Happy Sunday Everyone:
Coaching the coaches call was super impactful for me last week. This call is where Rick coaches the coaches, then we coach the students with the same content. To say it’s Rick’s way or the highway would be the understatement of the year. To watch him get some fairly high powered, high energy, decent sized ego’d people to do whatever he asks of them is fairly remarkable. After 10 years with him, and I know it sounds like a cult (it’s not), I’ve come to realize every time I listen to him, I win, every time I choose to look at the menu of advice as a ” a la carte”, it bites me. So here Rick is with 12 coaches on a zoom call and he’s going through this exercise. He has us all put our arms out, palms up, and says “in the right hand we have intentionality, in the left hand we have behavioral, in your perfect world your hands should be clasped but they’re not i.e. your intentionality and your behavior are not in sync. Is this yet another example of practice what you preach? Yes, is it another example of “do your deeds follow your words”, yes, but this one brings way more clarity.
I want my team and our employees to have good/balanced lives, that’s an intention. My team and others are working 14 hours a day, that’s behavioral. We’ve hired over 100 employees to help w/ volume and 2 new team members on my own team, that’s progress to say “currently my hands, and that of the company, are far apart, but they’re getting closer, and that is progress”. Rick then had us write down on our top 3 priorities. Not what they “should be” but what they are. Mine was Kim/Boys, my work, my faith. I get that many folks would not agree with these priorities, but these are my priorities right now. So then I break down further my behavior vs. my intentionality into these 3 priorities, and out comes more clarity as what I’m doing in each category. In some areas the hands are further apart than others. I love having the clarity though of where I need to focus my time and my energy.
I’m fully aware that I’m a broken record on some of these topics but every time I talk about it, I get more clarity. I’m seeing progress, I’m also identifying areas where there isn’t progress and simply making changes vs. beating myself up over it. When I go through these exercises i.e. writing this out, I can identify that progress is being made. If I just looked at every day and what comes at me, I think I’d consider every day a fail. When I can take a step back and think about what I’m doing to move my behavior closer to my intentions, and realize those behavioral changes are propelling me in the direction I want to go, I create more momentum. With more momentum, the decision process to get behavior/intentionality linked-up happens faster i.e. positive change and success.
So as an assignment, you might want to give yourself a gut check as to how far part your intentionality and behavior are from one another when measured against your top 3 priorities, then make tactical changes to get them in alignment. It’s refreshing.