Allen Iverson Mentions Practice 22 Times in a Press Conference
Two things I’ve learned over the years that will allow you to be in the top 80% of whatever it is you choose to do. They are VERY simple to do. It comes down to showing up and practice (i.e. see Allen Iverson’s Practice Rant above)
First, it’s showing up. Today, most people don’t do something because they perceive it’s hard or “they don’t feel like it.” No one wants to show up all the time. You have to act in spite of how you feel. Sounds simple? It’s hard in practice.
Second, practice may not make perfect, but you will improve. I started running in 2017 after Thanksgiving. I never ran more than five miles ever. It’s not fun waking up at 4am several days of the week and early every single Saturday, while other people are sleeping and you could be too. Well I ran my first marathon, Chicago, in 3:40 minutes. It was much faster than I thought because my training was consistent and tough. I put in the miles and results paid off. The same thing happened in the my next marathons. In February I ran a 3:20 marathon, five months after my first one.
The same thing is when I first started coaching and doing workshops (like team building). You get better more you do. Sure, there are other factors that can significantly increase your growth, effectiveness, and success.
You learn more with every engagement and every time you do additional research.
You improve (even a tiny bit) each time you do something. Improvement is about very small changes over time (you think of that as a formula: Improvement = frequency x tiny changes
Marathon runner who’s been running for 10 years is probably better than someone running their first marathon. A seasoned business professional (CEO, CFO, CHRO) is probably better than someone in their first year working.
Great performers many times make it look easy. But they do because of endless, consistent practice.
Practice will make you much better than you were before. You may never be a master, a professional runner or New York Times Best Selling Author.
Practice and showing up really works. It will get you 80% of the way there.
Segment 1: Tony Richards discusses the fear of being wrong with producer Bill Foster.
01:00 – Welcome to Better Than Before
03:30 – Fear of Being Wrong
Segment 2: Jason Treu, Executive Coach and Author, joins us as this week’s featured guest.
09:30 – Social Wealth
13:00 – Cards Against Mundanity
20:00 – Creating High-Performance Culture
23:30 – Leadership Blind spots
31:00 – Tony’s Lightning Leadership Questions
Segment 3: Leadership Lesson: How to Get Promoted
35:30 – Manager Response
40:00 – Path to Promotion In any organization, whatever we are doing is about the relationships that we have both internally and externally. The challenge is, people just don’t know how to build these relationships. – @jasontreu… Click To Tweet
About the Guest
Jason Treu is an executive coach who helps executives, managers, and employees to maximize their leadership and management potential. He provides coaching, workshops, and speaking services. He is the best-selling author of Social Wealth, the how-to-guide on building extraordinary business relationships.
He was a featured speaker at 2017 TEDxWilmington for his talk on, “How to Get CoWorkers to Like Each Other.” His employee engagement and team building game, Cards Against Mundanity, has been played by more than 12000+ employees to increase performance and teamwork.
We need to stop using traditional ways of looking at business value (efficiency, productivity) in order to understand the massive trust crisis. It’s a giant double-digit tax that keeps increasing and companies blindly keep paying.
The “Trust Tax” costs anywhere from $4000-$10,000 per employee every single year. This is a conservative figure. How much per year is that costing your company?
Lack of trust in business is something we now take for granted, as a normal cost of doing business. It’s why the exceptions are so remarkable. They are the ones creating the biggest competitive advantage and having unparalleled success.
“In Trust Across America’s most recent 2018 study of the trustworthiness of America’s largest public companies only 103 companies in the Russell 1000 scored a 70% or above (score 80% or more is highly unusual). The rest failed our test.” That’s really poor.
Any company can use trust to rocket their success with a few simple steps. But like in life, the simplest things are often the most overlooked.
How big a check are cutting this year to pay for your “trust tax?” Think of what your company could use that money for?
I frequently get leaders, managers (new and experienced) and other employees asking me about articles, books and podcasts they should check out on leadership, managing others, giving feedback, building great teams and developing their employees. So here you go 🙂
Here are four excellent articles on managing others and building great teams:
Teamwork is the most important soft skill, period. It’s the least understood and significantly impacts the bottom line. Poor teamwork is the norm. Most people haven’t really ever been on a really high functioning team with every member having superior teamwork skills. Teamwork needs to be prioritized in the on-boarding process and company-wide.
Communication is a critical issue that’s getting much worse. Poor communication costs between $420,000 and $800,000 per year in a company of a 100 people. You can use those ratios to check on how much money it’s costing your organization. Finally, large organizations don’t leverage expertise across groups and geographies very well. Poor teamwork in this area costs hundreds of millions of dollars for a multinational organization.
Lack of trust is a huge problem and tends to be the root cause of almost every problem. Organizations need to tackle issues starting with trust versus skipping over it. For example, in conflict resolution issues the average team of five people wastes 200 to 275 in emotional turmoil, misunderstandings, and miscommunications. The root cause in trust. If you don’t start there, you’ll have a very challenging time resolving the conflict.
Lack of self-awareness is a leadership nightmare. Research shows senior leaders significantly overestimate their abilities compared to what other people rate them in the organization. Their inability to calibrate their skills with how others view them is a huge issue. It causes them to make mistakes, micromanage, misread situations, manage their emotions poorly, miscommunicate and much more.
Employee engagement is dismissal. You can read below. The data is really poor. Sure it’s getting slightly better, but 70% of workers are still disengaged. According to research, only 28% of managers are skilled at. That number seems REALLY high to me. I’d put it as below 10%. The costs are staggering.
Managers are extremely poor in managing their employees. Every client I have mentions that they don’t get enough feedback on their current work and career path from their manager. There is a reason is 100% of people who say that. Managers also have real challenges giving tough feedback in a way that motivates employees and creates behavioral change. These comments are the tip of the iceberg. There is much more on this topic.
HR.com: The twelve DNA traits are below. I’ve revised the titles of each trait (my take):
Master and Improve Analytical Abilities – Smart technologies and analytics are quickly becoming essential. Over three-quarters of HR professionals (78%) indicate that analytical thinking will be the most vital worker capability by 2020. And alarmingly, only 11% of organizations report they are making good progress building a capable workforce to meet 2020 goals.
Leadership Skills are REALLY Lacking – A well-designed leadership strategy combining diversity, good coaching, and data-driven decisions is imperative for effective future leadership. Only 20% of HR professionals give a high rating (at least 8 out of 10) to their organizations’ leadership skills, and only 17% of HR professionals agree (high/very high extent) that their leaders are effective coaches.
Learning & Development Needs to be Prioritized – Employee development programs are viewed as one of the most crucial HR issues for the coming year, yet only a third of HR professionals feel that learning is embedded in their culture. Moreover, organizations are making slow progress in key areas such as personalization, mobile learning and micro-learning.
Managers Must Improve Their Ability to Develop Employees – Performance management is in need of serious reform. Management training is inadequate in this area. Just 21% of HR professionals believe (agree/strongly agree) that managers are skilled at performance management. Technologies are also being reformed. In 2019, performance management systems will be among the HR systems most likely to be added, replaced, or modified.
Talent Analytics Provide a Competitive Advantage – Leveraging talent analytics requires new skills, solid technology and, more than anything else, a new mindset. Currently, a majority (59%) of HR professionals do not make use of talent analytics, even though organizations that excel at it report support from management and a noticeable competitive advantage.
Become Much More Skilled in Talent Acquisition – “Recruit talent to support growth” is the most important area of focus for HR departments in 2019, tied with “employee learning and development.” Yet, many companies are failing in this crucial area. In fact, HR professionals regret an average of 31% of new hires. Emerging technologies in the areas of artificial intelligence and recruitment marketing are expected to help.
Must Figure out Diversity and Inclusion – Most organizations have not yet reached a higher maturity level when it comes to diversity and inclusion (D&I) practices. Companies with successful D&I initiatives are more likely to have support from senior leaders, to track metrics in this area, and to require D&I training for their workforce.
Employee Engagement Extremely Poor and Crippling the Bottom Line – Engagement deficits are costing employers a fortune. Continuously measuring and tracking engagement is key, but success requires action based on those metrics. More than anything else, leadership (77%) and culture (74%) are essential for supporting initiatives and driving employee engagement.
HR and Workforce Technologies is in the Very Early Stages – How companies leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and smart technology will be integral to their performance. Only 10% of companies report making high or very high use of AI for HR, so there’s a long way to go to leverage the benefits of the AI technology.
The HR Skills Gap Increases – HR must prepare for the future by adopting more strategic responsibilities and by acquiring greater knowledge of technologies and analytics. It must, in short, close the skills gaps in its own profession.
Workforce Planning: Talent Development is Even More Critical – Turning mounds of data into real insights and recommended courses of action will be a challenge but also a necessity. Companies must devote more resources to career planning and succession planning to ensure workforces have the up-to-date skill sets needed to keep their business moving forward.
The Human Experience is Essential to Success and a Highly Effective People Strategy – Human experience (HX) goes beyond the employee experience when a company can create meaning for their employees at work. Employees want to reach their full potential, and HR can take the lead on helping employees set and attain goals to maximize employee engagement levels.
Human resources professionals have an opportunity to transform the workforce over the next five more than ever before. If they focus on the above areas over the next 12 months, they can make significant progress and take their company to the next level of success!
