Having confidence is a huge advantage in careers, life, and relationships. It’s the key to attracting the right job, the right people, the right decisions from others, and getting what we want.

Like money, everyone wants more confidence. Some people naturally seem to have it; perhaps they were lucky and had the right kind of parenting. In any case, knowing a few strategies for improving our self-confidence will ensure that we can tap into its power.

Everyone has a baseline of confidence. Some people have unshakable confidence built upon strong foundations; others find their confidence level is a bit shaky when faced with mistakes, criticisms and failures.

Confidence is closely tied with our sense of self-esteem. Self-esteem enables us to experience ourselves not only accurately but gladly. It’s a realistic, appreciative opinion; we are able to be honest about our strengths, weaknesses and everything in between, and still feel good about who we are.

There is a difference between the outer appearance of confidence and deeply felt intrinsic self-worth. True self esteem is steady; it doesn’t lead to complacency or overconfidence, but rather is a strong motivator to work hard.

Studies have shown that self-esteem is universal: it is important not only in Western Cultures, but is related to mental health and happiness in diverse cultures including Asia and the Middle East.

Foundations of Self-Esteem

According to Glenn R. Schiraldi, Ph.D, author of 10 Simple Solutions for Building Self-Esteem, self-esteem is built from three factors: unconditional worth, unconditional love and growth.

1. 1.      Unconditional Worth

   This means that one’s worth isn’t increased or diminished by external factors, but is based on our true value as a human being. This can be confusing to people who have learned they must achieve and acquire in order to be considered worthy.

   Once we believe in our intrinsic worth, we are relieved of the need to judge ourselves and others, or compare and compete on external values and factors. We can choose to value our own innate capacities and see the many ways we contribute to the well-being of ourselves and others.

2. 2.      Unconditional Love

   Abraham Maslow noted that psychological health is not possible without love for the essential core. Even those who have not experienced unconditional love from parents can learn to provide love to themselves and others. Love helps us experience our worth, feel satisfaction, and enjoy growth and life.

3. 3.      Growth

We feel better about ourselves when we are living constructively, learning, making decisions, developing and growing. Growing does not change our core worth, but it helps us experience it with greater satisfaction.

In summary, self-esteem is a sense of satisfaction that comes from recognizing and appreciating our intrinsic worth; it encourages us to choose to love and grow. It’s not based upon comparing and competing. We can enhance and enjoy our sense of self worth through learning, growing, achievements and goals. 

How We Lose Confidence

Young children do not appear to experience self-dislike. As we mature, however, we learn to over-think. We judge, compare, criticize, worry, blame, and obsess about faults. We want what we don’t have, and we forget to appreciate what we do have.

We lose patience with ourselves and others, and don’t accept things as they are. As we lose self-compassion, we also lose our compassion for others. As adults we become highly judgmental, and may even prize judgment as the quality of discernment.

As a result, we become overly critical. We apply a negative eye to ourselves and that erodes our sense of intrinsic value and self worth. Unreasonable negative thoughts intrude into our minds and forming background chatter that drowns out appreciation and enjoyment.

Getting Rid of Negativity

Without doubt, our own critical nature eats away at our confidence more than any outside judgment, mistake or failure. Over-active negative mind chatter can cause us to react defensively in neutral situations.

Many of these habits of thinking are learned and can be unlearned. Forget about blaming parents, teachers, and people who didn’t like us when we were growing up. No matter what happened to us or how we ended up with negative reactions, we can learn to disconnect from harmful automatic thoughts.

We can replace negative thoughts with positive ones that will make us more effective, happier, and self-confident. Ultimately we are responsible for the thoughts we choose. We can’t control many things in life, but we can control our thoughts.

Here are a few of the distortions that show up in negative mind chatter:

We lose confidence when we apply negative thinking to ourselves or other people. No one escapes these intrusive thought patterns. The key is to become aware of them. Once we catch ourselves engaging in automatic distortions, we can re-think, reframe, and revise our thoughts.

For example, we might be thinking, “I can’t possibly get this done in time. I’m too slow in the mornings. My brain doesn’t work that way.”

We can reframe the self-talk like this: “I don’t like having to work in a hurry, especially so early. I’m not sure I can finish, but at least I can start.  Maybe my brain will wake up after a few stabs at it.”

By acknowledging the reality, we avoid catastrophizing and assuming, and we agree to do what is possible by starting.

When we look at what we can do, instead of what’s wrong, we give ourselves a chance to succeed and grow from the experience. When we guard against distortions and negativity, our confidence grows instead of withers. Our minds start to acquire more positive thinking habits. We set ourselves up for success and build self-confidence.

Human nature expects, and demands, that when a person is in need of help that a friend or family member step up and lend a helping hand. A rescuer fills this need because it offers satisfaction for themselves and help to the ones in need. The request for assistance can be financial or emotional support, or some type of physical task that needs to be completed. No matter what is called for, though, a rescuer will allows jump to the rescue of the person in need.

There are numerous downfalls associated with a person that is a natural rescuer. They will, nine out of ten times, sacrifice their own personal finances, well-being, or lifestyle in order to help others. Many people that put others before themselves have to cope with living a simple life that is full of choices made by the people around them.

The second most prominent downfall that can befall a rescuer can be linked to the problem discussed above. Once people realize that a rescuer is present they will take full advantage of it. More often than not a person that helps others will be used to accomplish as many tasks as possible, even simple ones such as running to the store in the middle of the night. No task is too small, or big, to tackle in order for them to fulfill their own inner demands.

Being a rescuer is an emotional need that many people throughout the world can be categorized into. It is a natural response to any situation that may arise pertaining to the wants and needs of friends and family members. It is an emotional state that requires the rescuer to help people in order for them to feel needed, making them fulfill the internal requirements of being important and loved. Even though stepping up and helping people is a natural, commonly automatic, act for a rescuer, it is possible to limit the negative effects associated with the actions. Basically, people that are rescuers need to learn how to say “no”, and to realize that it is necessary to prioritize their lives by putting themselves before others.

Lane Resources Inc.

R. Lynn Lane

Several generations have grown up on the tales of Winnie the Pooh and his friends from the Hundred Acre Wood. Since the loveable Pooh Bear was first introduced to the world in 1924 by writer A.A. Milne, stories of the ragtag gang have captivated the hearts and imaginations of millions.

Rarely does a child—or and adult, for that matter—read or watch a Winnie the Pooh story without coming across a moral lesson. Four of the life lessons that permeate throughout the franchise are:

1. Optimism is better than pessimism.

Contrast the adorable yet morose attitude of Eeyore with the ever-upbeat attitude of Winnie. While Eeyore always focuses intensely on the cloud, Pooh always seems to find the silver lining. Pooh and the others seem to tolerate Eeyore’s pessimism, but it is clear that the better approach to life is the optimistic one.

2. True friends are always loyal, even if it costs.

Winnie and his friends frequently overcome their fears in order to rescue one who is lost or in danger. They are even willing to set aside personal agendas and desires for the sake of the one who is in trouble, such as when Pooh set aside his search for honey in order to rescue Christopher Robin from the dreaded Backson. In so doing, the Hundred Acre Wood residents demonstrate true friendship to us.

3. Expect the best in each other.

Piglet, Winnie’s timid friend, often finds strength in the encouragement he receives from Pooh. Even when the others express doubts about another’s abilities or intentions, Pooh remains positive. Similarly, when we expect the best in someone else, often that person will rise to the occasion. As a bonus, positive expectations can also lead to less stress and fewer interpersonal conflicts.

4. Have an unquenchable hunger for more.

Fans of Winnie know that the one thing that occupies most of Pooh’s time and energy is his never-ending quest for honey. He has an insatiable thirst for the sweet nectar. Likewise, we can have an insatiable desire to grow beyond where we are right now. We can have a healthy hunger to grow personally, professionally, relationally, intellectually, and spiritually.

These and other lessons expressed through the Winnie the Pooh series of books and videos can enrich the life of a young child as well as a seasoned parent. Winnie the Pooh and his friends may reside in a fantasy world, but they teach us valuable lessons for living in the real world.

Lane Resources (c) 2011
Lynn Lane

How to Read People
and Influence Perceptions

Competition for top leadership positions is tough. Intelligence and good social skills are the price of admission, but they’re not enough. A high-potential candidate must master the intricacies of reading people, predicting behaviors and influencing perceptions—advanced communication skills that can be learned.

The effective CEO’s presence and essence have changed tremendously over the last two decades. There’s no hiding behind a title. What propels most executives to the top won’t keep them there for long, unless they can continually improve their people-reading skills and manage perceptions.

If you have talent and skills, you probably know by now that they’re not enough—unless you’re lucky enough to bear the company founder’s last name and are in line for succession.

Today’s effective leaders have more than presence, charisma and charm. They are strategic about managing their communication skills and adroit at reading others’ perceptions and values.

Perceptive leaders craft messages that meet their target audiences’ needs. They understand which information will be filtered out, how messages become distorted and disregarded, and how information is assigned meaning.

While they are savvier than most at reading nonverbal cues, preconceptions about body language may cause them to miss more important signals. Leaders must learn to identify how people’s values become filters for their perceptions.

Social Intelligence

Psychologist Daniel Goleman rocked the world of leadership development with his landmark book, Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace (2000), and his theories on EI’s role in business interactions.

In 2007, he followed up with Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, which carried internal emotional awareness into the realm of external social facility.

In the similarly titled Social Intelligence: The New Science of Success (2009), management consultant Karl Albrecht explores how social intelligence plays out in executive interactions. He suggests SI is “a combination of a basic understanding of people—a kind of strategic awareness—and a set of component skills for interacting successfully with them.”

Albrecht defines social intelligence in relatively simple terms: “the ability to get along well with others and to get them to cooperate with you.” He proposes five distinct dimensions that contribute to social competencies:

1. Situational Awareness: A social radar used to read situations and interpret people’s behaviors in terms of possible intentions, emotional states and proclivity to interact.
2. Presence: A range of verbal and nonverbal patterns, to include one’s appearance, posture, vocal quality and subtle movements—a collection of signals that others process into an evaluative impression.
3. Authenticity: Others’ social radar, whose signals lead them to believe we are honest, open, ethical, trustworthy and well-intentioned—or not.
4. Clarity: Our ability to explain ourselves, illuminate ideas, accurately pass data, and articulate our views and proposed actions—all of which enable others to cooperate with us.
5. Empathy: A shared feeling between two people; a state of connectedness that creates the basis for positive interaction and collaboration.

Each dimension of social intelligence requires competencies well beyond the norm. Leaders cannot fake these qualities.

Situational Awareness
It’s no accident that Albrecht puts situational awareness at the top of his list. High-potential leaders must be able to read emotional contexts in any given situation.

Executives spend most of their waking hours interacting with and influencing others so they can meet any number of business objectives. Most of us believe we’re pretty good at reading people, but we may overestimate our prowess.

Body Language

We assign meaning to gestures, facial expressions and vocal intonations. We believe that people who cross their arms are closed-off and defensive. If a woman puts her hands on her hips, we assume she’s taking a stand and could become aggressive. When a man casts his eyes toward the ceiling, we think he’s considering something.

But such assumptions aren’t necessarily true, and they can distract us from other important cues. Leaders require a deeper understanding of the art and science of reading people to accurately decode body language.

People-Reading

Research shows that people are only 20 percent successful at reading body language. Determining the true meaning of visual, verbal and nonverbal cues requires a more complex analysis of other variables.

Consider the many clues we may miss during critical negotiations or board presentations. Have you ever left a meeting wondering how you fared? If so, you likely focused intensely on your presentation and failed to observe and decode others’ communication signals.

You cannot interpret signals if you’re not seeing them. An inner focus prevents you from observing, hearing, filtering, asking questions and interpreting signs. You’re simply not taking advantage of all observable, available data.

Flight Plan for Your Career

Airline pilots are astute observers in the cockpit. They see and read a variety of instruments and data within the context of their situation. They’re always aware of what is happening and what could happen long before decision time arrives.

Their observations force them to create a proactive management plan. They watch, anticipate and decode everything to optimize outcomes.

As a professional, you should follow suit. Observe, decode, assign meanings and formulate possible responses to what you see and sense.

The Invisible Iceberg

The stimuli we hear and see are merely the tip of a complex psychological iceberg. We know, with only one glance, when someone is upset. Many of us can walk into a meeting, instantly sense the tone and appropriately adjust our demeanor.

Why, then, can two people observe the same circumstances and draw completely different conclusions?

The brain filters incoming observations before it allows us to reach a conclusion. Common internal variables may alter this process:

• Biases
• Flawed assumptions
• Memories
• Urgencies
• Agendas
• Fears
• Paranoia

“Truly advanced people-readers take this into consideration and strive to objectify their conclusions by factoring in the filters of their own world view,” writes communication consultant Harrison Monarth in Executive Presence: The Art of Commanding Respect Like a CEO (McGraw-Hill, 2009).

The Bias Trap

We have a tendency to apply our own values and choices to others. But smart executives know that engineers view the world one way, while salespeople see things in another light.

Different departments can hold different values. Failure to recognize this can cause gridlocks, delays and derailed goals. Evolved individuals realize the potential impact when gauging a situation and assessing individuals’ readiness to buy into a plan.

Optimizing Outcomes

When mastering the art of people-reading, your ultimate goal is optimizing outcomes, not judging others.

In sales, this means understanding what prospects really need, their possible objections and tailoring your presentation accordingly. With your boss, it means avoiding potential hot buttons and predicting standards of successful performance. Selective timing and customized verbal and nonverbal messages are critical.

Each step requires the ability to read moods, sense levels of stress or distraction, and gauge openness and risk levels. Learn to say and do the right things, at the right time, with the right people.

The more you observe about others, while filtering out your internal biases, the more effective and empowered you’ll become at reading people and situations accurately.

The Influence of Context

Much of social dumbness comes from not paying attention to available clues. We fail to see them when we’re focused on crafting our best message and delivering it to successfully persuade others to our point of view.

All human interaction takes place in a context or a setting. Context creates meaning, and meaning shapes people’s behavior. Situational awareness and people-reading depend on recognizing contexts and the meanings they create.

Each of us inherently knows this, yet many of us don’t appreciate the extent to which context influences everything.

3 Context Dynamics to Observe

Watch for the following dimensions in any given situation:

1. The Proxemic Context: This refers to the dynamics of the physical space in which people are interacting, the structures and positions within that space, and the way people’s behaviors are influenced by it.The definition of proxemic includes these three ideas:

a. The relative degree of physical proximity tolerated by an animal species or cultural group
b. The use of space as an aspect of culture
c. The study of differences in distance, contact, posture and the like in communication between two people

1. The Behavioral Context: The patterns of action, emotions, motivation and intention that show up in human interactions.

1. 3. The Semantic Context: The patterns of language used in the discourse, which signal—overtly and covertly—the nature of the relationships, differences in status and social class, governing social codes, and the degree of understanding created (or prevented) by language habits.

Each of these dynamics is complex and beyond the scope of this article; however, their basic definitions should alert you that context is multilayered. That said, each of us can work on becoming better observers of context and learning to understand situations in more effective ways.

4 Steps for Better People-Reading Skills

The following steps can help you improve your ability to observe and read people and situations. Practice at least one over the next seven days, and notice any changes in the way you perceive and experience others. You will likely be more present, and your experiences will become richer.

1. Start using your senses instead of going through the day on autopilot. Sit in an airport, a restaurant or a mall and watch people. Try to figure out their relationships in couples or groups. Notice their moods, clothing and the ways they position themselves with others.
2. Observe the spaces in which you find yourself. Who sits where in meetings? How are offices or work spaces laid out? How does this communicate status or authority?
3. Listen for the various ways people use language to signal their social status and authority. How do people use slang, figures of speech, specialized vocabularies and clichés?
4. Observe the nonverbal signals people use to define and reinforce their relationships. How does the boss convey approachability? How do others do this?

The more you consciously use your senses and observe people, the more situational awareness you will gain. After a while, you’ll pick up on things you never before noticed. You’ll begin to incorporate new sensitivity into your communications and most certainly raise your level of executive presence.

What are you grateful for today?

Thank you for being part of this great journey in my life!

Hello and welcome. I was motivated to write this article and hope it will help you see where we are today and what the future is heading towards in our current economical situation. First let me say, I am not an economics expert and any information I share is my opinion and you should do your own research for yourself!

Americans and the World are being mislead and are kept in the dark about critical information that our leaders should be sharing. One huge lie or misconception is that we are free from the recession. Some of our leaders and the biased media have been trying to sell us on this for months now. For example, according to some the recession was over in June 2009. But just look around, thousands of families are still looking for work and many are without homes.

The government and our leaders are showing us one hand while keeping the other hidden behind their backs. They don’t want us to see the real deal. One other sad thought is that we have some people that don’t care and some who invite this type of a meltdown of the American economic landscape. The Fed will continue to print money and the value of the dollar will continue to go down if we stay on this path.

What does that mean to you and me? When the dollar is devalued it will take more dollars to buy gas, groceries, clothes and all the things we need and use daily. The dollar is going down and the Fed continues to drive it lower as they print more and more money.

One day the crap will hit the fan and you and I will have to pay the price if things don’t change.

So…what can we do?

1. Invest in Gold or Silver.

Don’t go into debt to buy gold or silver, invest with a small amount of cash that you can invest and let it grow. Could it go down? It could but it doesn’t look like it for a long while. I remember when gold was a few hundred dollars an oz. now it’s heading into the thousands and climbing. I purchased silver a year ago at $19.00 an oz. and purchased some more yesterday and paid $30.78 pretty good growth in one year. Plus when the dollar is worthless you’ll have some currency that you can use. Just an idea.

2. Start your own business.

Find a business that you will enjoy and start doing it today. It will be tough at times but if you do what you enjoy you will tend to stay with it. I have been working for myself since I was about 5 years old. Even though the value of the dollar is way down there is still plenty of them to go around. You could work for gold or silver. It will be the small business that saves this economy not the government.

3. Learn about money and how the government works.

Here is one of the most misleading lies that government has spread to many in the American culture. The American Government Will Take Care Of You! That is a load of crap. The government cannot create jobs without creating more taxes. When a business is taxed more the cost of goods and services go up to cover the extra taxes and with a weakened dollar the price is even more substantial.  

4. Take control.

Now is the time to take control of your life and your future. Take a moment to think about the future of America and your kids and grandchildren. Do I think we will have a complete meltdown? We are headed that way, but I’m sure that after the awakening of the 2010 midterm elections we may slowly start to pull our way out. America may never be as it was only a few years ago. With time and great leadership we could become better!

Stay vigilant and stay prepared!

R. Lynn Lane

Lane Resources Inc.    (c) 2010 www.warriorofsuccess.com                                         

Offer for Today!   Brian Tracy’s —> Flight Plan!  Let me know what you think!

“To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”  —Baruch Spinoza

Most of us have a poor sense of our talents and strengths. Throughout our education and careers, there is a lot of attention paid to our weaknesses. We are acutely aware of our faults and deficits, our so-called “opportunities for development.”

 Parents, teachers and managers are all experts in spotting deficits. In fact, most parents, teachers and managers consider it their responsibility to point out flaws and try to help us correct them.

 We have become experts in our own weaknesses and spend our lives trying to repair our flaws, while our strengths lie dormant and neglected. The research, however, is clear: we grow and develop by putting emphasis on our strengths, rather than trying to correct our deficits.

Most people don’t concern themselves with identifying their talents and strengths. Instead, they choose to study their weaknesses. A Gallup poll investigated this phenomenon by asking Americans, French, British, Canadian, Japanese and Chinese people of all ages and backgrounds the question: “Which do you think will help you improve the most: knowing your strengths or knowing your weaknesses?”

Have you ever noticed how some folks will argue their weaknesses? You can’t pay them a compliment at all.

Action Plan….

Focus on the strong talents you have.

Learn to take a compliment.

Everyone’s talking about ways to find opportunity amid economic chaos. Yet there’s something right under our noses that’s being overlooked: Times of crisis present unprecedented opportunities to stretch and develop real leadership capabilities.

What’s needed, specifically?

Hire more executive coaches, step up sessions, and implement more training and development programs.

In tough times, you cannot rely on talent and luck. Even when you have a talented team at the top, people need help in stretching their capabilities to meet the economy’s overwhelming demands. Your leaders can’t go it alone. You can’t, either.

Scientific research on great performance has persuasively shown that key abilities are developed. They don’t occur naturally. In fact, there may be no such thing as natural talent. It’s certainly not something you want to rely upon to help solve current problems.

Great leaders aren’t born; they’re made—and the research to support this is overwhelming. What we previously thought of as innate can often be taught. Leadership capabilities are acquired through constructive practice and developmental opportunities, and today’s business volatility calls for both.

“The key to this development is pushing people—or people pushing themselves—just beyond their current abilities, forcing them to do things that they can’t quite do,” according to Fortune Senior  Editor Geoff Colvin, author of Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers From Everybody Else (Portfolio, 2008).

Crisis or Opportunity?

The upside of a financial crisis and recession is that they offer all of us the opportunity to stretch our skills in our current jobs—and I mean everyone. That means you. But you already know you’re being stretched, don’t you? You feel it. The question is, how are you going to welcome your own particular crises and use them to benefit your personal and professional development?

According to Colvin, managers often redirect people’s careers based on slender evidence that they have talent (or lack thereof). Unfortunately, we don’t give ourselves the same opportunity. We’ll try something new, and if it doesn’t come naturally or we don’t immediately excel, we conclude we have no talent for it.

We abandon pursuit. We never give ourselves the chance to practice and make progress. We don’t like the feeling of discomfort that comes from doing something poorly, so we don’t hang in there. Scientific evidence, however, is beginning to show that our definition of talent is wrong. In fact, “talent” may not mean anything at all.

In studies of accomplished individuals, researchers have found few signs of precocious achievement before their subjects began intensive training. Similar findings have turned up in studies of musicians, tennis players, artists, swimmers, mathematicians and chess players.

Is Talent Irrelevant?

Such findings do not prove that talent doesn’t exist, but they do suggest it may be irrelevant.

The concept of talent is especially troublesome in business. We label people and then assign expectations, some of which are unrealistic. When people are fast-tracked or deemed executive material, we assume they have special gifts. Worse, we fail to adequately emphasize the importance of  continuous training and coaching. Instead, we rely on their “natural gifts.”

Identifying these gifts has been extremely elusive. In fact, some business giants actually gave little early indication that they would become great.

Jack Welch, named by Fortune as the 20th century’s manager of the century, showed no particular passion for business, even into his mid-20s.

Steve Ballmer and Jeffrey Immelt were average employees at Procter & Gamble in the 1970s, with little evidence they would go on to become CEOs of Microsoft and GE before age 50.

In this age of genomic research, there should no longer be any question as to what is—and isn’t—innate. If a talent is innate, scientists should be able to identify the gene for it, and no progress has been made on this front.

Talent or Hard Work?

We can safely draw the conclusion that there’s plenty of opportunity for everyone. Many high-performing executives will tell you they don’t rely on their innate talents as much as their hard-earned skills. 

CEOs like A.G. Lafley of P&G and GE’s Immelt have said that being forced to manage through crises early in their careers enhanced their abilities in ways that were critical to becoming CEOs. They wouldn’t have achieved their status without surviving the storms that gave them hands-on practice.

Certain practices can make our experiences especially productive:

• Coaching helps.
• Receiving feedback allows us to fine-tune our skills.
• Working in a safe learning environment is essential.

Workplaces encourage practice and development, and mistakes should be viewed as learning opportunities. You also need to clearly define and develop a plan for achieving the abilities you wish to hone, including a measurable time frame. This will turbo-charge your performance and improve your chances of success.

10,000 Hours or 10 Years

Malcolm Gladwell makes the case for 10,000 hours of practice to attain expertise in his book Outliers (Little, Brown & Co., 2008):

“The 10,000-hours rule says that if you look at any kind of cognitively complex field, from playing chess to being a neurosurgeon, we see this incredibly consistent pattern that you cannot be good at that unless you practice for 10,000 hours, which is roughly 10 years, if you think about four hours a day.”

Almost all child prodigies in music, sports, chess and the arts seem to put in 10,000 hours before they attain expertise and produce significant results.

The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, edited by Anders Ericsson, Charness and Feltovich, et al, compiles scientific studies to prove the point in a wide variety of fields. The trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers “whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming” are nearly always made, not born.

Many of us have already put in more than a decade of doing what we do. The question is whether we’re practicing the right things, in the right way. Are we designing deliberate practice that actually develops the specific skills we need to make progress toward specific results? Or, to use a golf analogy, are you going to the driving range and hitting a bucket of balls the wrong way, for hours at a time?

What Is Deliberate Practice?

Anders Ericsson and his scientific colleagues emphasize the importance of deliberate practice, which isn’t what most of us think of when applying the term to sports or music education. In fact, our habitual use of the term in these domains may prevent us from applying it correctly to the business realm.

Deliberate practice is characterized by several elements:

• It is an activity designed specifically to improve performance, often with the help of a teacher, coach or expert.
• It can be repeated frequently.
• Feedback on results is continuously available.
• It’s highly demanding mentally.
• It isn’t much fun and entails hard work.

If you think you’ve outgrown the need for a teacher or coach, it’s time to challenge this assumption. A business coach can see things a manager cannot and is trained to deliver feedback in a way that’s inaccessible to most managers.

Without a clear, unbiased view of your performance, you cannot choose the best practice activities.  Most of us lack the knowledge we need to design our own practice programs, and we cannot realistically provide objective observations and feedback to ourselves. As stunt people like to say, “don’t try this at home.” Hire a coach who can properly stretch you beyond your current abilities and help you move out of your comfort zones. Otherwise, human nature dictates that you’re likely to spend your time practicing what you already know how to do.

According to Noel Tichy, PhD, a professor of organizational behavior and human resources management at the University of Michigan School of Business, our progress depends on leaving our comfort zone to enter the learning zone, where skills and abilities are just out of reach. We must force ourselves to stay in the latter, even as we make changes.

Why We Avoid Hard Work

Deliberate practice is, above all else, an effort to focus and concentrate. Recognizing unsatisfactory elements of performance is difficult and uncomfortable. When you try your hardest to perform better, you place enormous strain on your mental abilities.

Deliberate practice, in fact, can be viewed as an antonym to fun. Instead of doing something at which we excel, we intentionally work on areas where we have deficits—over and over again. After each repetition, a coach can tell us exactly where to focus so we can repeat these skills yet again.

Obviously, if the activities that require practice were easy and fun, everyone would do them. But in reality, most people won’t practice or persist long enough to improve. This is good news if you’re willing to do what most people won’t. It’s the reason you’re more likely to keep your job and thrive in this recession.

What About Passion?

Talent is not what determines success at developing high-level capacities. Rather, those who care the most will rise to the top. Exceptional performance depends on what we decide to do with our lives and the passion that drives us.

One of the most purchased articles from the Harvard Business Review is a 1968 piece on motivation that explains our three main drives:

1. Achievement
2. Power
3. A sense of community and desire to help others

No matter your driving force, you have to care deeply enough to work hard to become exceptional.

Nothing can make you endure the pain and sacrifice of deliberate practice for decades unless you’re  carried by an intrinsic compulsion to do so.

But allowing people to follow their intrinsic drives and work on projects of their own choosing is not something most organizations tolerate. In their fervent application of solely extrinsic motivations, organizations may actually prevent people from developing their passionate abilities.

Talent Is Never Enough

In Talent Is Never Enough: Discover the Choices That Will Take You Beyond Your Talent, (Thomas Nelson, 2007), leadership expert John C. Maxwell suggests talent is “often overrated and frequently misunderstood.” He  advises readers to build their strengths to become a “talent-plus person,” defined by the following tenets:

• Belief lifts your talent.
• Initiative activates your talent.
• Focus directs your talent.
• Preparation positions your talent.
• Practice sharpens your talent.
• Perseverance sustains your talent.
• Character protects your talent.

Even if you hold onto the notion that you’ll always survive because of your innate talent, you must still prepare, practice and persist. The scientific research is in, and it’s conclusive. Hard work—not talent—contributes to high performance.

Two mentors or one? Choosing a mentor or success coach is not like ordering coffee with two sugars. One mentor at a time is the perfect way to get more things done.

As you have heard before…too many cooks spoil the soup. They all have different ways of cooking and different ways of getting things done. Mentors are no different.

How many mentors do you have? I put this question to Kevin Hogan last year and he said, “one mentor at a time” is all people need. Kevin went on to explain that if you played baseball you wouldn’t want 3 of the best coaches trying to coach you. Reason being…they all coach in a different way.

I think of Kevin Hogan as my mentor/coach for the past few years now. I put him right up there with Zig Ziglar and Brian Tracy and people that know me will tell you that is saying so much coming from me.

I can relate to what Kevin Hogan was saying. I teach Kenpo Karate and a blend of other martial arts but, I teach my way. I know Instructors that teach the same style and same techniques, but they teach them differently. I see it all the time.

Kevin Hogan’s E-zine “Coffee With Kevin” was on video last week and he addressed the same question with the same answer. (Kevin is consistent.)

I think you should pick your coach/mentor the same way you should pick your martial arts Instructor. Here we go…..

1. Don’t just go for the hype. I had a karate teacher once that said, “ I can kill you 6 times before you hit the ground.” I didn’t study with him very long…his business went under too.

2. Find the people that have a track record that can deliver.

3. Find the mentor or coach that will make you work. You have to put in the work. I coach a group of people that ask me to push them hard every week…that is what they signed on for.

4. Find a coach that cares about people.

Thanks!

R. Lynn Lane