nature of the game. In today’s business climate, for example, with its frequent and fast-paced changes, mergers and downsizings and unexpected setbacks, learning to turn adversity to advantage and ride the waves in a storm is an essential survival skill.
Interrelationships Among the Five Characteristics
We’re going to talk about each of these characteristics separately, but in reality they are intertwined. They are like the ingredients in a cake: they combine in interesting ways that change them and make them into something more than they could ever be as separate entities. You can’t effectively extend trust, for example, until you learn to manage yourself (and particularly your ego). It won’t be possible to allow someone to do something their way unless you are prepared to let go of the conviction that only you know how something ought to be done.
The Tough Lab of Sport
Sir John Whitmore made some interesting comments on sport as a “developmental” laboratory. “Because sport is compressed in terms of time, the emotions involved are much more intense, so life after a time in sport is actually easier because you have been there before; it’s familiar territory. I never experienced an extreme of emotion in life, in terms of highs and lows—that has been new to me. I experienced all of them in sport.” He goes on to point out, as Dabrowski did, the importance of emotion in development and what we are calling the Third Factor. “I feel some people go through life cushioning themselves from their emotions, and I think they miss something. It is the extremes of emotion that give you your deepest experiences in life, and sport did that for me” (p. xi, Sporting Excellence, David Hemery).
In Paradise Lost, John Milton argues that virtue is not virtue until it is tested. How well things work when under fire is a test of their value. It is hard enough to succeed in the everyday world, but in the competitive arena both coach and athlete are on display before large audiences, exposed to scrutiny, their performance continually analyzed, evaluated and critiqued. The more important the event is perceived to be (the Olympics especially), the greater the impact on both performer and coach. But even at a minor sporting event one can see how competition brings out the worst in many people. That’s why the five characteristics discussed here are so important: great coaches and performers have demonstrated that they hold true even under fire. And if they work so well in the heat of competition, just imagine how effective these fundamentals will be when applied on a daily basis.
In some organizations, particularly those where there are engineers, hi-tech people and others who pride themselves on being practical and task-oriented and on “getting things done,” there is a stigma attached to the so-called soft skills. Developing others, coaching, and other such activities are seen as “fluff ”—not really connected to getting the job done, hitting the numbers or bringing things in on schedule. This is a misguided view. It’s the so-called soft skills that produce the “hard” results.
The coaches I interviewed for Ignite the Third Factor were united in their view that their role was to develop those under their tutelage to the best of their ability, using all of each person’s potential. But sometimes the developmental requirement calls for the equivalent of a kick in the pants. I am not talking about being vindictive, but of being willing to have that “difficult conversation” even when you’d prefer to bail. Confrontation is difficult for most of us, but the ability to face it and use it effectively is an essential skill in developing others. We will cover that skill in Chapter 7: Embracing Adversity, but it is also outlined in detail, for those who are interested, in Appendix B: When All Else Fails.
Unfortunately, too many leaders focus on the end goal, and more particularly on what it will do for them. For such people it is certainly not about developing anyone. It’s only about getting results. In most environments these leaders and coaches have a very short shelf life. I say in most environments because in a few situations, such as college sport, for example, the performers are forced to adjust their game to fit the predetermined designs, plans and idiosyncrasies of their authoritarian coaches. Winning coaches in these situations are tolerated even if they are not developmental. They get to replace 30 to 35 percent of their “workforce” every year. Try that in your workplace!
Commitment and the Developmental Bias
There are other ways of talking about developmental bias. In his excellent book Coaching for Commitment, Dennis Kinlaw emphasizes that almost everything a coach does should be in the service of developing commitment in the performer, the person being coached. He is not talking about commitment to the organization, but about building in people a commitment to themselves—a commitment to develop their own talents and skills to the highest level possible, and to work for continuous improvement.
In her book Leadership and the New Science, renowned systems analyst and consultant Margaret Wheatley helps us see a broader and more comprehensive meaning of commitment. She talks about people in dysfunctional organizations, organizations that have been tipped into chaos by leveraged buyouts or dramatic downsizings. She points out that about 25 percent of people continue to work to a high standard, care about their results, and bring creativity and enthusiasm to their daily work. At first she thought these people were simply denying reality, pretending everything was going to be okay three months down the road even though they had no guarantee of employment. When she interviewed them, however, she discovered that something else was going on. These were the people who had taken the time to create a sense of purpose and meaning for themselves in their work and in their lives, so that even if the organization didn’t make sense, they did. They were performing this way, to this level, because it was part of who they were as human beings.
Such inner commitment to one’s talents and skills usually reflects the work of some very good teachers, parents and other leaders who have taught, parented and coached with a strong developmental bias. Often, it is reflected in the individual in activities such as continuous learning and working on blind spots.
It is interesting to observe this commitment in young Olympic performers. Over the years they take on more and more responsibility for developing their own excellence and their own training programs. When athletes are young, the coach almost always does this, but exceptional coaches early on begin transferring these responsibilities to their young charges. The really good coaches understand that their job is to work themselves out of a job. They believe that this is the true meaning of empowerment.
Marco Beaulieu, who works in engineering management with Bell Canada, was a student in a weeklong leadership development program at Queen’s School of Business in 2007. During this program, offered four times a year, I get to meet many excellent managers and leaders. Marco told me the following story about the development of commitment and belief.
He was coaching 10- to 12-year-olds in minor hockey in Montreal. He had three important values he wanted them to learn during the year: sharing, teamwork and respect. He focused hard on those values and brought in a few people with the appropriate expertise to help teach such skills as power skating and shooting drills. One of these experts was Nancy Drolet, a former national team hockey player and Olympic gold medalist. Marco said the kids loved her. She spoke to them about never giving up, and it became a kind of rallying cry; they became committed to pushing through.
The team made the playoffs, and to Marco’s surprise got to the final game against a team that had beaten them all year. “They never gave up,” he said, “and we were tied 2–2 at the end of the second period in the final. Before the game I had bought a cheap hand-mirror with a handle. In the dressing room between the second and third periods I had all the players close their eyes. I told them that when I tapped them on the shoulder they were to open their eyes for a second and look at the picture of the person who would make the difference in the third period.” He then went around the room and in succession tapped each player on the shoulder while he held the mirror up to their face. The players rose to the occasion and won the game 5–2.
I had Marco tell my students that story the following morning. I asked the class how many of them wished their son or daughter had a coach like Marco, and every hand went up. We all, as parents, rejoice when our children get a teacher or a coach who has that developmental bias.