performance

“It’s not fair”

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The Olympics are only a few days away. For some this will induce a sigh of despair, for others a sense of excitement. For the many, many competitors this is their moment to compete on the world’s biggest stage and potentially to shine.  And for those that perform above and beyond anyone else, the ultimate prize, the medal, the media spotlight and the adulation of the watching crowds.

People like to see people win at sport.

People hate to see people win in life.

When we see a sportsman or woman stand on the podium, taking the ultimate prize, we talk about the hours of commitment, the sacrifices, the hard work and the talent. Yet when we see someone doing well in life, we talk about the fact that they must have got there by screwing others, the injustice, the fact that they are a “fat cat”.

I know life isn’t a level playing field. But neither is sport.

I can’t win the 100 meters final at the Olympics, I’m not going to score the winning goal in the FA cup final, and I’m not even going to get around the park in as quick a time as many. Does that make it unfair?

Is it unfair that Usain Bolt can run faster than me and therefore gets a goal medal and millions of dollars worth of endorsements?

Is it unfair that Didier Drogba scored in the final of both the FA Cup and the Champions League and secured a big money move to a club in China?

Is it unfair that you can run around the park quicker than me and therefore get to the pub first?

Next time you’re thinking about the guy with a bigger house, the girl who got the promotion ahead of you, or reading the reports about somebody else’s bonus, remember this: it isn’t unfair, they’re just doing better than you.

Work hard, do your best, fulfil your potential and your talent and stop looking on with envy at others. Whatever rewards that brings, if you’ve done your best that is all that matters. Respect the success of others, be gracious and, for the love of God, stop bleating on.

Act your age

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Now with an update below.

I’m no extrovert…..as people who know me will tell you. I can stand up at a conference and speak, I can hold the attention of a board room, I can even manage to make people laugh…..now and again. But my preference is for conversations in smaller groups. It is just the way that I am.

My son is very like me in this respect. Or so I thought.

At the beginning of the year he got his grades and his drama mark was….well it was ok. Not bad, not good, just pretty average. James is academically strong, he is bright. He is also a good sportsman, not the best, but a good team player and a member of the cricket and rugby squads. He isn’t an actor. Or so I thought.

On the back of his grades, he announced that he was going to join the drama club. He wasn’t happy and he wanted to improve his grade. The only person more shocked than us was his drama teacher. Because he isn’t like that. Or so I thought.

Last night, we sat and watched the end of year performance. It was a Little Red Riding Hood mash-up with comedy, timing, one liners, interplay and significant dialogue. And there was James playing one of the major roles. Maybe not the star this time, but he was on and off stage throughout and with many, many lines.

And he rocked.

He was confident, his timing was impeccable, he was humorous and his delivery was word perfect. This was not my son.

But of course it was, and I was wrong.

Independently he had assessed his strengths and weaknesses, he had the courage to identify where he needed to develop and he had the balls to go and do it. He didn’t say, “its not me” he didn’t say “I’m not an actor”, he didn’t say “I’m not like that”.

He said, “I’m going to show you that I can do anything I set my mind to”.

He didn’t say, “That is just the way that I am”.

Now there’s a thing.

We’re adults, we know everything. They’re kids, they know nothing. Or so I thought.

What if we all set about tackling one thing that we know we’re just not that good at?

Update: So, he recently auditioned and has just landed the role of Bugsy in the full production of Bugsy Malone. I’m proud, but more than that I’m amazed at how much you can achieve when you put your mind to it. Well done that man, we can all learn from children.

Seeing things differently

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For those of us that work in HR, being kept in the dark is nothing new. Only last week, in Hamburg, I really was in the dark……for the best part of a day.  When I look at a meeting agenda and it includes the phrase, “experiential session” that is normally sufficient to get me reaching for the Blackberry and the “urgent” email that requires my immediate attention for, well about as along as the session is going to last. But on this occasion, there was no escape.

The experience was created by Dialogue in the Dark, a social enterprise which brings together the sighted and the visually impaired and essentially turns the tables. For several hours, you are immersed in darkness and complete tasks and everyday routines with the guidance of visually impaired coaches. As they say of themselves, “Blind people are the “sighted” ones in this environment and can demonstrate their capabilities better than their sighted colleagues” and I can tell you, in my case that was absolutely the truth!

As I say, I’m not always the keenest on interventions like this, to quote someone far cleverer than I, “team building is for suckers” but as it goes, this experience was really something out of the ordinary and after a weekend of reflection, here are the things that I’m still mulling over.

Listening is hard when there is so much “noise” – So we all say we know the value of listening rather than talking (ok….well apart from you at the back, but if you see me after class we can pick that up one on one).  But when you really NEED to listen, you become aware of how much noise there is and most of it is coming from humans. We talk too much, we make too many statements, we don’t ask enough and we don’t really listen.

Trusting people is tough – This isn’t about trusting people in business, this is about trusting people with your wellbeing. We didn’t get to see or meet the coaches before we were working with them (as a visually impaired person wouldn’t get to see you or I before we offer to help them). They could have led me into walls, tripped me up or got me to pour boiling hot water over myself (yes, we made coffee in the dark) from an initial position of wanting to just do it all myself, I had to let go.

Touching reassures – When you are in the dark, when you can’t see an inch in front of you, when you don’t know which way to turn or where to go, feeling a gentle hand on your arm means the world. Am I being metaphorical? Yes and no. Touching is not wrong, just be careful.

We’re not hitting home – Or alternatively, we send too many half packets of data and rely on the receiver to decode. At one point, one of my fellow delegates informed me that there was a step ahead. As I took an exaggerated comic step up, I learned to my expense that it was a step down….thankfully my face broke the fall. He was trying to help, the information was sent with the right intention, just not the right content.

You can nudge as well as stride – In the collaborative tasks there were two types of leaders, the striders and the nudgers. The thing about striders is that they assume you’ll follow and when they realise you aren’t, they are too far ahead to make amends. Nudgers may seem to lack the dynamism, but they bring everyone home together.

Did I really get all of that out of one day? Well I guess with these things, you always have the lingering thoughts, they just sometimes need to be brought to the fore.  Dialogue in the Dark was really different, it was really valuable and perhaps most exultingly they are working withschools and children as well as adults. It doesn’t exist in the UK at the moment, lets hope someone is farsighted enough to change that soon.

*I apologise unreservedly for that last line…..

Disappointment and performance

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As a proud Welshman, I was hooked to the television on Saturday morning to watch the Welsh rugby team play France in the semi final of the Rugby World Cup. The Welsh were favourites after a series of strong performances in earlier games and it seemed that it was almost a matter of time until I was watching them in the final for the first time.

But with less than 20 minutes gone, their captain was controversially sent off and reduced to 14 men for over an hour, the effort was too much and they lost by a single point. Unsurprisingly, the post match analysis and the media focus was all on the sending off, the rights and the wrongs, the ins and the outs. In the words of the Coach Warren Gatland,

 “the destiny of having the opportunity was taken away from us”

In business I have seen so many people who feel the same way. Passed over for a promotion, working for someone who they don’t respect, not paid the amount they think they are worth, on the project that is going to the wall because it is being led by “that idiot”.

And that is the thing, it is always someone else’s fault. And often the one at fault is the guy in charge.

I’m not going to say that the world is without injustice. Sometimes bad things happen. But my point is that obsessing on these things just isn’t healthy. It doesn’t make you a better person, it doesn’t improve your performance it ultimately will not bring you success.

There are certain factors that you can control in your life, in your work, and there are others that you can’t. Focussing on and trying to control the things that are out of reach of your influence is a sure-fire way for a life of resentment and frustration.

The Welsh players can’t go back and change the decision that was made. But they can prepare for the third place play off and show the world why they are the team that everyone would wish to be in the final. And then they can go on to the Six Nations on a high and with a chance to show the world once again their abilities.  They need to accept that they didn’t lose because a player was sent off, they lost because they scored less points than the other team.

Likewise, you can’t go back and get that promotion, change your manager, increase your own pay or run that project. But you can focus on the next opportunity, the next chance to shine and you can prepare yourself to make the most of it.

Disappointment is natural, we all want to do well. But most of the time it is your fault when things go wrong. Accept that, work out what you’d differently and focus on improvement. It takes a bigger person to do and sure it will hurt at times, but I guarantee it will be ten times more effective than focusing on past failures and looking for someone to blame.