Next week marks the 21st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests.The people of China converged on the capital hoping to cleanse the party of corruption and encourage free speech.On June 5th, 1989 the Chinese government cracked down on the Tiananmen Square protests with tanks and soldiers armed with semiautomatic weapons.After a day of brutal attacks on its people, one man decided to stand up and take extraordinary action.
The tank man was an ordinary person, probably on his way home from work, briefcase and groceries in hand.I imagine he was disgusted at what he had seen in the previous days.He had enough and stood in front of a column of tanks to stop them.He then climbed on top of the tank and he began to scream at the commander in the lead tank.It is clear at this point, that tank man is willing to risk his life.
Little is known about this mans identity.His lone act of defiance becomes an icon of freedom across the globe.He became an inspiration to millions and he changed lives forever.Since the day tank man made his heroic stand, his country has changed beyond recognition (enter capitalism). China will never be the same again.
What gave this ordinary man the will power to stand up, speak out and risk his life?
“The rose has no ‘why’, it blooms when it blooms. It doesn’t watch itself or wonder if anyone else sees it.”
Angelus Silesius, the German mystic shares this poetic insight to remind us about what’s important when we we’re looking to perform at our peak. As leaders, peak performance is attained when we have focused attention in the right direction. We limit ourselves and our ability to perform at our highest capacity when our attention is singularly focused on what others are doing, or when we get caught up in what others think about what we’re doing.
For leaders, we perform best when we are in it to win it. In other words, when we are focused on the goal we are working towards or the project of which we are a part, our chance for optimal performance increases exponentially. The leader, like the rose, will bloom when s/he keeps the goal or project front and center.
Being in the wine & spirits business, the first iconic figure I think of when I hear the term "performance," is Gary Vaynerchuk or as most of us know him, "Gary V." Gary V is a multifaceted icon known for his wine advice, the energetic host of Wine Library TV, a recent New York Times best selling author (Crush it! Why now is the Time to Cash in your Passion), and a video blogger who’s turned into a social media genius. He has proven to be a largely successful businessman that loves his business, people, and most importantly, the hustle.
To understand how Gary V maintains his performance edge, let’s take a look into his attitude on business and life. Here are a few bullet-points on Gary V and what it means to perform at your best:
It takes a boatload of patience to be able to perform at a high level.
If you ever watch or listen to Gary V, he appears anything but patient. He’s aggressive and in your face…almost to an unbearable level. However, behind the scenes you will notice a businessman who exudes what it means to remain patient. For years, Gary and his family primarily utilized traditional advertising techniques to build his family’s local wine business. This expanded over generations and they were able to turn a small business into a prominent wine distributor/seller. However, Gary saw more potential in his family’s business. That’s when he turned to new social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to promote Wine Library TV (his video blog about wine). This allowed him to turn his family’s wine business into a national industry leader where he leveraged a dual identity as both business guru and wine expert. Although from his social media success it may appear that his business success was rapid and overnight, his business was already established and had a great reputation from a life-long process his parents worked so hard at. With patience, Gary V was able to grow his family’s business and dreams into something bigger than ever expected. Without patience, it would have never occurred.
Work/work balance = focus.
Just as important as maintaining a work/life balance is maintaining a work/work balance. Gary shows us that in order to perform at our best, we will need to perform with focus and purpose. In order to perform to our best ability, we need to be organized, not only in the office but in our minds. To maintain a work/work balance requires clarity around business vision and direction. It means having a plan and committing to that plan. As Gary V says, it doesn’t make sense to have “1 ass on 10 toilets”. He shows us that performing on the cutting edge requires us to create and maintain focus, while getting lean mentally, physically, and businesswise. By taking the time to create focus, we achieve quality performance as opposed to quantity. And quality performance will drastically improve quantity profit.
Do what you love.
More than anything he does, he brings passion into everything he gets involved in. He's unpretentious in his techniques and makes learning about wine fun because he loves what he does. He states, "Do what you love. Love your damn family and crush it." Working hard is a given to be successful in business, but without the passion to work hard, we cannot perform. Like Gary, we must endeavor to be the ultimate performer of our own content, be it on the web, with our hands, or with our minds. Performer and performance are inseparable concepts. You can't perform a "cover" of someone else's passion, but you can create your own, believe in it, and put yourself in a position to CRUSH IT!
Raju is a business owner in New Jersey. He graduated from Boston College with a bachelors in finance and philosophy. After trading on Wall Street for many years, Raj shifted focus to pursue his entrepreneurial interests. He is a co-founder of iB-LIEVE and the director of product development.
Recently, I was walking through an airport in Baltimore, Maryland trying to kill time during a lay over before my next flight took off to my final destination. I saw a book that immediately intrigued me, “Shop Class as Soulcraft”, by Matthew Crawford. The book is about how manual labor (working with one’s hands) has become a lost art only to be replaced by cubicle work and hours spent detached from life, staring at a computer screen; the former being intellectually stimulating and a gateway towards spiritual development and the latter resulting in apathetic and indifference to life in general. What caught my interest even more then the topic of the book was that word, SOULCRAFT and how it can directly be related to coaching and leading athletes towards peak performance.
The journey towards peak performance and individual excellence should, above all things, be soul-centered human development, soulcraft…Disguised by the hours of physical training, hidden underneath the hundreds of pounds of weights lifted, and long before the finish line is in sight you will find SOULCRAFT. It is betterment from the inside out. It is the invisible development that is mostly felt and not seen. Unfortunately it gets lost in the never ending effort to get bigger, faster, and stronger.
Whether your training of choice be strength training, speed training, cycling, swimming, yoga, tai-chi or any other movement-based training you are not only bettering your physical self but also your spiritual self, your soul. Most athletes, especially those younger athletes, have trouble getting past the tangible, comparatively obvious benefits of physical, movement-based training, the larger muscles and the faster movements. However, after years of training (at any craft) it becomes quite obvious that your soul is on that same path of development. It is a challenge for all coaches to instill an understanding and awareness that spiritual development might be the most important aspect of any athlete’s efforts toward optimizing performance. My rationale is this: If you are a sprinter and spend hours a day mastering the mechanics of your stride, both length and frequency and hours developing the appropriate musculature for an explosive start and a strong finish so that at the end of the day (career) when father-time creeps up and your muscles simply don’t fire as fast as they used to, what do you have left??? You have a body that was once fast but a mind and soul that will forever (as long as you are alive) be strong, resilient and poised, traits that can result from challenges of training and competition.
In my opinion it is essential for a coach to instill in his/her athletes that you are not only training for your sport you are training for your life.
Check out these books for interesting readings on the topic:
In January 2008 a well-known U.S. Senator became the front-runner in the Presidential election with some very smart campaigning and an excellent campaign slogan – Change We Can Believe in. President Barack Obama changed the communication landscape in political campaigns by using new and creative ways to fuel and grow his community. In creating a concise and clear message that resonated with the temperature of the country and cut through race and gender, he was able to engage and energize a community of change makers that wanted to make a difference.
Political campaigns are about making personal connections with voters that will leave a positive impression until Election Day. Realistically candidates are unable to shake everyone’s hand, kiss each baby’s forehead, and sit down at the kitchen table of every home. But instead they create a communication strategy that allows the candidate to “touch” each voter in some fashion before they go to the polls. And Obama’s campaign revolutionized a new medium that will forever change the political scene.
“Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be president.” said Arianna Huffington, editor in chief of The Huffington Post. YouTube allowed Obama free advertisements with his commercials. Facebook and MySpace provided a platform for people to talk about the issues relevant to them and their families. And the campaign used an assortment of websites to leverage small donors and collect millions in online donations of less than $100. In other words, Obama became a one-man viral marketing campaign.
Two years later Obama’s administration continues to use these channels to communicate to their constituents. They believe, just like many of us do, that the family no longer congregates at the kitchen table, or in front of the TV, but rather online.
Communication is far more complex than a simple exchange of information between people. Think about it. We’ve spent a lifetime trying to master communication (consciously and subconsciously) and yet we still struggle with it! Why is communicating so difficult? Why can’t we just communicate and be done with it?
Although there are many elements to communication, I’d like to zoom in on one element that I believe to be the most critical. It’s an element overlooked by many and butchered by many more. We’re talking about nonverbal communication. Body language! Nonverbal communication is the process of communication in which we send and receive wordless messages. It’s something we have grown accustomed to all our lives and its how we naturally communicate with the world.
In fact, research shows that the majority of our communication is nonverbal. That means we communicate with each other more without even uttering a single word! We do this with our facial expressions, our gestures, how long we maintain eye contact, our posture, how we roll our eyes, sigh, or even change the tone of our voice. We simply communicate by living!
The point is, we are always communicating. And even when we are not communicating, we are still communicating! We are sending nonverbal messages to everyone around us at all times! Becoming aware of this simple fact can help us become excellent communicators.
Gaining awareness of our body language and the body language of our peers allows us the ability to gain understanding of what it might indicate within those experiences. By doing so, we may be able to communicate more effectively with each other and enrich the entire experience.
To put this idea into perspective, take a step back and become aware of the nonverbal communication you’re exercising right now. As you’re reading my blog, notice your posture. Are you slouched? Are you sitting upright? If I were to see you reading these very words, would I think you’re engaged? Would I think you’re bored?
Taking the insight gained from this little exercise on your body language in your day to day activities, turn outward and apply what you’ve learned in other situations throughout the day. Remember to ask yourself, “What message am I sending right now?”
“Stories are the language of leadership…real power emanates from our ability to connect to ourselves and those around us.” Kevin Cashman shares this insight in his book, Leadership from the Inside Out.
What stories are you a part of? What stories have influenced you and brought you significant learning and transformation? More importantly, what stories are you communicating? Take a moment to think about those questions and please share some comments and responses.
In order to be the powerful leaders Cashman describes, our job is to two fold: connect with ourselves and connect with others. To connect with others, leaders need to share stories. By storytelling, we powerfully communicate who we are and what we are about – our vision and goals. Doing so enables others to get on board, to get excited, and to get in the mood for partnership or collaboration. To connect with ourselves, leaders need to listen authentically. By listening to others, we take in new information. This new information leads to new learning. And by reflecting upon that new learning, we connect to ourselves.
Posts
