Ever catch yourself thinking about a high achiever and saying: ‘he’s a natural’; or ‘she’s a lot smarter than me’; or ’that person is so much more experienced than I am’?

According to the research reported in Geoff Colvin’s recent Talent is Overrated (2008), those reasons aren’t valid. Look around you:

Top performers are NOT generally:

Naturally gifted – most of the people who became the most accomplished in their field “did not show early evidence of gifts.”

Exclusively hard workers – we all know people who work plenty of hours who achieve average results

More experienced – we all know people with more experience than us who get average results

Higher in IQ – we all know people who are smarter than us who get average results

Born with great memories – you get the point?!

-          And believing these things simply gives people an excuse to be mediocre.

1. The key message in this book is that superior performers pursue DELIBERATE PRACTICE in areas that address specific skills that take them AROUND their limitations.

One great example is Jerry Rice, the former San Francisco 49er (since we’re not professional athletes, look for the concepts here). The records he holds are not 5 or 10 percent higher than the person in second place (which would still be impressive) but 50%! He played 20 seasons until he was 42 in a position where the average player lasts about 7.Yet he was not considered fast by professional standards.

His success came “because he worked harder in practice and in the off-season than anyone else” AND because he designed his practice to work on his specific needs – on the four things he had to excel in to compensate for his lack of speed: running precise patterns (strength training); explosive acceleration (uphill wind sprints); endurance training for stamina late in games; and changing directions suddenly without signaling his intent (trail running).

His off-season training regimen was considered so brutal that his coaches refused to share it with anyone for fear they might damage themselves!

The point here is that it’s not just graft that gets you places; it’s the right kind of practice activity that can help you get better results.

2. The crucial question to think through is: what’s the most important activity for making me better at what I do?

Do you need to practice how you run your first appointments so they lead to more meetings? Or how you make prospecting calls? Look at the results you get from asking for referrals (which is a specific skill you can practice), your networking activities and coffees with potential centers of influence. Could they be sending you more referrals? The likely answer is yes. Would it be worth joining someone you know who runs such meetings well and learning from them? Perhaps your biggest challenge is planning-related.

The only way to be more effective prospecting or as a networker is to do it AND to be learning more about what the most effective networkers do. It’s a skill to learn – just like getting more referrals. The best resource I’ve ever come across is Thomas J Stanley’s Networking with Millionaires. Email me for other recommendations.

3. Superior performers perceive more, know more and remember more

They notice things average performers do not; they look further ahead for trends; they know more from seeing less; they are more expert in their field because they study more; their ability to recall and interpret information is superior too; they see themselves as responsible for the things that do not go well; they are always getting better; and they are always overstraining themselves mentally or physically.

Most of these things you can decide to start doing more of today too!

4. Getting there is tough but is available to almost anyone: “Landing on your butt twenty thousand times is where great performance comes from.”

The highest achievers in any field have accumulated many more lifetime hours of practice than everyone else. Colvin calls it the Ten-year Rule (ten years before you can become acclaimed) which is rather similar to what other research has called the 10,000 Hour Rule. This is the dominant reason why so-called child prodigies appear to be innately talented. Tiger Woods’ father had a metal golf club in his son’s hands from the age of 7 MONTHS and on a golf course at 2 years old! Mozart’s father had his son on a program of intensive training in composition and performing at age three.

And great advisors get there the same way great tennis players do.

5. The chief constraint is MENTAL for those who also want to be high achievers.

You won’t make any progress if you work hard and then just do things in your comfort zone. You need to face your fears.

University of Michigan’s Noel Tichy has identified three areas: the comfort zone (useless), the learning zone (great) and, beyond that, the panic zone (unproductive). To become top of your game, you must be getting in your learning zone as much as possible “and then forcing (yourself) to stay continuously in it as it changes, which is even harder – these are the first and most important characteristics of deliberate practice.”

The great mental intangible to sustaining this is your motivation. Colvin reports that most researchers believe that drive must be primarily intrinsic because of the sacrifices necessary to be the best. It is founded in people’s desire to solve a great question or problem in their field (enjoying their focus on the process not the outcome/goal), to do good, to make progress, to be the best, be an achiever or desire power.

A great example of this is that most eminent executives and entrepreneurs keep working long after they need to. What’s the first thing Bill Cosby did when he sold the rights to The Cosby Show for $25,000,000? He took a red eye flight to Vegas so he could start practicing his stand up routine for a new show.

Nonetheless, some extrinsic motivation is effective for others at times, especially recognition and feedback that is constructive, nonthreatening and work rather than person focused.

6. Much of this boils down to what you want in life, what you believe you’re capable of doing and the belief that your work will pay off.

Passion develops over time based on how much action you take. The “Eureka” moment of a genius idea is mostly a myth and generally comes after years of intensive preparation.

7. Support, feedback, repetition and activity designed to improve performance

“No one becomes extraordinary on his own.” Especially at critical times in their development, Colvin recommends the importance of an outside eye to see the things you cannot not see about yourself.

“It’s apparent why becoming significantly good at almost anything is extremely difficult without the help of a teacher or coach, at least in the early going.” He says there’s a reason why the best golfers still work with coaches. A supportive environment matters.

8. “If the activities that led to greatness were easy and fun, then everyone would do them,”

“and they would not distinguish the best from the rest. The reality that deliberate practice is hard can even be seen as good news. It means that most people won’t do it. So your willingness to do it will distinguish you all the more.”

Lastly, Colvin does say that NOTHING can fully explain achievement because “real life is too complicated for that”. However, clearly there is much that can be done by each of us to move beyond being average and aiming to make more of a difference and ultimately becoming one of the best in our field. Good luck on your journey!

Thanks for reading this. Please forward it on.

Author: Matt Anderson, The Referral Authority, Author of Fearless Referrals

www.TheReferralAuthority.com

www.LoyaltyEzine.com

Today I would like to honor and acknowledge the incredible courage of those who have survived severe wartime injuries. The most gut-wrenching articles I have read in some time are about both British soldiers and Iraqi civilians who have lost limbs because of explosions. While I suppose this subject has little to do with business, I believe these are crucial takeaways that not only put life into perspective but teach us all to be more connected to others which, in my opinion, will improve us as a caring human being whom others would prefer to do business with.

20 year-old Matthew Weston of the Royal Engineers was clearing a dirt track of mines in one of the most dangerous parts of Helmand, Afghanistan in July 2009. Night had fallen. As he turned to give the all-clear, a blast ripped through his body blowing off both of his legs. He had stepped on an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). These are littered throughout narrow alleyways used to deadly effect by Taliban soldiers. “I was the man at the front. I didn’t have any night-vision equipment. They just didn’t have enough to go round.” Surgeons never thought he would survive after losing seven pints of blood, part of his intestine and his spleen. He was unconscious for a week and woke up to find himself back in England with his sister by his bedside. Last summer British soldiers ran a one-in-three chance of being blown up every time they left the main base. To make matters worse, soldiers say that the Taliban lace IEDs with bacteria from untreated sewage, increasing the chances of infection.

Many amputees suffer crippling pain in arms and legs that do not exist. It is common for them to have hallucinations, flashbacks and to wake up in cold sweats screaming after stepping on imaginary IEDs. London Times writer Miles Amoore was covering the combat only to return to England after his brother, James, stepped on an IED and was seriously wounded.

The emotional journey for most of the soldiers can be a long one that starts with feelings that go from despair to denial and anger: Matthew Weston: “There were days when I didn’t see the point in going on. You see murderers in prison that are completely fine. They don’t contribute at all, they waste oxygen. You think, ‘Why did it happen to me?’I never harmed anyone.”

But it moves to a gradual acceptance. As Rifleman Daniel Shaw, age 18, puts it: “Right, my legs are gone, there’s no point in moaning about it. There’s no point in being suicidal. I might as well crack on.”

“Once you can talk about your wounds, then they become something so boring you get past them and come to terms with them,” says Lt Alex Horsfall. Journalist Amoore wrote: “I watched them come back to life. Their resilient personalities began to plug the mental fissures ripped open by the bullets and shrapnel.”

Despite the fact that there are constant surgeries, phantom pains and life-changing injuries, “the soldiers remain stoic. There were only six legs between the six wounded soldiers in my brother’s bay. And yet I watched them laugh about their wounds, hit on the nurses and play practical jokes on each other.” Clearly the power of a sense of humor even in the darkest of times goes further than we can imagine.

In Daniel Gilberts’ Stumbling onto Happiness, the Harvard psychology professor cites studies that show that over time people who have become disabled consider themselves happier than those who win the lottery! “They’re unbelievably positive and they always surprise you,” said Alice Croft, an intensive-care unit nurse. “They make us laugh; they ask us out when they wake up. They find a way of dealing with the massive injuries they have and taking it on the chin.”

There is still the challenging realization of not being able to do what they had done in the past – cutting food, dressing themselves, writing, and walking. One of the solutions they have found is setting goals – learning to write with hands missing fingers and learning to walk on prosthetic limbs. Rifleman Paul Jacobs, 20, who lost one eye in a blast and took shrapnel to his other wants to climb Mount Kilimanjaro once he has finished rehabilitation.

Lt Alex Horsfall: “I have realized that there is a huge amount to life that is unappreciated until limbs are lost. You will be chuckling when I am running faster than Usain Bolt on some ridiculous, metallic, spring contraption.”

Most of us will never come close to experiencing such trauma, yet we can learn much from how these soldiers have responded. It can also remind us of the sacrifices some people are willing to make, to put our own daily worries into new perspective and of how much we have to be thankful for.

I was deeply disturbed, riveted, humbled and awed by the actions, attitudes and thoughts of the people I read about and the pictures I saw. You can help wounded soldiers by making a donation online at www.helpforheroes.org

Thanks for reading this. Please forward it on.

Author: Matt Anderson, The Referral Authority

www.TheReferralAuthority.com