Rick's Business of Audiology Blog

Important Lessons from Sports # 10: Purpose Focus

Focus, Focus, Focus

Pay Attention, Pay Attention, Pay Attention

These are words commonly heard around sporting events.

They are a constant reminder that the best sports teams keep their focus.

Does your team have a clear focus?

Does each team member know what is expected of them?

Has each team member agreed to do what you want?

On a more important level:

Do you know what you are doing? What you want? Is it posted clearly?

Without a clear goal, winning the league championship, broken down into winning each game, broken down into winning each play, broken down into each player winning their individual assignment, a football team will never succeed.

Without a clear goal your team won't excel either.

Often mediocrity comes not because people want to be average at best, but because they don't have any idea of what they can become.

Rick

Important Lessons from Sports # 9: Rules, play by them or fail.

Successful people play by the rules. Not most of the time, but all of the time. Sure mistakes are made, but successful professionals don't live by their mistakes.  Truely successful professionals do not break the rules to achieve their success. 

The best athletes in sports take the time to know the rules of the game. Not just at an overview level, but specifically. They don't just "think" they know them, but often have a rule book within easy reach. They aren't afraid to check the rules regularly. They also aren't afraid to remind others of the rules when appropriate.

Successful professionals have the same characteristic. Not only do they know the rules for accounting, licensing, professional ethics, and social functions, but they follow them. They are quick to refer to ethics laws and licensing laws and often have copies of them nearby for reference. They aren't afraid to check the rules, and to remind others of them when they are violated.

Successful professionals aren't afraid to perform near the line. They have taken the time to learn not just what someone said, but exactly where the line is. Where they are safe and where they are not.

Athletes have not only the rules of the country and state, the rules of the game, and the rules of physics to deal with.

Successful professionals have not only the rules of the land, but rules of professional ethics, and rules of personal professional behavior.

Perhaps my least favorite part of organized sports is the tendency to teach the players it is OK to cheat if you are not caught. Imagine a big league football player calling a penalty on himself. It just wouldn't happen. This works because at a bigger level it is just a game. About the worst thing that can happen is they lose the right to finish the game.

Real life is different. It is not OK to cheat just because you are not caught. You must often call penalties on yourself. Perhaps redoing a report and resubmitting it. Perhaps telling someone you made and error and requiring them to return for extra work. Perhaps resubmitting a tax form. This is important because the penalty for real life mistakes can be a trip to jail, loss of professional license, or an injury to a patient, client, or customer.

If you want to be successful learn the rules for your arena and then follow them as if your professional life depends upon it. Because it does, just ask Michael Vick.

Rick

Important Lessons from Sports # 8: T.E.A.M.

T.E.A.M. = Together Everyone Accomplishes More

Top players, even in relatively solitary sports like professional golf, always have a team.

There are the obvious ones such as teammates, and the associated trainers, travel managers, and groundskeepers that enable them to perform.

And the not so obvious ones, often forgotten; spouse, parents, kids, friends, personal advisors, pastors, accountants, property managers, financial planners, attorneys, and all the other people that enable them to perform better and keep their focus. Helping them keep their attention on their highest value activity; in this case golf.

This is the same for a professional health care provider.

There are the obvious teammates such as employees, bosses, and co-workers.

There are also the not so obvious teammates; vendors, night cleaning crew, UPS guy, the computer repair person, and advertizing representative.

There are also the most important team members of all; patients, professional contacts, and referral sources.

There are also your personal support team; your spouse, family, and friends.

It is important for you to remember they are on your team, and you want them to understand and guy into your purpose.

Often we fail to realize team members who are not on our official company organizational chart are far more important than those who are.

Your spouse and family will most likely outlast all of your current employees.

Your key referral sources and patients will often outlast your employees, or perhaps your employer.

Just as each player on a sports team must know their role for the team to perform their best your professional support team members must know their role for them to help you perform at your best.

Rick

Important Lessons from Sports # 7: You become what you think.

What you think is very important. What you think defines who you are.

What you think will influence what you say and what you say will define who you are.

In sports if you think you will lose, often you do. If you think you will win often you do.

What you think determines the outcome more often then you may realize.

This is often demonstrated by great performers, sports and stage, visualizing a great performance prior to their actual performance.

A great golfer visualizes the perfect swing and the ball's movement to the target.

A great dancer visualizes each move prior to going on stage.

A great sales person visualizes the customer interaction before it happens, and visualizes success.

I am not talking about the "positive thinking" that sometimes we hear about, but preparation thinking.

Not just imagining, or dreaming, about success. Although in some instances this may work. What I am encouraging is reality thinking. An athlete may visualize a performance, and realize a few more trips to the weight room, or a couple of extra miles on the track, will be important. The dancer may realize that movement doesn't feel right, and adjust in the back room.

A sales person while visualizing a successful sales call will realize they don't yet have the best presentation, they may visualize a question they weren't prepared to answer. They then prepare, or plan to overcome, the problem. If they think about how they will handle a question before it is asked, and perhaps practice their response, they are in a better position to get it right when the customer is present.

Athletes:

Think about what they are going to do.

Think about how they will do it.

Think about how success will be achieved.

In life the same applies.

Think about the kind of person you want to be.

Think about what that person will say.

Think about what that person will do.

Then you are in a position to do it.

Life is full of unexpected situations, unexpected opportunities. You cannot think about them all. However many you can think about.

Think what the person you want to be will think, say what the person you want to be would say, and then you will become the person you want to be.

Rick

Important Lessons from Sports # 6: Habits are important.

Habits are very important. Your habits define who you are.

What you do will influence what you do automatically and what you do automatically defines you as a person.

Your habits define you more than you may realize.

In sports players practice what they want to happen over and over again until what they want to do becomes a habit. The perfect golf swing comes from swinging perfectly thousands of times so when the game is on the swing is automatic. The great swing has become a habit. When the great swing becomes a habit, the player can concentrate on situational strategy during the game without consciously thinking about the mechanics of the swing.

In sports the player who cannot make it to the game in time doesn't play. Great, and even average players, make it a habit to show up on time.

Life is like sports, if we practice what we want to be we can become it.

If your habit is to get up early each morning you will do it automatically.

If your habit is to be courteous to others you will do it automatically.

If your habit is to be honest you will do it automatically.

If your habit is to do the most important things first, you will do it automatically.

If your habit is to shower every day you will do it automatically.

If your habit is to use the toilet and not your pants you will do it automatically.

We don't start life with these habits, we learn them.

We learn them by consciously doing them over and over again until we don't even think of it.

Is it always the most convenient to use the toilet? Just ask a toddler. It is not, but we learn at a young age to accept the inconvenience of interrupting what we do to use the toilet.

Decide what kind of a person you want to be, then determine what habits that person would have, then consciously do those things. Eventually they will become your habits and you will become the person you want to be.

Rick

Important Lessons from Sports # 5: Life isn’t fair.

Life is not fair.

• Is it fair that the hardest working most talented football player gets injured in practice and never gets to play?
• Is it fair that the officials miss a call and the outcome of the game changes?
• Is it fair that I am not tall enough to play center on the basketball team?
• Is it fair that some exceptional athlete can make more money prior to ever actually playing in a game, just because they were drafted #1, than great players who have played for years?

No: Or at least most people I have asked don't think so.

• Is it fair that I was born in the USA? As opposed to being my age in Iraq?
• Is it fair that I have loving parents that kept their marriage vows and nurtured me in an exceptional manner? While others don't.
• Is it fair that I have good vision, good balance, good hearing, and overall good health? Not everyone does.
• Is it fair that I have healthy smart kids? Not all are.

These situations are harder for people to answer with confidence.

In reality I despise the word fair.

I think it the worst 4 letter word in the English language.

What I do know is that life is not fair, whatever fair actually means.

When you find yourself thinking, or worse yet saying, it is not fair stop yourself. What do you mean? Find a better way to articulate what you mean that actually means something.

When you hear someone say it isn't fair stop yourself from their thought pattern. Encourage them to articulate their thoughts in a manner that actually means something.

Rick

Important Lessons from Sports # 4: Not everyone can.

You can be anything you set your mind to do.

What a ridiculous statement. Anyone who I hear utter this statement immediately looses credibility with me.

You cannot be anything you set your mind to. Reality will get in the way. I think viscerally we really know this, so the statement is actually discouraging in and of itself.

I learned as a young person playing sports I wasn't ever going to be the winning center on an NBA team. I am only 5' 7" tall. It won't work. Early on I decided not to waste my time on that goal.

I learned as a young person I will never be a starting NFL lineman, or even a starting college lineman, I just didn't have the gravitational enhancement needed for the job.

When I present the Success Pyramid, the first level, the base of everything, is having the mental and physical characteristics to do what you want to do.

If you are blind, you won't ever be a 747 pilot for United Airlines.

I will never give birth to a child. I will never have the preciseness necessary to be a heart surgeon.

If you don't like sitting in a small room helping old people hear you won't be any good at fitting or selling hearing aids.

When I graduated from college with my MBA I took a job working functionally as a financial controller. OK, I had my MBA, I knew the accounting, I could technically "do" the job. But it wasn't a good fit. I am not a super anal get every million dollars to the penny kind of a guy. I don't see words that are misspelled, and misplaced, in a document I write. Lawyers do see every grammatical mistake and are not capable of reading past them. One mistake and they weren't able to use the document. I drove myself nuts trying to track every penny. I burned out. At the time I was very discouraged, I didn't know why. Later I learned it wasn't that I was dumb, or incapable, but the job just didn't match me. I didn't have the mental characteristics for that kind of position. No one told me. I felt unsuccessful because I really worked very hard and didn't succeed. No matter how hard I worked, that job wasn't going to work out.

Anyone can do something great. You can do something great. Identify your gifts and use them to the max; don't waste time on things you cannot in reality ever do.

I do hope this helps you.

Rick

Important Lessons from Sports # 3: Only Practice Perfection

Practice what you want to be, not what you are.

Practice is a key success skill. Those who are the best at practice are almost always the best in the game.

But: Practice makes perfect is misused and misunderstood.

Practice may make you perfect at what you practice. However if you just practice your poor performance until you can be perfectly miserable, or perfectly average, or perfectly inept, why waste your time practicing?

In fact practicing poor performance is actually harmful.

If you want to be good, practice to be good, don't practice your mistakes.

If you don't know how to be good, learn. Read, watch, and get someone to coach you.

Then practice being good until you cannot imagine performing any other way.

Rick

Important Lessons from Sports # 2: You won’t win every time, and that is OK.

School teachers try to teach us we must win every time, like somehow they think that will happen after we leave school.

Sure a teacher in an artificial setting can make up rules so you will win every time, so you will get an A+ on every test. They keep telling me it is to encourage the students and help them be successful.

Life isn't like that.

Thank God for sports. In sports, as in life, we don't win every time. Sports teaches us to get up and try again after we lose.

In life we don't' get an A+ or even an A on every test.

Sports teach us to win graciously, and loose graciously. Sports teach us to participate in and celebrate the success of others, while redoubling our efforts. Sports teach us the winners often fall a few times to their victory.

Many people who have attended school, and never participated in sports, seem to expect they will win every time and easily get discouraged when this doesn't happen after they leave school. They end up doomed to a life of jobs and mediocrity as they desperately try not to lose. They fear new things, they become depressed, they burn out.

As a business person I am always careful about the straight A student in school. Often they aren't prepared for the C average that life is about to throw at them.

The person who knows they won't win every time, who isn't afraid to get up to the plate and take a good swing even when they struck out last time has an advantage.

Rick

Important Lessons from Sports # 1: Keep Score

Always keep score.

If you don't keep score you can never be a winner.

Let me repeat. If you don't keep score, you can never be a winner.

Why? Because if you don't define what victory is you can never achieve victory.

If you don't define success, you can never achieve it.

Without the ability to keep score you are on an endless treadmill with no chance of getting off.

If you don't keep score you are a target for depression. Because you have set yourself up so you cannot ever feel good about a win.

If you don't keep score you are a target for burnout. Because you have set yourself up so you cannot ever feel even small victories.

Always keep score.

If you don't keep score you are only fooling yourself.

Let me repeat. If you don't keep score you are only fooling yourself.

We all keep score; the only question is using what criteria?

If you don't choose how you keep score you will default to something, but what?

If the number of customers served isn't the score keeping measure then you may default to something less productive, like how often you leave the office on time.

If the value of your passive income isn't the score keeping measure then you may default to something less productive, like how your last shopping trip felt.

If spending time with your kids isn't the score keeping measure then you may default to something less productive, like did you get to watch your TV show.

If learning isn't measured and score kept how many students would ever study for their lessons?

Don't fool yourself, keep score.

Don't waste your time; keep score on things that are important to you.

I know this will help you.

Rick