A Framework for Leadership Success

by Jim Citrin

Posted on Wednesday, September 5, 2007, 12:00AM

In addition to my 25 years in business, I've been an athlete my entire life. As such, I'm interested in the champions who have taken their success in sports and gone on to do great things with their lives.

I'm just as interested in the many great business leaders who learned how to compete, win, lose, and excel on a team or individually through sports when they were growing up.

Studying the Champions

I've always wanted to find out what separates the enduring champions -- those who stay on a positive life trajectory, growing as people and contributing to the greater good -- from the other sports stars who fade out or crash and burn. What in all of this could be applied to help achieve one's greatest aspirations and potential?

So, for over three years, I've been working on a study to distill the most important lessons about leadership and business success from the world's most inspiring athletes. The culmination of this work is my brand-new book, "The Dynamic Path," which I'll provide an overview for in this column.

A Framework for Life

The Dynamic Path is a powerful framework that can help you live your life to reach your greatest potential. It allows you to set goals and move from stage to stage in your life, continually growing and developing from individual to champion, and from leader to legacy-builder.

You don't need to be Colin Powell, Bono, or Magic Johnson to inspire people and build a legacy. Anyone who has the motivation, energy, and a little bit of creativity can have a positive and enduring impact on those around them -- and even the world at large.

Through natural talent, dedication, hard work, and mental toughness, you can grow to achieve excellence in your chosen field. To become a top performer in any discipline, you need to sharpen your skills through highly directed practice over an extended period of time. And to progress from strong performer to champion in sports or business, you need to develop mental toughness.

Learning Mental Toughness

The ability to come through and deliver in the moment of truth is the single characteristic that distinguishes the greatest champions from everyone else. I'd always thought that they were endowed with a "mental toughness gene" at birth. However, to my great surprise and delight, I discovered from my research that mental toughness is in fact a learnable skill.

It turns out that the ability to achieve a personal best in the seminal time trial, to make the last shot at the buzzer, or to hit the RBI with two outs in the bottom of the ninth is something that can be practiced and developed. With knowledge of how your mind and emotions work, and with deliberate practice in training and competitive situations, you can develop this ability. Moreover, mental toughness is an important skill that applies far beyond the realm of sports into your most important career, community, and personal situations.

Mental toughness allows you to thrive when it counts most, remaining cool, calm, and collected during the ups and downs of a game, race, match, or business situation. It's this skill that allows you to act in an instinctive and automatic way at the most important turning points of a competition or other high-stakes circumstance.

Practice Makes Perfect

Expert performers are distinguished not by the characteristics they inherited, then, but rather by their ability to continue improving for years, even decades, until they become great. Expert performance is the end result of prolonged effort to improve through a regimen of deliberate, targeted activities specifically designed to optimize improvement in carefully selected areas.

Differences among performers, even the most elite, are a function of the amount and duration of deliberate practice they undertake. The top performers in the world not only work harder than everyone else in their field, they've invested many more hours of highly focused practice over the years.

Deliberate practice helps improve a specific skill or performance to enable you to reach for goals just beyond your level of proficiency, to provide you feedback on results, and to build a program that allows for high levels of repetition. Think about a few concrete things that are at the core of your role and focus on how to do them significantly better. And continue to focus day in and day out.

From Individual Contributor to Leader

At some point for people in sports, physical ability will ebb and athletic talents will fade. This is a critical turning point. Some ignore the telltale signals and try to hang on to what they have, relying on the skills that got them to their peak. That's a recipe for disaster, because inevitably you have to change in order to grow.

This is the exact parallel for a star individual performer in business -- the rainmaking sales leader, the hot designer, the brilliant trader -- who risks topping out as a solo act. The champion who breaks through to become a leader decides to confront the moment and stop focusing on himself and concentrate instead on the success of others.

When you're dedicated to making those around you successful, success will accrue to you as a natural end result. It's one thing to be a star individual contributor in sports, business, or life and quite another (ultimately more satisfying and sustaining) to extend beyond oneself to work with and through others. This is how a champion continues to grow as a person and transforms into a leader.

Leaving Behind a Legacy

Whether on a historic scale like battling to cure cancer, a large scale like helping inner-city youths find a way out of poverty, or on a small scale like becoming a mentor, the more you isolate something genuinely meaningful to you that's worth fighting for, the more that your leadership will propel you toward building an enduring legacy.

People everywhere have a deep-seated urge to be meaningful contributors in the world. When you decide to focus your attention on a particular calling that will make a discernable positive impact, you've moved into the realm of building a legacy. If your cause is worthy and if there's a credible reason for selecting it, then you'll be able to inspire others to follow along and make a sustaining and positive impact.

Becoming a true champion in sports or business requires sacrifices. This can only be sustained by a burning desire that needs to be fueled every day. Not everyone wants to assume the responsibilities of leadership or to focus on the success of others around them. And while many people want something that will outlive them and provide evidence of a life meaningfully lived, not everyone has the drive or passion to create a bequest of significance.

But for those who aspire to do all these things, The Dynamic Path is the way.

10 Tips to Tap the Power of Talent

by Dave Anderson

If you listen to top executives in any industry discuss how to build their business you will inevitably hear them discuss the mandate to bring talented people into their organizations and then build around them. I discuss the importance of talent in my workshops as well. However, while talent is a great head start it isn't any guarantee of success. As John Maxwell says in his new book, Talent is Never Enough: "Too many talented people who start with advantages over others lose that advantage because they rest on their talent instead of raising it. They assume that talent alone will keep them out front. They don't realize the truth that if they merely wing it, others will fly past them. Talent is more common than they think. Mega-best-selling author Stephen King asserts, 'talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.'"

Following are 10 tips concerning talent that will help you put this vital trait in its proper perspective, while it aids you in developing your own talent and the gifts of others.

1. Everyone has talent. People have equal value but not equal giftedness. Some have a multitude of talents and other fewer, but all of us have something we can do well. What is essential is that you place employees in a position where they can maximize their talent.

2. Develop the talent you have, not the one you want. You will never maximize your talent if you continue to spend too much time in areas where you are not naturally gifted. This doesn't mean that you cannot get better in those areas; you'll just never be great at them since excellence is impossible without talent.

3. Many things that are important to success do not require talent. Attributes like punctuality, effort, patience, and unselfishness, among other traits, are essential to success yet require no talent. Thus, talented people must realize that their talent is never enough. Without characteristics like those listed, they won't have a prayer of reaching their potential.

4. Talent is enough to get your foot in the door, to get you noticed, and to offer you a head start. In the beginning, it separates you from the rest of the pack and gives you a head start over others. For that reason, natural talent is one of life's greatest gifts. But the advantage only lasts a short time.

5. Anyone can make choices that will add value to talent. The key choices you make-apart from the natural talent you already have-will set you apart from others who have talent alone. These choices, among other things, include developing the discipline to develop your talent; building the character necessary to protect your talent; choosing the attitude necessary to maximize your talent; and believing in yourself enough so that you unleash your talent.

6. Relationships influence your talent. Nothing may influence your talent as much as the important relationships in your life. Surround yourself with people who add value to you and encourage you, and your talent will go in a positive direction. Spend time with people who constantly drain you, pull you in the wrong direction, or try to knock you down, and it will be almost impossible for your talent to take flight. To maximize your talent, determine (1) which relationship must you initiate; (2) which relationship you (3) which relationship you must distance yourself from; (4) and which relationship you must abandon must strengthen;.

7. Teachability expands your talent. If you are a highly talented person, you may have a tough time with teachability. Why? Because talented people often think they know it all, which makes it difficult for them to expand their talent. Change your attitude toward learning. Learning is energizing and gives you an edge. It changes your thoughts, which improve your actions, which edify your results. When you see learning in this light, you won't be able to get enough of it!

8. Character protects your talent. Many talented people make it to the limelight, but the ones who have neglected to develop strong character rarely stay there long. Absence of strong character eventually topples talent because people are often tempted to take shortcuts. Accept that while many of your circumstances are beyond your control, your character development is not. Character is the sum total of your everyday choices. Thus, great character is built by making good choices, one choice at a time.

9. Focus directs your talent. Focus does not come naturally to us, yet it is essential for anyone wanting to make the most of his talent. Having talent without focus is like being an octopus on roller sakes. There's plenty of movement but you don't know in what direction it will be. Give up the things-and people-in your life that distract you and take your eyes off your dreams. Give up to go up - day in and day out. If you know that you have talent, and you are energetic and active but still don't see measurable results, then lack of focus is likely your problem.

10.Teamwork multiplies your talent. In the movie Rocky, Rocky Balboa describes the relationship with his girlfriend, Adrian: "I got gaps. She's got gaps. But together we've got no gaps." What a great description of teamwork! It doesn't matter how talented you may be-you have gaps. There are things you don't do well. This is why if you want to do something big, you need a complimentary team to strengthen those areas. As a talented person working in your own talent zone and surrounded by team members doing the same, you will become more and accomplish more than you ever could on your own.

There are several other aspects that help launch and develop your talent: passion, practice, initiative and responsibility. But the 10 points listed should give you plenty to consider as you hire new people, develop those you already have on your payrolls and strive to reach your own personal potential.

Dave Anderson is president of LearnToLead, a sales and leadership training organization. He has an extensive automotive background and has spoken at NADA for eight consecutive years. He has written six books and has three more slated for release in the summer of 2007.

For Grace Under Fire, Practice Makes Perfect

by Jim Citrin

"I was mentally weaker on the important points."

That's how tennis star Novak Djokovic summed up his loss to player Roger Federer, who overcame seven set points to win his 12th Grand Slam and become the first man in more than 80 years to capture four straight U.S. Open tennis titles.

Perhaps you're an investment professional confronting swirling equity and debt markets that are as daunting as the raucous nighttime crowds at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. Or you might be a manager trying to keep your team together and your customers loyal as upstart competitors seem to appear out of nowhere.

Are you responding to the pressure like the cool, calm, and collected Federer, who delivers in the moment of truth? Or are you more like the talented but tortured Djokovic, whose emotions led him to tense up when it counted most?

A Learnable Skill

The answer lies in your mental toughness. If you believe that the ability to perform best in the most important moments is genetically endowed, i.e., you either have it or you don't, then you're not alone.

Most people look upon those special performers -- the trader who can exploit market chaos or the quarterback who pulls out a come-from-behind victory -- as fortunate aberrations.

But mental toughness is a learnable skill. With knowledge of how your mind and emotions work, deliberate practice in high-stakes situations, and focus and patience, you can develop this ability. When you do, you'll experience winning results and break through to a new level of performance and success.

Unemotional Rescue

It turns out that there are different areas of the brain that govern us when we're thinking clearly and calmly versus when we're operating in a state of anxiety or fear.

We perform at our best when we're guided by the area of the brain that plans and reasons. When we're nervous or fearful, however, the more base motor areas of the brain -- the ones that produce emotions -- take over.

Being guided by your emotions leads you to think short-term, seeking out instantaneous results or immediate gratification at the expense of strategy. Your emotions deceive you into believing that the way to perform best at any moment is to react with dramatic actions or bold strokes, even if being deliberate is actually the right course of action.

Embrace Your Failures

So how do you set about developing mental toughness?

· Through focused practice of how to think correctly in important situations

· Through building up a body of knowledge of how to deal with mistakes and setbacks

· Through positive imagery.

Counterintuitive as it may seem, winning in any endeavor depends on a robust history of failure. To learn how to win under pressure, you first need to learn the proper mental attitude toward mistakes. You don't want your mistakes to be so important in your mind that they lead you to play it safe. Thinking of mistakes as the stepping stones to winning liberates you to keep challenging yourself and taking calculated risks.

When you do make mistakes, you need to assess them constructively. Properly evaluated, mistakes give you valuable feedback, allowing you to make corrections so that you don't repeat the mistake. But while it's important to recognize and analyze mistakes when they occur, it's just as essential to not think that acknowledging them is a sign of weakness. The ability to think about mistakes and remain positive is a sign of strength.

The reality is failure is always possible, even for the best performers in the world. Say you blew a client presentation and lost the business that should have been yours. Guess what? It also happens to the greatest rainmaker. Or you hit an easy overhead into the net. Well, so did Roger Federer in the Open final. If the best performers make mistakes, it only makes sense that it'll happen to you.

Performance Doesn't Determine Character

Beyond acknowledging the value of mistakes, there's a deeper reality that will help you free yourself from a debilitating fear of failure. That fear is often the result of an unacknowledged belief that the results of your efforts and your quality as a person are inexorably linked.

In truth, there's no connection between the results you achieve at work (or in sports) and your quality as a human being. This simple but profound insight can free you to be a more natural and mentally tough performer in all aspects of your life. The reason is that if you link mistakes to who you are as a person, you'll exaggerate the emotional responses of your actions.

Either consciously or subconsciously, your emotions lead you to think that if you perform poorly you did something wrong -- or worse, that you're a bad person. But just because things don't work out doesn't mean you've erred. You may have made the absolutely right decision and failed in the execution. Or maybe you selected the right course of action and did everything you were supposed to do, but your competitor got lucky.

It's equally important to know that just because something worked out well doesn't mean you did something right or were thinking correctly. You may have made the wrong decisions and just got a lucky break. If it worked this time, don't count on it happening again, especially when the stakes are high.

The Power of Positive Imagery

Applying positive imagery helps you prepare in advance for high-pressure situations and to recover your focus when necessary. High-quality images of your best client presentation, fairway iron, free throw, or team meeting allow you to experience yourself doing it right and help you feel ready to perform to your highest skill level.

These multi-sensory images take you where you want to go, and often where you've not yet been. Exercise deliberate practice to develop positive imagery skills.

For instance, Ted Williams, the greatest batter in baseball history, was meticulous about studying opposing pitchers. He would imagine what they would throw to him and then picture how he would react.

Mental Toughness in Business

In business, clarity of thought is the equivalent of mental toughness in sports. The ability to think through problems proactively using your mind rather than being reactively led by your emotions leads to high degrees of performance in business.

It entails performing an accurate assessment of a situation and focusing your decisions around the things that are under your control, rather than obsessing over outside factors. It's planning for contingencies and updating your action plan to take account of new information, and also making tough people calls, even if doing so means making some people unhappy.

To summarize, the mentally tough person is guided by a disciplined mind, which can be developed through the consistent practice of not letting your emotions guide you.