Am I deluding myself by studying world class leaders?

Geoff Roberts change, choice, flexibility, focus, opportunity, strategy

So many article, blogs, books, presentations etc are based on the proposition that we can learn from ‘world class operators’ – if they can do it, so can you; if you just model how they do it, you can do it too, that sort of territory. Some NLP’ers even propound the view that “if anyone can do it, you can do it”.

I want to open an enquiry into the legitimacy of that view.

World class operators are, by definition part of a very small tail in a statistical distribution of performance, and many (most?) of these outstanding performers have physical or mental attributes that I cannot attain:

  • Usain Bolt is blessed with a super-abundance of ultra-fast-twitch muscle,
  • Richard Branson is dyslexic and didn’t really get on well at school,
  • many others around the world had ‘challenging’ childhoods.

So some have physical advantages that no matter how hard I try or visualise or set challenging goals I will never be able to replicate and others have a past that I managed to avoid. Moreover, their performance is so far removed from mine that it lies well outside my comfort zone, maybe even in the “Here be Dragons” territory that is more disabling than empowering.

What if we were to challenge ourselves with performance that lies in the stretch zone instead? What of we were to model our performance on those who perform 10/20/30%  better than ourselves, rather than the zillion% outperformers whose achievements are practically unobtainable?

Now, let’s be clear here – I am not saying that these people cannot be and are not inspirational, what I am suggesting is that their performance is so far from the norm that us mere mortals might be better off concentrating our learning on how our local business, charity, church, theatre etc leaders do it. When I look for a book on “What you can learn from you above-averagely successful but not world-class leader” they don’t seem to be there.

Is this a field for research? Do you find such global inspirations too far out of sight as to be really helpful? What do you think of this topic generally? Go on, comment away…

To challenge or to collude?

Geoff Roberts change, choice

 

I have been introduced to the concept of AST-Arab Standard Time. The southern European countries and Caribbean and lots of other warm countries seem to have their own version of AST-things will happen when they happen and just because we have an appointment at 0800 don’t expect me to turn up at that time.

Now in my world of training, if I am given a two-hour slot I plan to have 120 min worth of material available. What happens then when the participants don’t turn up for the first 45 min and then slowly trickling over the next half hour? Do I start at my minute one? If I start to their timetable when is their minute one? When do I finish? 120 min after I start or when I was originally scheduled to finish? There are versions of this, if I am co-training and my co-trainer overruns and effectively ‘steals’ some of my time do I have to cut my material back to meet the original finishing time or do I simply run over and impose my own version of  AST on the proceedings?

I don’t at the moment have any answers to these questions-they are real and particularly important when working in those cultures were an 0800 start might mean some turning up at 0800, the majority at perhaps 0900 and a few as late as 10 o’clock. If programme is scheduled to finish at three o’clock, do we still aim to finish at three or do we deliver the material it was planned, after all we are delivering against specified criteria in terms of both content and guided aligning hours for an accredited course.

There is no failure, only feedback

Geoff Roberts change, choice, flexibility

Head in hands with failure

 

My friend Andy Green has decided to label this week “Failure Week” and it set me thinking. Those of you who read this blog will recognise that it has become rather occasional – one might say that I have failed to write something every day, which was my original intent.

However in my world failure is only really failure if I fail to learn from it. So what have I learned?

  1. I am most successful blogging daily when I have a plan – usually to write a series of articles on a particular topic (see Twixtmas or Metaprograms earlier).
  2. I need to sort out the ‘Schedule’ function in my WordPress – it doesn’t work and it bugs me that I have to go in every day to workaround the fact that my scheduled post didn’t make it to your wonderful eyes.

What I have learned from earlier experience is that a list of more than 2 or 3 items is less likely to get completed than a very short list – eat the elephant one bite at a time. So that’s it. I suggested elsewhere that I might write an A-Z of personal development, so I am off to compose the first few, any suggestions for topics (especially for Q, X, Z) will be very welcome.

Fear of Failure

Geoff Roberts change, choice, opportunity, Risk

fear of failureOften, when coaching clients, I come across those with great ideas who just do not put them into action. Now there can be all sorts of reasons for this, and what I want to explore today is a very common one – Fear of Failure.
If the status quo is OK, there can be a sense of “well, if I try and fail then I will be worse off than now”, or “if it goes wrong then I will get the blame”, or “maybe a better idea will come along…”. All of these make sense to the client and lead to inaction. But inaction also eliminates the possibility of success.

 

It’s a vicious cycle:

“I fear the possibility of failure…

…that fear leads to inaction…

…which totally eliminates the possibility of success.”

There are times when it’s necessary to just bite the bullet and take some action – my experience is that more often than not all works out well. And even when it doesn’t “There is no failure, only feedback” and I get the chance to learn something.

Go on, make that dream happen – take a small step today.

 

Should Sepp Blatter resign?

Geoff Roberts change, choice

The recent fuss over Sepp Blatter’s comments on racism raises, for me, the interesting point about the circumstances in which resignation should follow a cock-up.

He has argued that “When you are faced with a problem you have to face the problem. To leave would be totally unfair and not compatible with my fighting spirit, my character, my energy” and I agree that leaders need to be allowed to learn as much as the rest of us, but under what circumstances is a leader’s behaviour so out of line with expectations that it is no longer appropriate for them to lead (and, of course, represent) an organisation?

…and at what point does a series of incidents, each of which does not perhaps meet the ‘resign now’ criteria, suggest that you have the wrong person?

DIscuss…

One day at a time

Geoff Roberts change, choice, flexibility, focus

One day at a timeDo some of your goals sometimes seem a bit too challenging, a bit  too long-term or a bit too much to take on? Do you find it hard to make and maintain the committment necessary?

Well, I came a cross a suggestion that I found helpful – take it one day at a time. Now just a minute, isn’t that what is always advised? well, what I heard was a slightly different take.

The suggestion was to commit to your goal, or more accurately the action needed to achieve it, one day at a time. When you wake up, promise to yourself that you will eat only healthy food, run for 30 minutes, contact one new potential customer, whatever…today. If you miss it, you miss it, get on with life and re-make that commitment again tomorrow when maybe you will be more successful.Yoou will probably hit your action more often than not, each step still moving you forward, but without the weight of months or years of effort in your head weighing you down.

I find it easier to do something one day at a time than ‘for ever’. Maybe you will too.

Commit to Action

Geoff Roberts change, choice, language

Yoda“Are you really committed, or are you just going to try?”

I often hear others, and occasionally myself, say “OK, I will try to do ….”

Well here is a simple little exercise for you to do – go on, do it now, it will take you longer to read the instructions than do the exercise.

Put a chair in the middle of the room; stand behind the chair; now try to pick it up.

NO, I did not say ‘pick it up’. I asked you to try to pick it up. You can’t can you? You either pick it up or you do not pick it up!

The use of the word “try” carries with it an implicit possibiity of failure. Is that what you really want for your goals, or do you want to achieve them?

So go on, make that committment – decide that you will achieve that goal.

Remember, it was Yoda who said “There is no try, there is only do or not do”.

Are you really listening?

Geoff Roberts change, choice, focus, perception

I hear you but am I listening?Yesterday, I was driving my granddaughter to meet Peppa Pig. The radio happened to be on and it was one of those “my favourite tracks” sessions. The subject, I can’t remember who it was and it doesn’t really matter anyway, played Michael Jackson’s ‘The Man in the Mirror’, introducing it with comments to the effect that it was a song about how effecting change in the world necessitated starting with the man in the mirror (that is, yourself). I have heard this track many times and never, ever made that connection.

Then, this morning, I am driving that same grand daughter to nursery listening to a programme about The Jam Generation – that generation brought up in the 1980s with The Jam as part of their youthful soundtrack. The commentator seemed surprised that some senior Tories claimed to enjoy The Jam, and other groups of that ilk, despite the relatively left wing nature of their lyrics. He could not understand how they could subscribe to the lyrics in the song and yet be right-leaning Tories.

What both of these incidents suggested to me was the difference between hearing something and listening to it.

I have heard the Michael Jackson track many times and many times I have explained to other people that when I am listening to music. I very rarely pay attention to the specific words in the lyrics. More, I am concerned with the patterns of sound.

In the second case there the similarity, the commentator did not seem to acknowledge the possibility that these right-wingers could be hearing the lyrics while not listening to the words.

Now this observation is no great shakes but it does remind me of the need to be clear about whether a conversation I am part of is simply part of my life’s soundtrack or something whose contents might have much more meaning if I paid attention to what the other person was saying. Listening is an active process, its demands mental effort.

So today my challenge is to pay active attention when you are listening – whether to the radio, your colleagues at work, your partner, or whoever. Maybe it’s okay to have the radio on as a background soundtrack; but surely when we are face-to-face with someone they deserve as much attention from those as we might expect from then in reverse

Rattlesnakes can cause stress

Geoff Roberts change, choice, flexibility, procrastination, stress

Richard Bach has been at it again, this time he has stimulated my thoughts around change. Ask anybody who deals with change on a professional basis and they will typically tell you that either it takes a very long time or it can happen instantly, the latter usually when there is some sort of crisis to be dealt with. This requires a response outside our normal repertoire.

Richard Bach, brilliant writer that he is, put it this way:

It doesn’t take time to change once you understand the problem” he said, his face lit with excitement.” Somebody hands you a rattlesnake, it doesn’t take long to drop it does it?

Sometimes I was unaware that rattlesnakes were even around, sometimes I knew about the rattlesnakes but ignored them, sometimes the rattlesnakes transformed into a poisonous spider, but every now and again one of those rattlesnakes ends up in my hand. This is a bit like how some people deal with stress.

We wake up in the morning and someone has left the bathroom lights on all night (it’s not worth the hassle of finding out who and reminding them to turn it off in future), we go downstairs and the first thing we notice is the waste bin overflowing (who is it that is so lazy that they cannot be bothered to empty it and so just it just piles up. It falls on the floor), only try to fill the kettle up but we can’t because the sink is full of dirty dishes, then we find our favourite cereal has been used up, then there’s no milk, and the kids are late which risks me being late for the appointment that I have to meet after I’d taken them to school, then there’s an accident on the way there and I am delayed yet again, then the client I’ve been speaking to 4 weeks decides he wants a fundamental change in the proposal we have been working on, then I get home and my printer has run out of ink again, then the telephone rings and rings and rings but I am trying to concentrate on something else, then… (add in your own stressors will).

Then my wife comes in and asks what’s the dinner tonight?-And she gets it all dumped on her. I’LL TELL YOU WHAT’S FOR DINNER TONIGHT. WHAT’S FOR DINNER TONIGHT IS WHAT YOU COOK WHEN YOU WANT TO COOK IT….

Poor woman, a simple enquiry yet the stacked up stresses of the day just collapsed on her very ordinary question. And I spend the next week apologising and making it up – somehow.

If only I had dealt with those little things as they were happening…

If only I had dealt with the rattlesnake before it ended up in my hand…

Life is for living

Geoff Roberts change, choice, flexibility, focus, opportunity, procrastination, selection, time management

Richard Bach - OneI have just been reading another wonderful little book by Richard Bach called “One”. I first came across Richard’s books when I was introduced to Jonathan Livingston Seagull over 30 years ago. JLS can take you half an hour to read or a lifetime; it can be a simple story about a Seagull are a complex parable about learning. For many years I never left the house without a seagull on a chain around my neck, until the day that I realised the seagull had flown away when the chain broke,  never to be seen by me again.

Anyway, back to this latest book “One”. He posits a situation and an exercise that I challenge you to take on yourself. Somehow or other  he meets himself in the future and that future self  knows, for certain, that he only has six months to live. Let me give you the exercise by quoting from the book:

“I think we ought to take this napkin here”, she reached into her purse, “and this pencil, and we ought to list what we want to do most and make this the best six months, the best time in our lives. What would we do if there were no doctors with their dos and don’ts? They can’t cure you, so who are they to tell others what to do with whatever time we have left? I think we ought to make this list and then go ahead and do what we want.”

I don’t know whether the subject of this piece was lucky or not that he knew for sure that he had another six months to live. I don’t know whether or not I will be alive when you read this entry-there is no reason why I shouldn’t be but who knows what happens on the roads or in that complex biochemistry that keeps is running every day?

So my challenge to you is to do the exercise, to figure out what it is that you want to do (not need to do – that’s usually someone else’s agenda), to make a list and to get out there and do it. Oh, there will be challenges, but isn’t a life full of those anyway? Yes, you might upset a few people but you are living your life and you probably only have one of them so you might as well get the most out of it.

And some people will tell you that it’s impossible, selfish, not affordable, etc  – those are their hangups. So let them deal with them rather than dump them on you. I urge you do this exercise , after all you might only have six months to live.