out to their colleague first, calling or emailing them about the pending transfer situation, they instead sent a request through corporate to have the loan “switched,” since they already had permission from the client that they wanted to work with a local loan agent tied to their realtor.
How would you have handled this situation had you been the loan officer requesting the loan to be transferred?
Would you have reached out and snatched the loan away from your colleague in the same manner I just described – not being considerate of a person that works in your same office and for the same company?
Or would you have reached out directly to your teammate and explained the situation, letting them know the client wanted to work locally and that the agent was one of their preferred partners, and talk about transferring the loan?
A Real Christian Businessman takes situations like this and considers others in his decisions. He doesn’t conduct business the same way this person did by just sending the submission to corporate to change things internally without first talking to his colleague. He communicates directly with his colleague, letting them know the situation and the clients desire to work more locally.
These type of situations come up all the time in some form or fashion in all of our businesses! Someone goes behind the back of another in order to get what will benefit him or her the most. Everyone seems to always be looking out for themselves instead of being considerate of others – especially those that they work with everyday.
Let’s use this example this week to think of others FIRST instead of our own selfish needs and desires in the workplace. In the end we will come out better than we ever could have imagined. Because the Bible tells us so!
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves.” Phil 2:3 (CSB)