Written by I go to every one of my daughter’s soccer games. She’s the smallest one on her team, and over the past four years she’s earned her way up to being around the bottom of the top third of players. Given her size and age is an excellent achievement. I always encourage her (I’ve made sure she actually likes me cheering her on, never know how that’s really going to go unless you ask) and I explain strategy to her. She’s six and a half, and being my daughter, she’s coming to understand what this strategy stuff is. It’s something we enjoy together.
At the last game of the season, with only 15 minutes left, and her and her team were exhausted as it was a scorching day and they only had 2 substitute players. The other team had, literally, a tent to block the sun and about ten substitutes (4 kids + goalie at a time are on the field).
She was tired, moving slowly, like the rest of her team, but then something clicked. All of a sudden, she was everywhere. She took the ball off players, was shooting for the goal, she was intercepting passes, even parents from the other team (it was her old team from last year) were cheering her on. It was unbelievable, and unfortunately the rest of her team wasn’t there to support her, but she became a one girl army for those 15 final minutes. I would have thought someone was exaggerating if I hadn’t been there to witness it myself.
When I asked her what happened (after I’d let my super enthusiastic Daddy Pride calm down), she told me that all of a sudden, all the stuff we’d been talking about made a different kind of sense. And most importantly, she noticed that the girl coming towards her was just like she and I practiced. So she took the ball off her, just like we’d practiced, and then BOOM she was off.
This got me thinking about driving excellence in teams and in particular, about a friend of mine nicknamed Mo…
by http://www.sxc.hu/profile/svilen001
Years ago I was at a company Christmas party. I was new to the company and hired into a leadership position. I noticed that there was one guy, who seemed rather bright, who was drunk. People were ignoring him or making fun of him when he turned away, but when they looked at him they encouraged him in that way that I suppose if you’re drunk you think they are laughing with you but if you aren’t drunk you can see it is laughing at you. I had a couple of people come up to me and apologize to me for having arranged things such that I was sitting opposite him.
I’ll speed things up by saying that I decided to take a different approach than those around me, and his performance went from being “we need to fire this guy” to “this guy is on fire!” in the span of a couple of months. He had his click moment as well.
Mentoring people, hiring the ‘right’ people is all about different layers of strategy, some luck, and figuring out how you can help people motivate and change themselves. You can’t change someone, not really, you can help them change themselves because otherwise as soon as you step away, the wheels will come off. Maybe not at first, but when they do, the person themselves won’t know how to put themselves back together again unless they did it in the first place.
One of the things that I found crucial in opportunities like Mo’s, and that I witness in moments like that of my daughter, is that the top players aren’t there. There is no one’s shadow in which the person can hide, and it also means that there isn’t anyone who is trying, consciously or not, to stay the king of the hill. This allows other people to rise up and take themselves down a path they weren’t willing or able to go down before. It’s a very challenging thing to do, to invest in people to that point, to create a team environment that doesn’t necessarily have Super Heroes so that you’ve stacked the deck in your favour.
All too often I see project bids by consulting companies (I’ve participated in a lot of them) stack the deck to win the business and then not think about the people they are actually sticking on the team to deliver it. The classic “That’s a delivery problem, we’ve solved the sales problem, we got the business.” I shake my head even just writing this. The team’s that usually get put forward in those situations are put through such stress that you might think it was a growth opportunity, but it isn’t. Growth isn’t about putting a gun to someone’s head and telling them they have five seconds to do something that is nearly impossible and then patting them on the back when they do it. You know why? Because you haven’t taught them anything about helping others, never mind that 4 out of 5 will fail in that situation and you won’t realize that you are creating conditions for failure.
What my daughter’s soccer experience showed me is that there are plenty of moments in one’s professional and personal life, where you will see an unexpected return on a long term investment you are making. It takes a lot of skill and energy to invest in the growth of people, but you won’t know when they have built up enough energy in their rocket boosters to be able to pull on what looks like a miracle. The best part of it will be seeing their face as they realize that they are doing it.
I must thank Mr. Driss for his mentoring; I went from shadowing to shining. I got that boost that changed my attitude and performance. I have my self-mentored some people lately. I have been able to change their entire carriers. It is this energy, that people have within but that require little sparkle to boost forever, these people will do the same will give their hands to others. It is little move, little investment, that has great return on the company but also on our society. To have that flair, to be able to sense people with potential, to be able to take moment for others is so rare, this is why true leadership is uncommon. Mr. Driss is model co-worker and model father as well