I started this blog in my mind this morning while driving to another great “practice” session. Tom helped me finish it.
Tom started our morning session with an announcement. He was NOT looking forward to our session. He had been making incremental progress through the first handful of our practices. The last one…not so much. He was experiencing a “hiccup” in his performance and he didn’t like it. He liked it much better when he felt “little” gains from his efforts.
Tom had bought into another lie.
He expected his performance to improve incrementally. His expectation was that, “slowly but surely” he would get better and better and better. Most of us share a similar belief. We expect a corresponding return from our investment…regardless of what or WHO it is with. We expect things to be linear. They, and we, are NOT.
I am a cyclist. Actually, cycling is my favorite hobby. Nobody pays me to ride…I just love to. Actually I love to go fast.
I ride all year long. I rarely go fast. During the spring I always wonder if this is the year that it “won’t happen.” You see every year, about now, I begin to question why I train so hard. I ride and I ride and the speed stays…the same. I EXPECT a linear progression to my effort. It does not happen. I oftentimes start to lose hope. Then it happens. I go faster. I stay a “lot longer” on the wednesday night ride! My performance BURSTS.
As I’ve become a student of high performance individuals, teams, and leaders I’ve come to notice this as a recurring pattern. We do not progress in a linear fashion. We suddenly lose weight, gain speed, build confidence, grasp a concept, improve sales and on and on it goes. We need to TRUST the process.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in his book, THE BLACK SWAN explains. “Nonlinear relationships are ubiquitous in life. Linear relationships are truly the exception; we only focus on them in classrooms and textbooks because they are easier to understand.
You play tennis every day with no improvement, then suddenly you start beating the pro.
Your child does not seem to have a learning impediment, but he does not seem to want to speak. The schoolmaster pressures you to start considering “other options,” namely therapy. You argue with her to no avail. Then, suddenly, the child starts composing elaborate sentence, perhaps a bit too elaborate for his age group. I will repeat that linear progression, a Platonic idea, is NOT the norm.”
We BURST.
At BUILT TO LEAD we build strong individuals, teams, and leaders. We practice hard using the 12 8 4 2 as our process. Our sessions are nonlinear. The feel like “fits and starts” more than anything. We have a front row seat to see plenty of BURSTS. And see them we do. We watch people breakthrough. We watch people experiment. We watch people fall. We watch people get it. We watch people GROW.
Do not worry if your performance gains are nonlinear.
Trust the process.
Keep riding hard.
Your speed will come.
Thanks Tom.
BUILT TO LEAD 