Rumi on Getting Polished

 

“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?”

–Rumi (1207–1273)
Persian poet and philosopher

You don’t know everything.

You do know that, don’t you?

Continual learning is a basic necessity to professional improvement and in many cases it’s other people who will help you get there.

But only if you’re coachable. Are you?

To be coachable means to be…

  • Approachable
  • Attentive
  • Receptive
  • Curious
  • Objective
  • Trusting
  • Shapeable
  • Confident

It means you must listen with the intent to learn rather than to show what you know – exactly the type of listening required in the sales process.

Discover Stories with New Microsoft Local Impact Map

Every day hundreds of nonprofit organizations are hard at work improving education, facilitating research, and giving people the skills to find work or start a business.  When a nonprofit really connects with its community it becomes more effective and it leads to thousands of incredible stories from every corner of the world – stories that help inspire even greater achievements.

At Microsoft, we want to help these nonprofits succeed. One way we can do that is to make it easier for them to tell their stories. So with that goal in mind, our Corporate Citizenship team has used Bing Maps to build theMicrosoft Local Impact Map, a new tool that allows you to discover the stories of the communities you care about most, stories about how people and technology are having a real impact.

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One of our favorite stories comes from our team in India that worked with local teachers to train them under thePartners in Learning program. In the community of Dharwad, Project Shiksha was created by a group of trained instructors to establish a residential school for students with hearing impairments. One trainer in particular used an incredibly unique approach to help the students learn to use computers. Find out what she did by reading the story here.

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Of course, this story is only one among thousands. The Local Impact Map provides a living record of how technology is having a positive impact in communities around the world. We invite you to take a look and read examples of people working together for a common good.