At Spade and Archer, our mantras surrounding our core value ‘Graceful’ are as follows:
We are honest without being brutal.
We are cool under pressure.
We adapt quickly.
We are humble.
Grace is our most difficult core value to achieve on a daily basis. Grace not only applies to moving furniture but also how we interact with people. We never know when our grace will be tested, and we must call upon this core value on a moment’s notice. Being graceful means not only providing others with the grace to make mistakes, but to also allow ourselves the grace to make those same mistakes.
So what does it mean to be Graceful? When everything is going right, it is very easy to be graceful, even for the most clumsy person. But when things go wrong, our grace is truly tested. Every day in the world of home staging our ability to be graceful is tested and every day we strive to meet our standard of grace. Whether an item is broken or a client is upset, we use grace to smooth out the rough edges. We do our best to be honest without being mean, delivering messages that both need to be heard and can be difficult to hear. When a client does get angry, we do our best to stay calm and collected. We try to understand that the anger is mostly likely due to being in a high pressure situation and more than likely not a direct result of our actions. We learn from the situation at hand and adapt quickly to meet the needs of the moment and we try to take it all in stride without being too full of ourselves.
We had an opportunity to sit down and chat with one of our most graceful clients, Ruth Price. Ruth has had the opportunity to change markets twice. Starting in Bend, Oregon, she then moved to Portland, Oregon and most recently to Phoenix, Arizona. As we all know building a business from scratch can test even the most graceful person and Ruth has handled it beautifully.
Ruth has been a fantastic client for well over 10 years. As a result of the countless lessons in grace we have learned from working with her over the years, we feel that maybe you would want a chance to meet such a lovely person. Take a listen to her episode of Behind the Yard Sign by clicking here.