Happy Sunday Everyone:
I have a coaching student right now who has been struggling to do the work. Personally, I like her a lot, and know she has the ability to be great but she’s been a bit of a mess, she knows this. Homework comes in late, homework comes in sloppy, incomplete etc. Truth is, as a coach, its defeating when someone doesn’t do the HW, I look at it as a sign someone isn’t serious about being coached, or I’m not doing my job, or a combination of both. Other part of being a coach is understanding what motivates individual people. Some people are carrot, some people are stick, some people are pressure, some praise, some competition. On the last call, I told the other two guys on the call that I was going to fine them if she didn’t do her HW and turn it in on time. Keep in mind, these guys have been doing the work, and doing the HW well. They looked at me a little stunned but said “o.k.” What happened? HW comes in perfect, on time, and she starts off the call talking about these guys calling her the day before, making sure everything was fine, and how great she felt about it. Reality is the fine goes to charity, and these guys gave away collectively 45K last year, the fine is not the point. The point is when something isn’t working, we need to look within and change our mindset, and most importantly, help others change theirs. For her, and I believe most of us, the fear of letting someone else down and getting in trouble for it, was greater than whatever it was previously causing her not to do the work. I fear people’s lives being negatively affected because of my actions or lack thereof. When I’m being selfish, lazy, or both, I might not want to make the calls, might not want to do the work, and there are times when I do just that, but when I change my head and say “less leads equals less jobs”, I make the calls, I work harder. I realize now, it’s one of the reasons I love having a team, and coaching, I’m a better version of myself with there is pressure to deliver for others. Some people are just built to be lone wolves, sometimes I wish I was, but I’m not. I was lying in bed yesterday morning thinking about this and I thought of a formula that I can constantly go back to for stuff like this, mindset+tactics+accountability= massive results. Any of the two together will yield some results, but all three together seem to me to guarantee huge results. Understanding why we do what we’re doing, having tactics around the implementation of the why, and then having people hold us accountable to execute accordingly is a very simple model for success. I believe the most important part though is digging deep into the why, that’s where the purpose of it all starts. When we get the why down we’re much more interested in the tactics to deliver, and much more open to be held accountable for the execution of it all. Hope that makes sense.
I’ll also use this Sunday Thoughts to let those 3 students know that this fine will be in place the whole semester:)