Footprints on the Mountainside

In every organization, we have the odd success story of a person who rose through the ranks like a comet. As a trainer, the most popular question we get asked is how people can be made to perform at full potential.

Unfortunately, there is no answer that can be an instant solution - do this, and every person in your organization will be a genius. It just doesn’t exist.

So what is it that these stars have that others don’t?

For one, they have passion. When they find something they want, they go for it. When they find something they don’t like, they give everything in them to change it. Is it any wonder that they are on the pulse of whatever it is that they handle? They either are in love with it, or have created it, or know it in and out in their efforts to cause a change.

Another thing these people have is self-driven ambition. Being better than the next employee is irrelevant. What they are really competing with is their vision of how they could be at full potential.

How can this be brought into training? A simple answer would be - “It can’t”. However, that is not true either. People change. I believe that this is one shift that could at the most be inspired by someone, but the urge to walk the road is from the person walking it. It is not even a decision that a person can make, but a need inside. All the training in the world can only create some dream of this. Whether the dream fuels action when the person is on his own is what separates the stars from the masses.

Where could this journey begin? Right here. Right now. There is no rocket science to it. All it takes is being aware of yourself. Being aware of where you excel, what could be better, asking for feedback and absorbing it.

The most difficult thing in this journey is probably recognizing failure. Most corporate employees today have an inherent phobia of failure. When a situation doesn’t work as expected, a blame game follows. The brief was inadequate, time fell short, so-and-so goofed up, we didn’t have enough people…. and so on. Yet, there are also stories filled with pride about old successes where the brief called for guesswork and tarot cards, the project was due “yesterday”, everything that could go wrong went wrong, resources were short…… but the job was done. There is a reluctance to come out and say “the job was not done”, even when it wasn’t, where the simple statement gets replaced by miles of explanations, excuses and jargon, till the original subject of conversation is safely forgotten. This is an option - a comfortable one, but it doesn’t work for one who wishes to be a self-coched climber, because until you know what to fix, there is no “climbing” possible.

A difficult but necessary move is to strip the sugar coating and speak of the results as they are. Explanations have a valid place in the reflection and planning for changes - NOT in measuring results.

Another difficulty is in relating with people. The more we want something, the easier it gets to forget that others around us have things they care about too. One possibility is to step on toes, but unless you don’t need any relationship with them (work or personal), its going to come right back and step on yours. It is a conscious choice to explore how things different people want could fit in together and work out in a way that helps everyone. And guess what, the person to initiate this would be called a leader, no?

And so on. Its really about being aware and fixing what doesn’t work, and experimenting and taking risks and owning the results. Everyone goofs up. Its the risks that work that make you a star!