Happy Sunday Everyone:
This will likely go down as one of the stranger Sunday Thoughts for a variety of reasons. I always do my best to stay away from politics, religion, and controversial characters. Some might say “take a stand”, but for me it’s not the point of these. I need to remind myself of why I do this at times, my point, my point of these is to help me be more purposeful in observing things around me, learning from it (or them), and sharing it with others (originally my coaching students and now a broader audience). I wish I could push this exercise on to others so you could see how much more impactful it is to learn or take things in. Goals alone, by writing them down, have a 42% greater chance of actually happening.
Fun/Strange Fact: I was a competition break dancer in 4th grade (stage name “Dr. Purple”). To this day, I can guarantee you that there is no 250 lb. lender in this country that can break dance like me. If anyone would like to challenge me, challenge accepted. Going back 35 years ago, I learned this skill by observing others, no one more so than Michael Jackson. So last night as Kim and I are channel surfing, I came across “this is it” which is a documentary on Michael Jackson’s preparation for the tour he was going to embark on before his death. Kim said “skip it”, I said “let’s just watch it for a few minutes and see”, 2 hours later we were both in aww. For the sake of this message, I’d like to skip over all other components of Michael Jackson’s life with the exception for his talent as a musician/entertainer.
The purpose of this Sunday Thoughts for me is about understanding what goes into mastering your trade. I’m literally going to make this a coaching assignment for my students to watch this documentary. You can’t understand it until you see it, and you can’t really grasp what I’m talking about until you witness it. What he understands about his music, his moves, and everything else that goes into his performances is mind boggling. Here are my own take aways for myself to think about in my own trade:
* No matter what your job is; lender, realtor, funder, underwriter, CEO, CFO, processor, assistant, you’re either an amateur or a professional. I like to put things into buckets, asset or liability, shrinking or growing, now I have “is this a pro effort or an amateur effort”.
* As a leader, when you understand the details and people know you understand the details, the quality of everyone else’s work sky rockets. It’s not just about accountability, but also respect. When people respect you they will hold themselves to be more accountable for their individual performance and that of those around them.
* Having a vision matters. You might say “duh” but how many of you honestly spend more than 1 hour a year when you’re motivated to do business planning actually thinking about your vision? Everything he did in his performance was based on his vision, than working backwards to produce it.
* Hang around a bunch of pro’s. Seek out with intention who are the masters of the domain where we are seeking guidance and understanding. Are people around you qualified to give you the advice they’re giving? So many times they’re not. As an example, was on a coaching call this week and we were talking about training our people, I said “I don’t consider myself an expert on training, what coach is the expert on training and let’s go get a 30 minute call scheduled with that person”. Who is the best processor, who is the best underwriter, who is the best doc drawer….get feedback from people who deserve to give it.
* Lead with kindness and transparency. I wasn’t expecting this at all but MJ was kind to his support crew. When someone screwed up he explained “this is what I’m looking for, this is how you do it, now let’s do it again, and we’re all here for you”. Every opportunity we have to critique and how we handle it will end in helping build someone’s confidence or work toward taking it down.
This was far from what I was expecting when I turned the show on last night but I’m really glad I watched it and would highly recommend you give it a look, if for no other reason than to watch him dance. (I found it on Amazon).
Have a great rest of your Sunday.