Look great or be great
I would like to think that I am pretty good as a coach. I’ve worked hard to build a skillset and get to the level that I’m at. About a year ago I had the opportunity to coach a team and to put it bluntly - I came into that experience thinking I was him. I had it all together and I was going to change their lives and everyone was going to be blown away by how good I was.
Well, I was extremely wrong. Just so, so wrong.
It was a real blow to my ego.
This was the thing that I was supposed to be good at. I was supposed to be able to handle any situation and figure out how to create value at any time for any person. I wasn’t. I froze. And, it hurt. All at the same time, it was an extremely valuable learning lesson.
This may be a bit hyperbolic, and please stick with me. There are two ways to look good. The first, by acting a certain way, presenting yourself a certain way, and making sure that people have that perception. The other, always working to get to a new level of capability and skill and people naturally getting to the point of that because you are in fact good. Not because you want people to see you that way, but because you actually are. This reminds me of Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset, in which she talks about growth vs. a fixed mindset. A person with a fixed mindset isn’t growing, which was me in this example, and so I had to create value or my worth by ego and story. I was good, and I wasn’t really trying to get any better so I had to put out an image to protect those deficiencies.
The flipside of that is the growth mindset. A person with a growth mindset is a person that is always growing and learning. They could already be great, however, it’s more about what’s next as opposed to where they are now. Greatness is there, and it almost doesn’t even matter because there is something yet to be achieved. It takes the pressure of having to put out a certain appearance. The priority is growth. Another aspect of this is that when learning and growth is the focus, mistakes become part of the game. It’s ok to screw up. That is the best way to learn. Getting dirty is part of the fun.
Reflecting on what I have written so far, the initial thought for this article was the fact that an eternal focus on learning leads to more freedom and opportunity. My own personal experience with learning that lesson was quite backwards: I found that always being open to learning was actually easier and more enjoyable because it takes so much energy to put on a show about how great I am.. trying to impress people all the time. The minute I got into a situation I could not handle the image crumbled. Focusing on learning, growth, and new opportunities there is no image, there is simply learning and getting better and doing it again the next day. In the end, I got what I originally wanted and I got better for it too.
