Step Up Your Performance
I’m preparing for 5 workshops I’m running throughout Spring 2007 and one of my favourite topics is Performance Excellence.
What I love most about this topic is best phrased in a quote by one of my favourite speakers and authors, Dr Wayne Dyer “True nobility is about being better than you used to be!”
Too often we compare ourselves to other people and when we do this, we devalue and demotivate ourselves to take action; it also affects our self confidence.
In reality, at any point in time we can make a choice to improve or ’step up’ (personally, I think this is a much more positive and preferred phrase) our performance, if we look at where we currently are and how we would like to be.
I believe this story of a young father, will illustrate my point.
Adrian is now 32 years old, he was married in his mid-20s to a lovely lady called Samantha he’d met a few years earlier at University. They decided that they wanted to start a family soon and within a few years they had 2 gorgeous children, who put Adrian and Samantha through all the trials and tribulations children are known to be able to put their parents through!
Adrian’s biggest life challenge at that time was juggling his career with his family commitments. At about the same time that the second child was born, he was given a fantastic opportunity to progress in his career, which meant he would also be travelling abroad a lot more than ever before.
Adrian wanted the promotion, and he wanted to be there for his children, to be an active father in their lives and a supportive husband to his wife.
If you’ve faced this challenge yourself in your life, as the career parent or the one who’s at home with the child, you will know exactly the dilemmas Adrian found himself facing.
When I coached Adrian on this matter a number of years ago, his key goal was to perform to the best of his ability in both situations, to make the most of both opportunities (good father/husband and career progress), and to create a win-win situation for all those involved.
And, with this attitude, and with a clear picture and awareness of what he wanted to achieve, Adrian made it happen.
How did he do this? In Adrian’s case he made a decision to set boundaries and in this way he leveraged his time, so that time spent at work or travelling for work was maximised. He made sure meetings were focused, lunch appointments with clients had a finite timescale and he used ‘dead’ travel time for documentation and email contact, as he was required to do.
This gave him the freedom to give dedicated quality time to his family when he was with them, without the distractions and interruptions that too often busy business people find themselves dealing with in their private time.
Adrian made sure that private time was private, and work time was for work.
5 workshops in Spring 2007.
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