Proverbs for Business (Part 8)

Impudent People Suck

Proverb 9:8 – Don’t correct the impudent, or they will hate you; correct the wise, and they will love you. 

What the heck does “impudent” mean? I know that’s what I thought when I first read this Proverb. According to dictionary.com, an impudent person is characterized by impertinence or effrontery. Ha! That doesn’t help much either because most of us don’t know what impertinence or effrontery mean. Essentially, these words refer to someone who is shamelessly bold, audacious, or brash. That help?

Now that that is out of the way, let’s dig in. Have you ever known someone who was cocky, sassy, or overly bold? (i.e. an impudent person.) Think about that person for a minute. Picture him or her in your mind’s eye. Now imagine what would happen if you tried to correct him for something he said that was out of place. How would that go? Probably not too good. This is the point. Solomon warns us that these types of people–the impudent people among us–are not good at taking correction. They are offended easily when we try to correct them. These type of people have no place in our company. They do not fit into good company culture. 

While they may not be welcome inside your company, you cannot eliminate them from your business dealings. From time to time, you're going to deal with an impudent vendor or customer. What you must understand is that you must be careful how you interact with them in order to maintain a beneficial relationship. For example, if a potential customer thinks they know more about what you do than you do, you must be careful in your speech when you are educating them on your process and expertise. If you aren’t careful, you will inadvertently build up hostility in the relationship, which leads to a loss of a potential sale.

On the other hand, this Proverb tells us that correcting wise people leads to a deepening of the relationship. It is so easy to see this playing out in real life among good leadership teams. Usually, company leaders are wise people. They do not take offense at being corrected. They welcome it. They grow as a result. Their relationships get deeper each time this occurs. 

And when you interact with vendors or customers who are wise and you have opportunity to correct their perspective on something, those relationships grow and usually lead to more opportunities to do business. Wisdom works for business. 

The advice to take from this is to be careful with your words when dealing with impudent people in order to avoid creating hostility in the relationship and thereby losing an opportunity to do business. Also, embrace the wisdom in appropriately correcting wise people as a way to deepen the relationship and thereby increasing opportunities to do more business. Be wise. 

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Jason Duncan is President & CEO of Energy Lighting Services. When he is not working with his team to help produce some of the most amazingly efficient LED retrofit projects on planet earth, he coaches entrepreneurs and teaches salespeople how to get results through integrity. You can reach Jason through LinkedIn, Instagram, or through his company's website. Subscribe to his YouTube channel for weekly videos.