I’m in the business of helping people do what they do better. Simply put: I’m in the people-development business at all levels of an organization. I’ve been fortunate to have coached executives, family-business leaders, professionals and salespeople who have achieved the pinnacle of success.
And yet, I’ve also coached people who haven’t gotten better. They haven’t achieved the results that they, or I, were expecting. I’ve used the exact model of coaching, accountability, content, systems, etc., and I’ve seen very different results. It’s sort of like Weight Watchers where some people lose 200 pounds while others, on the same program, gain 20.
I’ve learned that getting better at anything is an inside job. It begins with someone wanting to get better. Of course, then there’s discipline, perseverance, managing self-doubt, overcoming setbacks and refusing to accept less than the best outcome. But the fact is, the more you want to get better, the greater your chances for success.
This is not easy.
High achievers set high expectations for themselves and others. They set lofty goals and are critical of their performance and the performance of their team, division, company, etc. Not critical in a negative way, but critical in a how-to-get-better way.
We all have worked with people who have lots of experience at a job that they just are not very good at doing. They might have been at the company for 20 years, but it’s like they’ve been there for one year 20 times. Then there are others with half the experience who are experts in their field. The difference is in the concentrated effort they put in. It comes down to how much they want to succeed and how hard they will work to do that.
I see this played out all the time on those television competitions where singers who have performed in coffeehouses for years and years are put on the stage to compete for a big prize. We see these people go through extreme polishing and become more and more professional. We watch them quickly develop not just because they are being coached and they are practicing but because they are constantly being coached and they are relentlessly practicing. I’m reminded of this saying: “Practice doesn’t make you better; ‘perfect practice’ makes you better.”
Before the competition, the performers were complacently singing in small coffeehouses, but now they see what else is possible and they want it, so they double down and really work on their craft.
I think that’s what separates average performers from high performers in any endeavor. Average performers settle and don’t challenge themselves to do what they do better. Top performers constantly assess, evaluate, look for ways to improve and then do the hard work necessary to get better.
Challenge yourself. Go to conferences, read books and blogs, hire advisors and coaches and then put in the necessary hard work, and even painful effort, to get better.
You don’t want to reach the end of your career and not have the results that you could have achieved. Jim Rohn put it this way, “We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret …”
Which kind of pain would you rather experience?
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