Coach to the Contrary

I have the priv­i­lege of facil­i­tat­ing a break­out ses­sion at this year’s Build­ing Cham­pi­ons Expe­ri­ence enti­tled “Simplicity.”

I love this topic, as I spent my early years (from the womb until about age eight) liv­ing quite sim­ply. Then my life became very chaotic, which only increased when I was 13. My father left home one day, and I had to go to work full time (I lied and said I was 16). For the next 35 or so years, life has been, well….complex.

In my 40’s, how­ever, I gained a sig­nif­i­cant appre­ci­a­tion for “pro­found sim­plic­ity,” as described by Will Schutz (a social psy­chol­o­gist). The more I live and the more I coach, the more I real­ize my role in help­ing oth­ers to nav­i­gate through the chaos and com­plex­ity, and emerge with “pro­found simplicity.”

In my BCE 2010 ses­sion this year, I will begin by aggres­sively chal­leng­ing my audi­ence with the fol­low­ing queries:

“How do you really come to know what is most impor­tant to a per­son? A company?”

“Is there one sure-fire way to deter­mine what a per­son or com­pany truly defines as success?”

The typ­i­cal responses I get are cen­tered around the person’s vision, what is in their heart, etc. More often than not, I hear that a person’s def­i­n­i­tion of suc­cess revolves around their inten­tions. To this I say HOGWASH.

If you really want to under­stand what a per­son or com­pany defines as suc­cess, then observe the one best indi­ca­tor: HOW DO THEY KEEP SCORE?

If you gen­uinely want to sim­plify your life, you have to start with defin­ing your real­ity. I believe the key definer of real­ity is WHAT and HOW you mea­sure. This may take a while to dis­cover, because most of us do not know — or do not want to admit — how we really keep score.

Think about your per­sonal and pro­fes­sional life. You are con­stantly keep­ing score.

“How did my daugh­ter do on her last test?”
“Did we get a good deal?”
“How can THEY afford a new car when we still have to drive the 1997 Out­back with 155K miles?”
“How much is my house worth NOW?”
“How much is in my retire­ment account this week?”

Peo­ple keep score through two pri­mary ways: they are either con­stantly com­par­ing or com­pet­ing. This is exactly the trail you need to fol­low to find out how some­one really defines success.

Often, we learned to keep score through our par­ents. Con­sider your own par­ents. What was the score­board for their rela­tion­ship? For rais­ing you? What “score­board” do you refer to reg­u­larly with your chil­dren? How you choose to keep score for your­self, your spouse, and your chil­dren will have a far greater impact on their lives than you may intend.

Lis­ten long enough to what a per­son says, and you will dis­cover how they keep score. They may say one thing — “I have a vision for this,” or “I want this for my chil­dren” — but we all lead with inten­tions. Don’t con­fuse inten­tions with a person’s true def­i­n­i­tion of success.

If you’ll be attend­ing The Expe­ri­ence this Sep­tem­ber, I hope you’ll join me for fur­ther dis­cus­sion on this topic! Break­out reg­is­tra­tion is avail­able here.

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