Here's a couple of insights worth thousands or millions of dollars!
(Revised from earlier post)
If you have a high “I” personality you are: “people oriented, trusting, persuasive, influencing, verbal, fun loving and creative. You make things happen and are frequently a source of inspiration.”
Heres the catch… Any strength overextended is a “weakness.” You will be TOO TRUSTING and at times, you who sell others so easily will be too EASILY PERSUADED yourself.
Here's the rabbis warning – You are setting yourself up for disappointment, because people will promise you things they will NOT deliver. These will be some REALLY NICE people. True believers.
And you will have three battles you could have avoided.
STEP 1. Disappointment. You won't get paid or delivered what you failed to get in writing. The hand shake and the hugs are not in ink and people have a tendency to rewrite history in their heads.
“By some peculiar axiom in the economic universe 9 times out of 10 anything involving money will be misunderstood by the party that owes it.” (Lance Wallnau)
STEP 2. Bitterness. You will realize something went wrong and will need to forgive them.
STEP 3. The other party knows deep down they didn't do the right thing and will avoid you. Sometimes they justify avoiding you by finding faults in you recently that they never saw so clearly when they needed your help. So now IRONICALLY you've lost a relationship you could have kept IF you had trusted them LESS and guarded the connection by having a letter of understanding about what they would do and what you would do.
Especially if this is not a straight up financial transaction and involves “bartering.” Bartering is done in the currency of some sort of service you will provide that is equal to money. It could be a service from them to you or you to them. Its best to put a dollar figure on the barter so there is no misunderstanding of the currency.
LISTEN: You won't want to do step 3 because it feels untrusting. What you don't know is that failing to do so leads to another scriptural rule – “give no place to the devil.” You expose the other person to temptation if you don't get your agreement in writing.
I've made this mistake so often I decided to write it out and explain it to myself in this post.
Point- trusting people err by being too trusting. Protect untested friendships by getting things in writing. You don't need a lawyer unless its a big deal. Just grab a piece of paper and write out with them what you are doing and what they are doing and date it and sign it and make a copy. Let them keep the original and put a smily face on it next to your signature.
Thats a classic high “I” personality style contract you'll be comfortable drafting.
P.S. theres another HUGE step to add to this but this is enough jewish meddling for now.
Really great to address the problem. You’ve got three points of problems. Was there supposed to be 3 steps to do?
Your word is your bond in the Texas I live in. I’m working on restoring that in the wide world, but would like pointers in the meantime. A day’s training. An ongoing 12 step group. I’d sign up!
So just how do you get people to put the deal in writing? It is not so easy. People want to take all the time in the world and ignore the request/contract form. I’ve had people wait until the event, so I’ve had to work days to prepare, before their board even meets to decide against the 3 month old decision. I’ve had people print my name in the bulletin of the conference while not addressing my fee and paperwork. I have had a large corporation who announced my workshop as an entirely different topic. Very few times have I had things work out — over 20+ years.
And even if it is in writing, then what? Go to court? Not even practical unless the fee is higher than my industry imagines.
And Bible? Let’s not publish it in Gath. Have you got some more help? I’m all ears (well some mouth, too, I admit.) LOL
This is an” on time message” I need to hear repeatedly. A former colleague had a sign posted on his desk…A verbal, or “gentleman’s agreement” is usually not an agreement and not between two gentlemen.
You just summed up pretty much every business/ministry crisis I’ve ever had in one simple blog post. Amazing.
Note to self: Get it in writing.
Thank you writing this and including so much information. Please take heed to this, everyone. God can deliver you from the battles he describes but you don’t want to go through those battles of you don’t have to. They are dark bad very damaging. Listen to wisdom and do what it takes to avoid these. One more thing – he names MLMers as people making a living off of this style of operating and this is true about done of them. But I also want to tell you that people who are given to the love of money and promote the Prosperity Gospel in churches are also this way. They LOOK FOR people who are really trusting and they KNOW that you trust them, especially because of their position in church or their grasp of Bible knowledge. You have probably not bothered to test the friendship and they will use that to their financial advantage as many times as they can to get as much money as they can from you ( and it’s usually done in secret just between the two or a few of you). Do not follow your heart. Follow wisdom and don’t be manipulated. Don’t erroneously think “Oh she would never do that. She’s the Bible teacher.” You don’t know that until you have tested the friendship or observed how she/ he responds when you are blessed with all the money they keep talking about. They say that success leaves clues but so does sabotage. Pay attention. Pay attention. Stop getting tangled up in their carefully planned webs of coercion.
That is very good advice. I like where it actually protects the other person from temptation as well
as making things understood right from the beginning. Well done.
could have used this many times in my life I am to trusting and want to help everyone, I think in my mind that they think like me and I always do unto others as I would have them do to me, but it has never worked out right and I never get it back because they don’t think like me. so I will use this advice because I so need it I have learned a hard lesion and it repeats over and over and then I have to forgive them you hit it on the nail. Thanks Dawn
Great blog post, Lance – thanks so much!
My old mentor Louis Gandara used to say, “Every project that has ever failed can be traced back to a lack of clear agreement on the purpose of the project or failure to adhere to that purpose.” So he recommended drafting up an “Agreement of Purpose” where the terms and expectations of the project were written out and both parties signed it. Not legally binding, but a great communication tool. (This was primarily between believers doing business together.)
It all boils down to character. If you and a client have a disagreement, and the terms are in writing, and you sit down like two adults and talk through a conflict, they will either stay in the dialog by being mature, or they will bail out of the resolution process by making excuses, blaming, etc. In that case, you have the deal in writing, but you also have your perception of what happened and they have theirs. Mature adults sit down and work it out. But mature adults are hard to find in our dysfunctional society (Christian or not).
I once made the mistake of doing a project for a non-believer and skipped the written contract. Deal went to heck big time. He was an attorney and knew how to manipulate the system. I lost $5,000 getting separated from him. But we kept praying and, lo and behold, were able to claim it as a business loss on the next year’s taxes, and got a $5,000 refund – praise God!
But that resulted in me created a good, solid, but short written contract that I make every client sign, no matter what (optional if it is under $300 in services). But even on the smaller ones, don’t get bitten by the “Oh, it’s so small — it won’t matter” deception. Those can bite you, too, sometimes.
Also, get all the terms and expectations in writing. And THEN, if anything changes, get those changes in writing, too. It’s called a “Change Order Form” and should be treated as an addendum to the contract.
Yes, Love believes all things but it is also discerning and senses that which is truly vital, approving and prizing that which is excellent, it’s pure and blameless unerring and untainted having a heart that is sincere, certain and unsullied that we can approach the day of Christ not stumbling ourselves or causing others to stumble by not also speaking the truth upfront in writing so that there can be no missed understanding…Phil 1:9-11 Amp. Thank you Lance, for reiterating what my wife and I just went through by not doing what you suggested. Our fault as much as anyone else’s.
Great word, Lance … as well as your comment, Ken …
“Any strength over-extended becomes our weakness” ..
This is true. The path of Life has deep ditches on both sides of it, I have heard. In our own strength of attempting to be balanced, we inherently tend to overcompensate into the other side of the tyranny of darkness. Love keeps us in the center of the path of His Will, and because Love NEVER fails … we never lose the strength which He supplies to walk into His destiny prepared and stay away from the outer darkness of the ditches.
I have to say—-this is actually a very discouraging post to me. I agree with the business wisdom, but I just don’t care for the tone of the blog—it almost takes the Lord out of the equation altogether.
God had his instructions to his friends put in writing – just in case we mess it up