At the Gap of Dunloe, we loaded into a wee carriage driven by Paul and pulled by his trusty horse, Nancy.
Paul took pics with us. He cracked jokes. He answered all manner of queries.
Paul is right out of central casting. Remarkably, he never gives you the impression that he's been there, and done that, even though he LIVES there, and has done that 3x/day for decades.
PJ and his brother run the sheep farm, set above a fjord so pretty it looks fake. To say that the sheep have all the best views in Ireland is, if anything, an understatement.
A lot of tourist guides try to boost the wonderment by adding emphasis, proactively answering questions, and even using vocal inflection to convey excitement.
PJ isn't a tourist guide. He's a sheep farmer who tolerates a few tourists each day. His verbal overview of how his dog, the mighty Rex, corrals the sheep from 400 meters
away was monotone, matter-of-fact, and.....concise.
"Okay. Welcome. I'm PJ. This is Rex. He's going to gather up those sheep, move them down
the hill, around the tree, back up here, and put them in this pen. When I say Away, he goes right. When I say Come Bye, he goes left. When I say Move On, he goes forward. When I say Stand, he slows down. Any questions?"
Rex manipulated those sheep all around that hill like a bloodthirsty puppeteer.
Once the sheep were sorted, PJ actually answered a ton of presumably ridiculous tourist questions in his "Yeah, they're sheep, what's the big deal?" way. He even let my daughter help shear a momma sheep (no sheep were harmed in this experiment).
Paul.
And PJ.
Everywhere I look, an attraction promises clean restrooms. The full Irish breakfast. Free Wi-Fi.
Gorgeous views. Music at 8:30 nightly. The best pint of Guinness in the town.
What they never trumpet is their Paul. Or their
PJ.
And that's a shame.
Because they have a Paul. And a PJ.
Maybe it's Siobhan. Or Robbie. Or Meghan.
But they have them. The people that make it perfect.
And so do
you.
Modern business has knelt at the throne of convention and conformity and consistency for so long that it often feels risky and
borderline irresponsible to let your people be......people.
But the Paul and PJ approach can work. Southwest Airlines has used this formula
for years. Their hire rate is so low because they only want specific personality types in customer-facing roles.
EVERY team member at
Disney parks is known as a "cast member" because they are playing a role, even if that role is "real-life picker-upper of garbage."
In my
very first book, The NOW Revolution, Amber Nasland and I wrote about the need of companies to "hire for
passion, and train for skills." More than a decade later, in the middle of Ireland, I'm reminded again just how important that is.
Find your Paul.
And your PJ.
Let them be themselves, and watch the impact it has on your customers.
