Leadership Game

“Common sense would suggest that having ability, like being smart, inspires confidence. It does, but only while the going is easy. The deciding factor in life is how you handle setbacks and challenges. People with a growth mindset welcome setbacks with open arms.” Travis Bradberry

Sport is such a wonderful arena for providing opportunities to be challenged, to learn about yourself and to grow. It provides so many parallels to business and lessons in overcoming challenges.

On Sunday we played in a knockout competition. To progress in the competition, we needed to win… so the pressure was real. At times we were in flow and scoring points seemed to come easier to us than our competitors. Yet when we got “comfortable”, we would take our eye off the ball and let our competitors back in to the game.

So when you take your eye off the ball or things don’t go your way, how do you work to keep on track? Here are 3 tips that helped us:

  • Get perspective (What is the reality of your situation) – too often we get wrapped up in the disappointment of not performing or not meeting expectations we have set for ourselves. Reality is, we are probably still performing and just need to tweak how we are doing things to get better results

  • Where is your focus – challenges happen and setback occur, yet dwelling on these and spending your time wondering what you could have done differently isn’t where you need to focus. They’ve happened, you can’t change that… so accept this and shift your focus to what next action you need to take

  • Keep one eye on what you want – a number of times throughout our game we checked in on why we were playing well, and it came back to playing smart. Assessing our situation and consistently making the right choices for where we were now, with one eye on where we needed to get to. This works equally for business, always needing to keep one eye on the long term.

This week, as Nick and I did on the weekend, keep checking in to see how you are going. Are you on track to achieve your desired results and if not, what can you do now to create change to get back on track. You are the one who can then take action to make this change.

We would love for you to forward this on to those in your networks so they will get value from our regular tips. If you want to be that leader who sets the standard, send us a note at strategy@mentorisgroup.com.au and let’s chat about how we can add value.

Have an awesome week!

Cheers
Paul Farmer
Managing Director
http://www.mentorisgroup.com.au