Many people with talent make it into the limelight, but the ones who have neglected to develop strong character rarely stay there long. Absence of strong character eventually topples talent. Why? Because people cannot climb beyond the limitations of their character. Talented people are sometimes tempted to take shortcuts. Character prevents that. Talented people may feel superior and expect special privileges. Character helps them to know better. Talented people are praised for what others see them build. Character builds what’s inside them. Talented people have the potential to be difference makers. Character makes a difference in them. Talented people are often a gift to the world. Character protects that gift.
When it comes to talent, everything is not always as it seems to the casual observer. Sometimes what appears to be a huge success isn’t. And in time, the truth comes out. That was the case for Dr. Hwang Woo Suk.
Strong on the Surface
In 2004, Time published its annual list of “People Who Mattered” in a special issue of the magazine. Among those cited was Hwang Woo Suk. The brief article accompanying his picture stated,
A veterinarian by training, Hwang began to research cloning for a practical purpose: he wanted to create a better cow. But his work didn’t stop in the barnyard. Hwang and his team at Seoul National University became the first to clone human embryos capable of yielding viable stem cells that might one day cure countless diseases. While such research raises troubling ethical questions, Hwang has already proved that human cloning is no longer science fiction, but a fact of life.
The recognition by Time was just the latest in many honors and much adulation Hwang had received. His was an incredible success story. He grew up in a poor mountain town in South Korea. The son of a widow, he had worked his way through school, earning money by laboring on a farm. After receiving his bachelor’s degree, he was advised to become a medical doctor. But he had another vision. He wanted to create a genetically superior cow for his nation. He earned his doctorate in veterinary medicine, and then after a couple of years practicing as a veterinarian, he entered the field of scientific research.
His talent was incredible—his drive remarkable. Both carried him all the way to a professorship at Seoul National University. It was there that he first gained attention in the scientific community. In 1999 he announced that he had succeeded in cloning a dairy cow. He became a national celebrity in South Korea. But he made a much greater impression in early 2004 when he announced that he had succeeded in creating human embryonic stem cells through cloning. Up to that time most experts around the world believed that cloning any kind of primate would be impossible because of the complexity of the genetic structure. Hwang followed his announcement to the media with an article in a prestigious scientific journal.
In 2005, Hwang announced additional breakthroughs and published them as well. He also announced that he had successfully cloned a dog—an Afghan hound that he named Snuppy. Hwang became an international celebrity among scientists and a national hero in Korea where he was a favorite of the nation’s president. He was regarded as one of the top experts on stem cells in the world. He already held the prestigious POSCO (Pohang Iron and Steel Company) Chair as a professor at Seoul National University. To that were added an appointment to lead the World Stem Cell Hub, the title “Supreme Scientist” by Korea’s Ministry of Science and Technology, and the creation of a postage stamp honor, depicting a man in a wheelchair getting up and walking as a result of his research. And he was receiving the equivalent of millions of dollars in financial support for his work. His talent and hard work had paid off, and he was at the pinnacle of his career and one of the most respected scientists in the world.
Questions
At year a shadow was cast over Hwang’s work. An American scientist with whom he had published his stem cell research suddenly announced that he would no longer collaborate with Hwang. The other scientist said his reason was a concern about the way eggs had been collected from donors during Hwang’s work. Soon afterward, another colleague of Hwang, Roh Sung-il, admitted that he had collected eggs from their junior researchers and had paid some donors, both ethical violations. Of great concern was the possibility that donors had been coerced. Hwang claimed that he hadn’t been aware of Roh’s actions until after the fact and that he later hadn’t identified the researchers as egg donors to protect their privacy.
Despite these ethical concerns, support for Hwang remained high. In South Korea, people who criticized him were often deemed unpatriotic. There were large public rallies to support the scientist. And Korea’s president, Roh Moohyun, had always supported Hwang. He stated, “It is not possible nor desirable to prohibit research, just because there are concerns that it may lead to a direction that is deemed unethical,” and “Politicians have a responsibility to manage bioethical controversies, not to get in the way of this outstanding research and progress.” What mattered most to the people was that there had been a scientific breakthrough.
However, while most of his countrymen cheered, a group of young Korean scientists grew skeptical of his claims. And a Korean investigative television show, similar to 60 Minutes in the United States, criticized Hwang’s research methods and questioned his work. In response, Hwang offered to resign from all of his official posts, but also defended himself. “I was blinded by work and my drive for achievement,” he stated. Even as late as December 2005, Hwang insisted that he had merely acted to protect the identity of the egg donors. A month later, the truth came out.
The Real Story
Things began to unravel when a journal that had published one of Hwang’s articles issued a retraction and Seoul National University created a panel to investigate Hwang’s work. On January 10, 2006, the panel announced an amazing conclusion: Hwang had fabricated all of his stem cell research. Then other reports surfaced, saying Hwang had forced one female researcher to donate her own eggs after she accidentally knocked over Petri dishes containing eggs from other donors. Questions followed about how he had spent $2.6 million of the nearly $40 million in funding he had received. On May 12, 2006, Hwang was indicted on embezzlement and bioethics law violations.
Had Hwang told the truth about anything? Was there any evidence that the scientist really did have talent? Or were all of his claims lies? No, as it turns out, he did tell the truth about one breakthrough— Snuppy the Afghan hound. Hwang and his team truly had been the first in the world to clone a dog. But the rest simply wasn’t true.
What happened to Hwang Woo Suk? Had his talent let him down? No, he had enough talent. What failed him was his character. Because it was weak, it neglected to protect his talent. And now his talent—no matter how great—is irrelevant. His career is over.
The Components of Character
People are like icebergs. There’s much more to them than meets the eye. When you look at an iceberg, only about 15 percent is visible—that’s talent. The rest—their character—is below the surface, hidden. It’s what they think and never share with others. It’s what they do when no one is watching them. It’s how they react to terrible traffic and other everyday aggravations. It’s how they handle failure—and success. The greater their talent is, the greater their need is for strong character “below the surface” to sustain them. If they are too “top heavy” with talent, then they are likely to get into trouble, as Dr. Hwang did.
Tim Elmore, who worked for me many years and is the founder and president of Growing Leaders, is the first person I heard compare character to an iceberg. When he speaks to college students, he often tells some little-known details about the infamous sinking of the Titanic.
The huge and unsinkable ship received five iceberg warnings that fateful night of April 14, 1912, just before it went down. When the sixth message came in during the wee hours of the next morning, “Look out for icebergs,” the operator wired back, “Shut up! I’m busy.” Those were his last words over the wire before it all happened. Exactly thirty minutes later, the great vessel—the one whose captain said even God couldn’t sink this ship—was sinking . . . They underestimated the power of the iceberg and overestimated their own strength. What an accurate description of so many people today.
No one can expect to succeed without strong character below the surface to protect his talent and sustain him during difficult times. Character holds us steady, no matter how rough the storm becomes. Or to put it another way, as David McLendon did when we spent time together recently, “Character is the pedestal that determines how much weight a person can sustain. If your character is the size of- a tooth pick, you can only sustain a postage stamp. If your character is as thick as a column, you can sustain a roof.”
So what exactly comprises character? Ask a dozen people and you’ll get a dozen answers. I believe it boils down to four elements: (1) self-discipline, (2) core, values, (3) a sense of identity, and (4) integrity. Let’s consider each of them:
1. Self-Discipline
At the most basic level, self-discipline is the ability to do what is right even when you don’t feel like doing it. Outstanding leaders and achievers throughout history understood this. Greek philosopher Plato asserted, “The first and best victory is to conquer self.”
The greatest victories are internal ones. Oswald Sanders, the author of the book on leadership that launched my personal journey as a leader, Spiritual Leadership, wrote that the future is with the disciplined. He said that without self-discipline, a leader’s other gifts—however great—will never realize their maximum potential. That’s true not only of leaders but also of anyone who wants to reach his or her potential. Talent alone is never enough. A person must have talent plus character. The battle for self-discipline is won within. The notable mountain climber Sir Edmund Hillary observed, “It’s not the mountains we conquer, but ourselves.”
One of the joys of my life is playing golf. I only wish my talent matched my passion! I have had the privilege of playing the East Lake course in Atlanta, home course of golf legend Bobby Jones, considered by some to be the greatest golfer who ever played the game. The club house is filled with pictures of him playing and with many of his championship trophies. Yet many people don’t know that Jones’s most significant victory was over himself.
Jones began playing golf at age five and won his first tournament at age six. By age twelve he was winning tournaments against adults. But Jones had a temper. His nickname was “Club Thrower.” An older gentleman called Grandpa Bart, who had retired from golf but worked in the pro shop, recognized Jones s talent and his character issues. After Jones made it to the third round of the U.S. Amateur Championship, the older man advised, “Bobby, you are good enough to win. That tournament, but you’ll never win until you can control that temper of yours. You miss a shot— you get upset—and then you lose.” Jones did master his temper and won his first U.S. Open when he was twenty-one. Grandpa Bart used to say, “Bobby was fourteen when he mastered the game of golf but he was twenty-one when he mastered himself.”
English theologian and orator Henry Parry Liddon observed, “What we do on some great occasion will probably depend on what we already are; and what we are will be the result of previous years of self-discipline.” The first step to strong character is conquering self.
2. Core Values
Our core values are the principles we live by every day. They define what we believe and how we live. Ideally we should write out our core values so that they become a clear beacon we can always use to guide us.
One person I most admire is John Wooden, the Hall of Fame former coach of UCLA’s basketball team. When he graduated from grade school at twelve years old, his father gave him a seven-point creed. From that time, Wooden has carried a written copy of that creed with him every day. Here is what it says:
1. Be true to yourself.
2. Help others.
3. Make each day your masterpiece.
4. Drink deeply from good books, especially the Bible.
5. Make friendship a fine art.
6. Build a shelter against a rainy day.
7. Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings every day.
I had read about the creed, and when I got to meet Coach Wooden, I asked him about it. Sitting in a restaurant at breakfast, he pulled a copy out of his pocket and showed it to me. Of course, since he has it memorized, he doesn’t need to carry a copy with him, but it has been his lifelong practice. Most important, he has always carried it in his heart and sought to live it out every day.
Swiss philosopher Henri Frederic Amiel stated, “The man who has no inner life is the slave of his surroundings.” Core values give order and structure to an individual’s inner life, and when that inner life is in order, a person can navigate almost anything the world throws at him.
3. A Sense of Identity
When it comes to character, each of us must answer the critical question, “Who am I?” That answer often provides the motivation to practice self-discipline. It is fundamental for the identification of core values. And it helps to establish emotional security. Our sense of security—or lack of it—often drives what we do.
American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne recognized this truth: “No man can for any considerable time wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which is the true one.” How do you identify yourself? Where does your personal value come from? What is your motivation as it relates to money and power?
If you live with a chip on your shoulder, believe deep down you have no intrinsic value, or see yourself as a victim, you will have a distorted view of yourself and your surroundings. That, in turn, will impact your character. No matter how hard you try, you cannot consistently behave in a way that is inconsistent with how you see yourself. Thus, a strong and accurate sense of identity is essential. To paraphrase author Ruth Barton, people are set up to fail if they envision what they want to do before they figure out what kind of person they should be.
4. Integrity
The final component in strong character is integrity, which is an alignment of values, thoughts, feelings, and actions. People who possess the consistency that comes with strong integrity can be very compelling. In his book American Scandal, Pat Williams tells the story of Mahatma Gandhi’s trip to England to speak before Parliament. The British government had opposed Indian independence, and Gandhi, one of its most vocal proponents, had often been threatened, arrested, and jailed as a result. Gandhi spoke eloquently and passionately for nearly two hours, after which the packed hall gave him a standing ovation.
Afterward, a reporter asked Gandhi’s assistant, Mahadev Desai, how the Indian statesman had been able to deliver such a speech without any notes.
“You don’t understand Gandhi,” Desai responded. “You see, what he thinks is what he feels. What he feels is what he says. What he says is what he does. What Gandhi feels, what he thinks, what he says, and what he does are all the same. He does not need notes.”
When values, thoughts, feelings, and actions are in alignment, a person becomes focused and his character is strengthened. Visually it could he represented by this:
Value > Thought > Feeling > Action
However, when these components aren’t aliened, it creates confusion and internal conflict, which looks more like this:
Value > Feeling >
Thought >
Action
Developing talent without developing character is a dead end. It won’t take people where they want to go. The lives of people who are long on talent but short on character always get out of balance.
A joint study conducted by Korn/Ferry International and the UCLA Graduate School of Management asked 1,300 senior executives to identify the top trait needed to enhance a business executive’s effectiveness. Coming in first was integrity. In second place was concern for results, with responsibility third. What’s true for the boardroom is also true in the classroom, living room, soup kitchen, or gym. If you want your talent to take you far, you need to protect that talent with integrity.
Character Communicates
The choice to develop strong character may not be the most important one to make the most of your talent. But it is certainly the most important to make sure you don’t make the least of your talent. You can’t really underestimate its impact. Entrepreneur Roger Babson, who founded Babson College and Webber International University, asserted, “A character standard is far more important than even a gold standard. The success of all economic systems is still dependent upon both righteous leaders and righteous people. In the last analysis, our national future depends upon our national character—that is, whether it is spiritually or materially minded.”
As I hope I’ve already made clear, character creates a foundation upon which the structure of your talent and your life can build. If there are cracks in that foundation, you cannot build much. That’s why you must first develop within before you can achieve much without. But once you build strong character, it does more than provide a platform for your personal success and the maximization of your talent. It also impacts others and allows you to build with them. It does that through what it communicates to people:
1. Character Communicates Consistency
Cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead stated, “What people say, what people do, and what people say they do are entirely different things.” That is true of people who live without character, without integrity. Such people communicate confusion to others. They can say anything they like, but their actions determine the message we receive. It was philosopher-poet Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, “What you do thunders so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.”
Amazingly there are people who actually promote this inconsistency. Designer Ralph Lauren was quoted as saying, “The crux of a person’s identity . . resides in the trappings, not in the person himself… One needn’t be well read, so long as one surrounds himself with books. One needn’t play the piano, so long as one has a piano. In short, one can be whoever one wants to be. Or— more accurately—one can seem to be whoever one wants to be. While one may be able to make an impression with “trappings “ real person always comes through in the end. Impressions are like shadows—they disappear when a strong enough light is shone on them. Character is the genuine article—and the more you shine light on it, the more of its details you can see. Character shows that who you are and who you appear to be are one and the same, and that, according to Greek philosopher Socrates, is the first key to greatness.
2. Character Communicates Choices
Earlier in this chapter, I mentioned that Bobby Jones needed to overcome a terrible temper to succeed at golf. Not only did Jones do that, but he actually became a model of sportsmanship and character. Both could be seen in his play. During the final play-off of a U.S. Open tournament, Jone’s ball ended up in the rough just off the fairway. As he set up to play his shot, he accidentally caused his ball to move. He immediately turned to the marshals and announced the foul. The marshals discussed the situation among themselves. They hadn’t seen the ball move. Neither did anyone in the gallery. They left it up to Jones whether to take the penalty stroke, which he did.
Later, when a marshal commended Jones on his high level of integrity, Jones replied, “Do you commend a bank robber for not robbing a bank? No, you don’t. This is how the game of golf should be played at all times.” Jones lost the match that day—by one stroke. But he didn’t lose his integrity. His character was so well-known that the United States Golf Association’s sportsmanship award came to be named the Bob Jones Award.
It’s an interesting paradox. Our character creates our choices, yet our choices create our character. Author and speaker Margaret Jensen observed, “Character is the sum total of all our everyday choices. Our character today is a result of our choices yesterday. Our character tomorrow will be a result of our choices today. To change your character, change your choices. Day by day, what you think, what you choose, and what you do is who you become.” Once you get a handle on the character of a person, you can understand his choices and even predict what they will be.
3. Character Communicates Influence
Today, many people try to demand respect. They believe that influence should be granted to them simply because they have position, wealth, or recognition. However, respect and influence must be earned over time, and they are built and sustained by character. First and foremost, influence is based on character. U.S. Army General J. Lawton Collins asserted, “No matter how brilliant a man may be, he will never engender confidence in his subordinates and associates if he lacks simple honesty and moral courage.”
I’ve taught leadership for three decades, and I’ve written many books on it. During that time, I’ve tried to help people develop skills that will benefit them as leaders. However, all the skills in the world won’t assist someone whose character is hopelessly flawed. Experienced leaders understand this. Author Stephen Covey writes,
If I try to use human influence strategies and tactics of how to get other people to do what I want, to work better, to be more motivated to like me and each other while my character is fundamentally flawed, marked by duplicity or insincerity then, in the long run, I cannot be successful. My duplicity will breed distrust, and everything I do—even using so-called good human relations techniques will be perceived as manipulative.
It simply makes no difference how good the rhetoric is or even how good the intentions are; if there is little or no trust, there is no foundation for permanent success.
Character cannot be inherited. It cannot be bought. It is impossible to weigh, and it cannot be physically touched. It can be built, but only slowly. And without it, one cannot lead others.
4. Character Communicates Longevity
If you want to know how long it will take to get to the top, consult a calendar. If you want to know how long it can take to fall to the bottom, try a stopwatch. Character determines which will happen. Dreams become shattered, possibilities are lost, organizations crumble, and people are hurt when a person doesn’t have character protecting his talent. Character provides the opportunity for longevity in any career, any relationship, and any worthwhile goal.
Author and pastor J. R. Miller wrote, “The only thing that walks back from the tomb with the mourners and refuses to be buried is the character of a man. This is true. What a man is, survives him. It can never be buried.” If you want your talent to last, and you want to sleep well at night, depend upon good character. Asked about the secret of a long and happy life, Coach John Wooden remarked on his ninetieth birthday, “There is no pillow as soft as a clear conscience.” Character protects your talent, and it also guards you from regret.
TALENT + CHARACTER = A TALENT-PLUS PERSON PUTTING THE TALENT-PLUS FORMULA INTO ACTION
Never forget that talent is a gift—either you have it or you don’t—but character is a choice. If you want it, you must develop it. Here’s how to become a talent-plus person in the area of character:
1. Don’t Give Up or Give In to Adversity
It takes character to weather life’s storms. At the same time, adversity develops character. Author and activist Helen Keller, who could not hear or see, remarked, “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
Anyone who does what he must only when he is in the mood or when it is convenient isn’t going to develop his talent or become successful. The core foundation of character is doing what you don’t want to do to get what you want. It is paying a higher price than you wanted to for something worthwhile. It is standing up for your principles when you know someone is going to try to knock you down. Every time you face adversity and come through it with your core values affirmed and your integrity intact, your character becomes stronger.
In his first novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Russian dissident author Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote about Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, a political prisoner in a Siberian labor camp. In one part of the novel, Shukhov is forced to build a wall in weather that is twenty degrees below zero. As it gets dark and even colder, the foreman gives the order to hurry the job by throwing leftover mortar over the wall, instead of using it, so that they can be finished for the day. “But Shukhov wasn’t made that way,” wrote Solzhenitsyn, telling how the man resists the order, determined to finish the job right. “Eight years in a camp couldn’t change his nature. He worried about anything he could make use of, about every scrap of work he could do — nothing must be wasted without good reason.”
The foreman yells at him and then hurries away. “But Shukhov— and if the guards had put the dogs on him it would have made no difference—ran to the back and looked about,” writes the author. “Not bad. Then he ran and gave the wall a good look over, to the left, to the right. His eye as accurate as a carpenter’s level. Straight and even.” Only then does Shukhov stop working.
German philosopher-poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe observed, “Talent can be cultivated in tranquility; character only in the rushing stream of life.” The irony is that if you have never experienced the resistance of the rushing stream, then whatever talent you have cultivated in tranquility may not survive. If you want your talent to take you far, then don’t quit under duress. Don’t give up in the midst of a storm. Don’t bail out in the middle of conflict. Wait until the trouble is behind you before assessing whether it’s time to change course or stop. Do that, and you may have additional opportunities to develop your talent.
2. Do the Right Thing
Doing the right thing doesn’t come naturally to any of us. As America’s first president, George Washington, said, “Few men have virtue enough to withstand the highest bidder.” Yet that is what we must do to develop the kind of character that will sustain us.
It’s not easy to do the right thing when the wrong thing is expedient. Moliere commented, “Men are alike in their promises. It is only in their deeds that they differ. The difference in their deeds is simple: People of character do what is right regardless of the situation.” It’s not easy to do the right thing when it will cost you. It’s not easy to do the right thing when no one but you will know. But it’s in those moments that a person’s character becomes strong. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. asserted this:
Cowardice asks the question: Is it safe?
Consensus asks the question: Is it popular?
Character asks: Is it right?
That is the bottom line. Are you going to do what’s right?
One way that I’ve tried to control my natural bent to do wrong is to ask myself some questions (adapted from questions written by business ethicist Dr. Laura Nash):
1. Am I hiding something?
2. Am I hurting anyone?
3. How does it look from the other person’s point of view?
4. Have I discussed this face-to-face?
5. What would I tell my child to do?
If you do the right thing—and keep doing it—even if it doesn’t help you move ahead with your talent in the short term, it will protect you and serve you well in the long term. Character builds— and it builds you. Or as Dr. Dale Bronner, a board member of my nonprofit organization EQUIP, puts it, “Honesty is not something you do; honesty is who you are.”
3. Take Control of Your Life
I have observed that the people with the weakest character tend to place the blame on their circumstances. They often claim that poor upbringing, financial difficulties, the unkindness of others, or other circumstances have made them victims. It’s true that in life we must face many things outside our control. But know this: while your circumstances are beyond your control, your character is not. Your character is always your choice.
People can no sooner blame their character on their circumstances than they can blame their looks on a mirror. Developing character is your personal responsibility. It cannot be given to you; you must earn it. Commit yourself to its development because it will protect your talent. Every time you make a character-based decision, you take another step toward becoming a talent-plus person. The process begins with deciding to make good character your goal and to stop making excuses. French writer Francois La Rochefoucauld asserted, “Almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we think to hide them.” The process continues with the determination to manage that decision every day.
You have God-given talent; develop it. You have opportunity before you; pursue it. You have a future that is bright; look forward to it. But] above all else, you have the potential to become a person of character; follow through with it. Character, more than anything else, will make you a talent-plus person. It will protect everything in your life that you hold dear.
Live Responsibly Today
By Dr Neil Anderson
Therefore do not be anxious for tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself (Matthew 6:34).
Trusting God for tomorrow is a question of our worth. Jesus said, “Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?” (Matthew 6:26). Birds are not created in the image of God. We are! Birds will not inherit the kingdom of God, but we shall. Birds are mortal; mankind is immortal. If God takes care of the birds, so much more will He take care of us. That’s why the apostle Paul could write, “My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).
Matthew 6:30,31 states: “If God so arrays the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more do so for you, O men of little faith? Do not be anxious then.” God lays His own reputation on the line. If we trust and obey, He will provide. This is a question of God’s integrity. “For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things... Therefore do not be anxious for tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:32,34).
God’s will is that we live responsibly today and trust Him for tomorrow. Are we people of little faith, or do we really believe that the fruit of the Spirit will satisfy us more than earthly possessions? Do we really believe that if we hunger and thirst after righteousness, we shall be satisfied? Do we really believe that if we seek to establish God’s kingdom, God will supply all our needs according to His riches in glory? If we do, then we will seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to us (Matthew 6:33).
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Courage Tests Your Talent
People think of courage as a quality required only in times of extreme danger or stress, such as during war or disaster. But it is much larger than that—and more ordinary than we think. Courage is an everyday virtue. Professor, writer, and apologist C. S. Lewis wrote, “Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at its testing point.” You can do nothing worthwhile without courage. The person who exhibits courage is often able to live without regrets.
British Bulldog
When I think about people whose talent was elevated—and tested—by their courage, one individual who immediately comes to mind is Winston Churchill. As a young man, Churchill anticipated greatness for himself. While he was in school at Harrow at age sixteen, Churchill’s response to a classmate’s queries about his future were bold. “I can see vast changes coming over a now peaceful world,” said the teenage Churchill, “great upheavals, terrible struggles, wars such as one cannot imagine; and I tell you London will be in danger, London will be attacked and I shall be very prominent in the defence [sic] of London … In the high position I shall occupy, it will fall to me to save the Capital, to save the Empire.” The vision Churchill had of his role was remarkably on target.
After Europe fell to the Nazis, Great Britain stood alone against them for two years with Churchill as their leader. He defied Hitler and continually rallied the people of the nation while they suffered under repeated German bombings and faced the threat of a possible German invasion. In during that time, Churchill vocally expressed his opposition to such actions. In 1940, when Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was forced from office, Britain looked for a strong leader to replace him. The natural successor to Chamberlain would have been Lord Halifax, the foreign secretary. But Halifax knew that he didn’t possess the qualities needed to lead Britain in war, and he declined the potential appointment. That’s when Churchill, then age sixty-six, was called to step into the gap.
Why would Churchill be chosen as prime minister? He had been out of favor for many years. Why would anyone believe Churchill had the courage to lead the nation in what appeared to be a cause for which many believed there was little hope? The answer is that his courage had been tested time and time again, and it had proven his talent.
A Desire to Distinguish Himself
Growing up, Churchill was a merely average student. He was clumsy and accident prone. As a teenager in boarding school at Harrow, he didn’t really begin to shine until he prepared for a career in the army. He excelled at history, was an excellent rider, and won the school’s fencing championship. After Harrow, he completed his military officer’s training at Sandhurst, and in 1895, at twenty years old, he was commissioned. Into the 4th Hussars, a cavalry unit that was destined for India.
His long-term goal was to enter politics, as his father had. But first he wanted to make a name for himself in the military. While waiting to ship out to India, he was eager for action, and he managed to join with Spanish forces, which were in combat in Cuba, as an observer to test his mettle. He later wrote, “I thought it might be as well to have a private rehearsal, a secluded trial trip in order to make sure that the ordeal was not unsuited to my temperament.” He proved himself courageous under fire and was even recommended for the Cross of the Order of Military Merit.
Once stationed in quiet Madras, India, he quickly grew bored, and once again, he sought action. He managed to get attached as a correspondent to the Malakand Field Force on the northwest frontier of India more than two thousand miles from Madras, but soon he ended up joining the commanding general’s staff. “I mean to play this game out and if I lose, it is obvious that I could never have won any other,” he wrote to his family. “I am more ambitious for a reputation for personal courage than anything else in the world.”
A History of Courage
He didn’t have to wait long to begin proving himself. He saw battle twice. The first time the unit was attacked, Churchill was under fire for thirteen hours. He was clearheaded in battle and even assisted another officer in carrying a wounded soldier to safety. He later wrote, “Bullets are not worth considering … I do not believe the gods would create so potent a being as myself for so prosaic an ending.” He described his second experience as the hardest fighting on the northwest frontier for forty years. During the five-hour battle, the unit suffered fifty wounded and seventeen killed, including the regimental commander.
When things quieted down, Churchill again looked for action. His mother’s influence helped him get into the 21st Lancers in Cairo. With them, he participated in what’s been called the last great cavalry charge in the history of the British Army. His unit was on reconnaissance that day near Khartoum and spotted 150 enemy spearmen. The British charged them, only to find that they had ridden into a trap. They ended up in fierce hand-to-hand combat. Within two minutes, 119 of the British army’s horses were wounded, 21 of their force were killed, and 50 more were wounded. Churchill fought valiantly, and his unit was victorious
In 1899, Churchill was ready to start his political career. He resigned from the army and ran for a seat in Parliament. He lost. Later that year, when war broke out in South Africa, Churchill went there to cover it as a correspondent for the Morning Post. Two weeks later, as he traveled with troops on an armored train, rebels attacked and derailed it. Churchill calmly took charge and rallied the troops. He helped to clear the rails, allowing the locomotive and tender to escape with the wounded. Then he went back to try to help the troops commander, only to be captured. He was taken to a temporary prison in Pretoria.
But Churchill refused to give in to defeat. After a month of captivity, he made a daring escape from the prison. He climbed over the prison wall and hopped a freight train. The Boer rebels posted a reward for his capture—dead or alive—but Churchill managed to make it to Durban. When he arrived there, he found that he had become a national hero and an international celebrity. After a six-month stint in the South African Light Horse, an irregular cavalry regiment, he returned to England where he once again ran for Parliament. This time he won. He was twenty-six years old.
Churchill’s grandson, Winston S. Churchill, wrote,
When one considers the number of occasions on which he hazarded his life, even after he resigned his commission and entered Parliament at the age of 26 in 1900, walking out of the wreck of a crashed airplane in the earliest days of aviation, serving in the trenches of Flanders where he commanded the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers in the line in 1917, and again when he was knocked down by a New York taxi in 1930 one cannot help but reflect that his preservation through all these hazards was nothing short of miraculous.
So when Winston Churchill was chosen to be prime minister in 1940, people who knew him understood what the country was getting. His courage, toughness, and talent had been well tested. His entire life had prepared him for what he would face during those five war years. And his performance didn’t disappoint.
Why Does Talent Need Courage?
The stakes were high for Churchill as he carried out his duties as prime minister. He was doing more than just defending London and the empire, though those responsibilities were obviously monumental. Freedom and democracy were hanging in the balance. But his first tests didn’t come when the stakes were so high. They came early. If he hadn’t possessed the courage to step up when he was young and untested, he never would have discovered the depth of his talent, nor would he have been ready when he had to perform on the world stage.
English writer and clergyman Sydney Smith asserted, “A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage.” To develop and discover our talent, we need courage. The English word courage comes from the French word Coeur, which means “heart.” And we need to recognize that if we display courage, our hearts will be tested continually. Here’s what I mean:
Our Courage Will Be Tested … As We Seek a Truth That We Know May Be Painful
Before he joined the army, Winston Churchill had a desire to create a reputation for bravery, but he didn’t know whether he had the talent for it. To make that discovery, he went to Cuba. His goal was to test his courage in a relatively controlled and somewhat safer environment than he thought he would face in India, what he called “a private rehearsal.” He understood that a person doesn’t know what he’s really made of until tested. If we fear the test, then we will never get a chance to develop the talent.
Most of us will never be asked to face flying bullets in a physical battle. Often our tests are much more private and involve an internal battle, and many people find that painful. Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Herbert Agar said, “The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.”
In order to grow, we need to face truths about ourselves, and that is often a difficult process. It usually looks something like this:
· The issue. Often it is something we do not want to hear about.
· The temptation. We want to ignore it, rationalize it, spin it, or package it.
· The decision. To grow, we must face the truth and make personal changes.
· The challenge. Change is not easy; our decision to change will be tested daily.
· The response. Others will be slow to acknowledge it; they will wait to see if our behavior changes.
· The respect. Respect is always gained on difficult ground, and it comes from others only when our behavior and words match.
Winston Churchill said, “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” It takes a brave person to listen to unpleasant truths. I have to admit that this has been a challenging area for me. I find it much easier to cast vision, motivate people, and lead the charge than to sit, listen to others speak truth, humble myself, and respond appropriately, but I’m continuing to work on it.
Our Courage Will Be Tested .. When Change Is Needed but Inactivity Is More Comfortable
Being inactive and never leaving what is familiar may mean that you are comfortable, but having the willingness to continually let go of the familiar means that you are courageous. American historian James Harvey Robinson asserted, “Greatness, in the last analysis, is largely due to bravery—courage in escaping from old ideas and old standards and respectable ways of doing things.”
Our situation doesn’t make us; we make our situation. Our circumstances don’t have to define us; we can redefine our circumstances by our actions. At any given time, we must be willing to give up all we have in order to become all we can be. If we do that, if we are willing to leave our comfort zone and bravely keep striving, we can reach heights we thought were beyond us. We can go farther than others who possess greater talent than we do. Italian actress Sophia Loren observed, “Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with the inner drive, go much farther than people with vastly superior talent.”
Our Courage Will Be Tested . . . When Our Convictions, Once Expressed, Are Challenged
Anytime you are willing to stand up for something, someone else will be willing to take a shot at you. People who express their convictions and attempt to live them out will experience conflict from others with opposing views. Ralph Emerson wrote, “Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end, requires some of the same courage which a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men to win them.” So should we simply keep a low profile, swallow our convictions, and keep the peace? Of course not! The opposite of courage isn’t cowardice; it is conformity. It’s not enough just to believe in something. We need to live for something. Howard Hendricks said, “A belief is something you will argue about. A conviction is something you will die for,” You cannot really live unless there are things in your life for which you are willing to die.
Our Courage Will Be Tested . . When Learning and Growing Will Display Our Weakness
Learning and growing always require action, and action takes courage—especially in the weak areas of our lives. That is where fear most often comes into play. It’s easy to be brave in an area of strength; it’s much more difficult in an area of weakness. That is why we need courage most. General Omar Bradley remarked, “Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death.”
When I am striving to learn and grow in an area of weakness and I am afraid of failing or looking foolish, I encourage myself with these quotations:
· “Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.” —George S. Patton
· “The difference between a hero and a coward is one step sideways.”—Gene Hackman
· “Courage is fear that has said its prayers.”—Karl Barth
· “Courage is doing what you’re afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you’re scared.”—Eddie Rickenbacker
· “Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway.” —John Wayne
We often mistakenly believe that learning is passive, that we learn by reading a book or listening to a lecture. But to learn, we must take action. As Coach Don Shula and management expert Ken Blanchard state, “Learning is defined as a change in behavior. You haven’t learned a thing until you can take action and use it.” And that is where fear often comes into play. The learning process can be summarized in the following five steps:
1. Observe
2. Act
3. Evaluate
4. Readjust
5. Go back to step 2
Every time you prepare to take action, fear will to some degree come into play. It is at those times that you must rely on courage.
David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, observed, “Courage is a special kind of knowledge; the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared, and how not to fear what ought I not to be feared. From this knowledge comes an inner strength that subconsciously inspires us to push on in the face of great difficulty. What can seem impossible is often possible, with courage.” Courage is a releasing force for learning and growth.
Our Courage Will Be Tested . .. When We Take the High Road Even as Others Treat Us Badly
In 2004 I wrote a book called Winning with People: Discover the People Principles That Work for You Every Time. In it is the High Road Principle, which says, “We go to a higher level when we treat others better than they treat us.” When it comes to dealing with others, there are really only three routes we can take:
The low road—where we treat others worse than they treat us
The middle road—where we treat others the same as they treat us
The high road—where we treat others better than they treat us
The low road damages relationships and alienates others from us. The middle road may not drive people away, but it doesn’t attract them either. But the high road creates positive relationships with others and attracts people to us—even in the midst of conflict.
Taking the high road requires two things. The first is courage. It certainly isn’t one’s immediate inclination to turn the other cheek and treat people well while they treat you badly. How does one find the courage to do that? By relying on the second thing, about which clergyman Dr. James B. Mooneyhan writes:
There is a great cancer working at the integrity of our society. It gets in the way of our efficiency and hampers our success. It robs us of the promotions we seek and the prestige we desire. The great tragedy is that none of us are immune to it automatically. Each of us must work to overcome it.
This malignancy is the lack of the ability to forgive. When someone wrongs us we make mental notes to remember what was done or we think of ways to “get back at them.” Someone gets the promotion we wanted so badly and resentment toward that person begins to build. Our spouse makes a mistake or does something offensive to us and we see what we can do to get even or at least make sure they never forget the hurt they have caused us.
We keep score of wrongs committed against us, we reveal a lack of maturity. Theodore Roosevelt once said, “The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.” Those who do not forgive are persons who have not yet learned this truth and they are usually unsuccessful people.
If you wish to improve this area of your life, here are some things that should help. First, practice forgiving . . …Secondly, think good thoughts of those persons . . It is difficult to have hostile feelings toward one in whom you see good. Finally, let people know through your actions that you are one who can forgive and forget. This will gain respect for you.
Remember this: Committing an injury puts you below your enemy; taking revenge only makes you even with him, but forgiving him sets you above.
No one makes the most of his talent in isolation. Becoming your best will require the participation of other people. When you take the high road with others, you make yourself the kind of person others want to work with—and you put yourself in the best position to help others at the same time.
Our Courage Will Be Tested . . . When Being “Out Front” Makes an Easy Target
Many people admire leaders and innovators. Organizations give them honors; historians write books about them; sculptors chisel their images on the face of mountains. However, while many people lift leaders up, others want to knock them down. C. V. White describes this tension well:
The man who makes a success of an important venture never waits for the crowd. He strikes out for himself. It takes nerve, it takes a lot of grit; but the man that succeeds has both. Anyone can fail. The public admires the man who has enough confidence in himself to take the chance. These chances are the main things after all. The man who tries to succeed must expect to be criticized. Nothing important was ever done but the greater number consulted previously doubted the possibility. Success is the accomplishment of that which people think can’t be done.
If you are a leader or even an innovative thinker, you will often be ahead of the crowd, and that will at times make you an easy target. That requires courage.
For many years, I hosted an event in Atlanta called Exchange. It was a weekend leadership experience for executives. I usually did some leadership teaching, brought in some high-profile leaders to answer questions, and arranged a unique leadership experience. One year we took the group to the King Center so that they could be impacted by the life and legacy of a great leader, Martin Luther King Jr. We then took them over to Ebenezer Baptist Church. And as a surprise we had arranged for King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, and daughter Bernice to be there so that everyone could meet them.
One question asked of Mrs. King was what it was like being with Dr. King during the civil rights movement, and she talked about the loneliness of being a pioneer and taking new territory. She said that her husband was often misunderstood, and she pointed out how much courage it took to stand alone.
We will almost certainly never have to face the hatred and violence that Martin Luther King Jr. did, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t need courage to lead. Often leaders are misunderstood, their motives are misconstrued, and their actions are criticized. That, too, can be a test— one that makes us stronger and sharpens our talent if only we have the courage to endure it.
Our Courage Will Be Tested …. .Whenever We Face Obstacles to Our Progress
Advice columnist Ann Landers wrote, “If I were asked to give what I consider the single most useful bit of advice for all humanity, it would be this: Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life and when it comes, hold your head high, look it squarely in the eye and say, ‘I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me.’”
Adversity is always the partner of progress. Anytime we want to move forward, obstacles, difficulties, problems, and predicaments are going to get in the way. We should expect nothing less. And we should even welcome such things. Novelist H. G. Wells asked, “What on earth would a man do with himself if something didn’t stand in his way?” Why would he make such a comment? Because he recognized that adversity is our friend, even though it doesn’t feel that way. Every obstacle we overcome teaches us about ourselves, about our strengths and weaknesses. Every obstacle shapes us. When we succeed in the midst of difficulty, we become stronger, wiser, and more confident. The greatest people in history are those who faced the most difficult challenges with courage and rose to the occasion. That was certainly true of Winston Churchill.
Pat Williams, in his book American Scandal, writes about Churchill’s last months. He says in 1964, former president and World War II general Dwight D. Elsenhower went to visit the former prime minister. Elsenhower sat by the bold-Spirited leader’s bed for a long period of time, neither speaking. After about ten minutes, Churchill slowly raised his hand and painstakingly made the “V” for victory sign, which he had so often flashed to the British public during the war. Eisenhower, fighting back tears, pulled his chair back, stood up, saluted him, and left the room. To his aide out in the hallway, Eisenhower said, “I just said goodbye to Winston, but you never say farewell to courage.
TALENT + COURAGE = A TALENT-PLUS PERSON PUTTING THE TALENT-PLUS FORMULA INTO ACTION
It’s tempting to learn about the life of someone like Churchill or Eisenhower and believe that certain people are born with courage and are destined for greatness while others must sit on the sidelines and simply admire them. But I don’t think that is true. I believe that anyone can develop courage. If you desire to become a more courageous person, then do the following:
1. Look for Courage Inside, Not Outside. Yourself
During the Great Depression, Thomas Edison delivered his last public message. In it he said, “My message to you is: Be courageous! I have lived a long time. I have seen history repeat itself again and again. I have seen many depressions in business. Always America has come out stronger and more prosperous. Be as brave as your fathers before you. Have faith! Go forward!” Edison knew that when we experience fear, we must be willing to move forward. That is an individual decision. Courage starts internally before it is displayed externally. We must first win the battle within ourselves.
I love the story about the shortest letter to the editor written to England’s newspaper the Daily Mail. When the editor invited readers to send in their answers to the question, “What’s wrong with the world?” writer G. K. Chesterton is reputed to have sent the following:
Dear Sir,
I am.
Yours Sincerely,
G.K. Chesterton
The old saying goes, “If we could kick the person responsible for most of our troubles, we wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week.” Courage, like all other character qualities, comes from within. It begins as a decision we make and grows as we make the choice to follow through. So the first step toward becoming a talent-plus person in the area of courage is to decide to be courageous.
2. Grow in Courage by Doing the Right Thing Instead of the Expedient Thing
Florence Nightingale observed, “Courage is .. the universal virtue of all those who choose to do the right thing over the expedient thing. It is the common currency of all those who do what they are supposed to do in a time of conflict, crisis, and confusion.” The acquisition of courage can often be an internal battle. We often desire to do what is most expedient. The problem is that what is easy and expedient is frequently not what is right. Thus the battle. But psychotherapist and author Sheldon Kopp stated, “All the significant battles are waged within self.”
As you strive to do what you know to be right, you must know yourself and make sure you are acting in integrity with your core values. There’s a saying that inside every individual there are six people. They are . . .
Who You Are Reputed to Be
Who You Are Expected to Be
Who You Were
Who You Wish to Be
Who You Think You Are
Who You Really Are
You must strive to be true to who you really are. If you do and you do the right thing, then you will increase in courage.
3. Take Small Steps of Courage to Prepare You for Greater Ones
Most of us want to grow quickly and be done with it. The reality is that genuine growth is slow, and to be successful, we should start with small things and do them every day. St. Francis de Sales advised, “Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly start remedying them—every day begin the task anew.”
People’s lives change when they change something they do every day. That’s how they change the “who they wish to be” into “who they really are.” What kinds of things can you do every day? You can have the courage to be positive as you get up in the morning to face the day. You can have the courage to be gracious in defeat. You can have the courage to apologize when you hurt someone or make a mistake. You can have the courage to try something new—any small thing. Each time you display bravery of any kind, you make an investment in your courage. Do that long enough, and you will begin to live a lifestyle or courage. And when the bigger risks come, they will seem much smaller to you because you will have become much larger.
4. Recognize That a Leadership Position Won’t Give You Courage, but Courage Can Make You a Leader
In my years of teaching leadership, I have found many people who believed that if only they could receive a title or be given a position, that would make them a leader. But life doesn’t work that way. Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher remarked, “Being a leader is a lot like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are one, you aren’t.” The position doesn’t make the leader; the leader makes the position.
In similar fashion, people should not expect the acquisition of a leadership position to give them courage. However, anytime people continually display courage, they will likely become leaders because others will look up to them, emulate them, and follow them. Jim Mellado, president of the Willow Creek Association, described leadership as “the expression of courage that compels people to do the right thing.”
5. Watch Your Horizons Expand with Each Courageous Act
The life you live will expand or shrink in proportion to the measure of courage you display. Those who are willing to take risks, explore their limits, face their shortcomings, and sometimes experience defeat will go farther than people who timidly follow the safe and predictable path. Founder of Success magazine, Orison Swett Marden, stated it this way:
The moment you resolve to take hold of life with all your might and make the most of yourself at any cost, to sacrifice all lesser ambitions to your one great aim, to cut loose from everything that interferes with this aim, to stand alone, firm in your purpose, whatever happens, you set in motion the divine inner forces the Creator has implanted in you for your own development. Live up to your resolve, work at what the Creator meant you to work for the perfecting of His plan, and you will be invincible. No power on earth can hold you back from success.
If you want to become a talent-plus person, you must show courage. There is no other way to reach your potential.
When I began my leadership career, I was very ineffective as a leader. I believed I had talent. I had been able to influence and lead others at every phase of my school career. But when I got out into the real world, I fell far short of my expectations. My talent was being tested, and I was falling short. My problem was that I wanted to please everybody. Making people happy was the most important thing to me. The bottom line was that I lacked the courage to make right but unpopular decisions. How did I turn things around? By making small decisions that were difficult. With each one, I gained more confidence and more courage, and I began to change. The process took me four years.
At the end of that time, I felt I had learned many valuable lessons, and I wrote the following to help me cement what I had learned:
Courageous Leadership Simply Means I’ve Developed:
1. Convictions that are stronger than my fears.
2. Vision that is clearer than my doubts.
3. Spiritual sensitivity that is louder than popular opinion.
4. Self-esteem that is deeper than self-protection.
5. Appreciation for discipline that is greater than my desire for leisure.
6. Dissatisfaction that is more forceful than the status quo.
7. Poise that is more unshakeable than panic.
8. Risk taking that is stronger than safety seeking.
9. Right actions that are more robust than rationalization.
10. A desire to see potential reached more than to see people appeased.
You don’t have to be great to become a person of courage. You just need to want to reach your potential and to be willing to trade what seems good in the moment for what’s best for your potential. That’s something you can do regardless of your level of natural talent.
British Bulldog
When I think about people whose talent was elevated—and tested—by their courage, one individual who immediately comes to mind is Winston Churchill. As a young man, Churchill anticipated greatness for himself. While he was in school at Harrow at age sixteen, Churchill’s response to a classmate’s queries about his future were bold. “I can see vast changes coming over a now peaceful world,” said the teenage Churchill, “great upheavals, terrible struggles, wars such as one cannot imagine; and I tell you London will be in danger, London will be attacked and I shall be very prominent in the defence [sic] of London … In the high position I shall occupy, it will fall to me to save the Capital, to save the Empire.” The vision Churchill had of his role was remarkably on target.
After Europe fell to the Nazis, Great Britain stood alone against them for two years with Churchill as their leader. He defied Hitler and continually rallied the people of the nation while they suffered under repeated German bombings and faced the threat of a possible German invasion. In during that time, Churchill vocally expressed his opposition to such actions. In 1940, when Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was forced from office, Britain looked for a strong leader to replace him. The natural successor to Chamberlain would have been Lord Halifax, the foreign secretary. But Halifax knew that he didn’t possess the qualities needed to lead Britain in war, and he declined the potential appointment. That’s when Churchill, then age sixty-six, was called to step into the gap.
Why would Churchill be chosen as prime minister? He had been out of favor for many years. Why would anyone believe Churchill had the courage to lead the nation in what appeared to be a cause for which many believed there was little hope? The answer is that his courage had been tested time and time again, and it had proven his talent.
A Desire to Distinguish Himself
Growing up, Churchill was a merely average student. He was clumsy and accident prone. As a teenager in boarding school at Harrow, he didn’t really begin to shine until he prepared for a career in the army. He excelled at history, was an excellent rider, and won the school’s fencing championship. After Harrow, he completed his military officer’s training at Sandhurst, and in 1895, at twenty years old, he was commissioned. Into the 4th Hussars, a cavalry unit that was destined for India.
His long-term goal was to enter politics, as his father had. But first he wanted to make a name for himself in the military. While waiting to ship out to India, he was eager for action, and he managed to join with Spanish forces, which were in combat in Cuba, as an observer to test his mettle. He later wrote, “I thought it might be as well to have a private rehearsal, a secluded trial trip in order to make sure that the ordeal was not unsuited to my temperament.” He proved himself courageous under fire and was even recommended for the Cross of the Order of Military Merit.
Once stationed in quiet Madras, India, he quickly grew bored, and once again, he sought action. He managed to get attached as a correspondent to the Malakand Field Force on the northwest frontier of India more than two thousand miles from Madras, but soon he ended up joining the commanding general’s staff. “I mean to play this game out and if I lose, it is obvious that I could never have won any other,” he wrote to his family. “I am more ambitious for a reputation for personal courage than anything else in the world.”
A History of Courage
He didn’t have to wait long to begin proving himself. He saw battle twice. The first time the unit was attacked, Churchill was under fire for thirteen hours. He was clearheaded in battle and even assisted another officer in carrying a wounded soldier to safety. He later wrote, “Bullets are not worth considering … I do not believe the gods would create so potent a being as myself for so prosaic an ending.” He described his second experience as the hardest fighting on the northwest frontier for forty years. During the five-hour battle, the unit suffered fifty wounded and seventeen killed, including the regimental commander.
When things quieted down, Churchill again looked for action. His mother’s influence helped him get into the 21st Lancers in Cairo. With them, he participated in what’s been called the last great cavalry charge in the history of the British Army. His unit was on reconnaissance that day near Khartoum and spotted 150 enemy spearmen. The British charged them, only to find that they had ridden into a trap. They ended up in fierce hand-to-hand combat. Within two minutes, 119 of the British army’s horses were wounded, 21 of their force were killed, and 50 more were wounded. Churchill fought valiantly, and his unit was victorious
In 1899, Churchill was ready to start his political career. He resigned from the army and ran for a seat in Parliament. He lost. Later that year, when war broke out in South Africa, Churchill went there to cover it as a correspondent for the Morning Post. Two weeks later, as he traveled with troops on an armored train, rebels attacked and derailed it. Churchill calmly took charge and rallied the troops. He helped to clear the rails, allowing the locomotive and tender to escape with the wounded. Then he went back to try to help the troops commander, only to be captured. He was taken to a temporary prison in Pretoria.
But Churchill refused to give in to defeat. After a month of captivity, he made a daring escape from the prison. He climbed over the prison wall and hopped a freight train. The Boer rebels posted a reward for his capture—dead or alive—but Churchill managed to make it to Durban. When he arrived there, he found that he had become a national hero and an international celebrity. After a six-month stint in the South African Light Horse, an irregular cavalry regiment, he returned to England where he once again ran for Parliament. This time he won. He was twenty-six years old.
Churchill’s grandson, Winston S. Churchill, wrote,
When one considers the number of occasions on which he hazarded his life, even after he resigned his commission and entered Parliament at the age of 26 in 1900, walking out of the wreck of a crashed airplane in the earliest days of aviation, serving in the trenches of Flanders where he commanded the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers in the line in 1917, and again when he was knocked down by a New York taxi in 1930 one cannot help but reflect that his preservation through all these hazards was nothing short of miraculous.
So when Winston Churchill was chosen to be prime minister in 1940, people who knew him understood what the country was getting. His courage, toughness, and talent had been well tested. His entire life had prepared him for what he would face during those five war years. And his performance didn’t disappoint.
Why Does Talent Need Courage?
The stakes were high for Churchill as he carried out his duties as prime minister. He was doing more than just defending London and the empire, though those responsibilities were obviously monumental. Freedom and democracy were hanging in the balance. But his first tests didn’t come when the stakes were so high. They came early. If he hadn’t possessed the courage to step up when he was young and untested, he never would have discovered the depth of his talent, nor would he have been ready when he had to perform on the world stage.
English writer and clergyman Sydney Smith asserted, “A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage.” To develop and discover our talent, we need courage. The English word courage comes from the French word Coeur, which means “heart.” And we need to recognize that if we display courage, our hearts will be tested continually. Here’s what I mean:
Our Courage Will Be Tested … As We Seek a Truth That We Know May Be Painful
Before he joined the army, Winston Churchill had a desire to create a reputation for bravery, but he didn’t know whether he had the talent for it. To make that discovery, he went to Cuba. His goal was to test his courage in a relatively controlled and somewhat safer environment than he thought he would face in India, what he called “a private rehearsal.” He understood that a person doesn’t know what he’s really made of until tested. If we fear the test, then we will never get a chance to develop the talent.
Most of us will never be asked to face flying bullets in a physical battle. Often our tests are much more private and involve an internal battle, and many people find that painful. Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Herbert Agar said, “The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.”
In order to grow, we need to face truths about ourselves, and that is often a difficult process. It usually looks something like this:
· The issue. Often it is something we do not want to hear about.
· The temptation. We want to ignore it, rationalize it, spin it, or package it.
· The decision. To grow, we must face the truth and make personal changes.
· The challenge. Change is not easy; our decision to change will be tested daily.
· The response. Others will be slow to acknowledge it; they will wait to see if our behavior changes.
· The respect. Respect is always gained on difficult ground, and it comes from others only when our behavior and words match.
Winston Churchill said, “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” It takes a brave person to listen to unpleasant truths. I have to admit that this has been a challenging area for me. I find it much easier to cast vision, motivate people, and lead the charge than to sit, listen to others speak truth, humble myself, and respond appropriately, but I’m continuing to work on it.
Our Courage Will Be Tested .. When Change Is Needed but Inactivity Is More Comfortable
Being inactive and never leaving what is familiar may mean that you are comfortable, but having the willingness to continually let go of the familiar means that you are courageous. American historian James Harvey Robinson asserted, “Greatness, in the last analysis, is largely due to bravery—courage in escaping from old ideas and old standards and respectable ways of doing things.”
Our situation doesn’t make us; we make our situation. Our circumstances don’t have to define us; we can redefine our circumstances by our actions. At any given time, we must be willing to give up all we have in order to become all we can be. If we do that, if we are willing to leave our comfort zone and bravely keep striving, we can reach heights we thought were beyond us. We can go farther than others who possess greater talent than we do. Italian actress Sophia Loren observed, “Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with the inner drive, go much farther than people with vastly superior talent.”
Our Courage Will Be Tested . . . When Our Convictions, Once Expressed, Are Challenged
Anytime you are willing to stand up for something, someone else will be willing to take a shot at you. People who express their convictions and attempt to live them out will experience conflict from others with opposing views. Ralph Emerson wrote, “Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end, requires some of the same courage which a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men to win them.” So should we simply keep a low profile, swallow our convictions, and keep the peace? Of course not! The opposite of courage isn’t cowardice; it is conformity. It’s not enough just to believe in something. We need to live for something. Howard Hendricks said, “A belief is something you will argue about. A conviction is something you will die for,” You cannot really live unless there are things in your life for which you are willing to die.
Our Courage Will Be Tested . . When Learning and Growing Will Display Our Weakness
Learning and growing always require action, and action takes courage—especially in the weak areas of our lives. That is where fear most often comes into play. It’s easy to be brave in an area of strength; it’s much more difficult in an area of weakness. That is why we need courage most. General Omar Bradley remarked, “Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death.”
When I am striving to learn and grow in an area of weakness and I am afraid of failing or looking foolish, I encourage myself with these quotations:
· “Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.” —George S. Patton
· “The difference between a hero and a coward is one step sideways.”—Gene Hackman
· “Courage is fear that has said its prayers.”—Karl Barth
· “Courage is doing what you’re afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you’re scared.”—Eddie Rickenbacker
· “Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway.” —John Wayne
We often mistakenly believe that learning is passive, that we learn by reading a book or listening to a lecture. But to learn, we must take action. As Coach Don Shula and management expert Ken Blanchard state, “Learning is defined as a change in behavior. You haven’t learned a thing until you can take action and use it.” And that is where fear often comes into play. The learning process can be summarized in the following five steps:
1. Observe
2. Act
3. Evaluate
4. Readjust
5. Go back to step 2
Every time you prepare to take action, fear will to some degree come into play. It is at those times that you must rely on courage.
David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, observed, “Courage is a special kind of knowledge; the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared, and how not to fear what ought I not to be feared. From this knowledge comes an inner strength that subconsciously inspires us to push on in the face of great difficulty. What can seem impossible is often possible, with courage.” Courage is a releasing force for learning and growth.
Our Courage Will Be Tested . .. When We Take the High Road Even as Others Treat Us Badly
In 2004 I wrote a book called Winning with People: Discover the People Principles That Work for You Every Time. In it is the High Road Principle, which says, “We go to a higher level when we treat others better than they treat us.” When it comes to dealing with others, there are really only three routes we can take:
The low road—where we treat others worse than they treat us
The middle road—where we treat others the same as they treat us
The high road—where we treat others better than they treat us
The low road damages relationships and alienates others from us. The middle road may not drive people away, but it doesn’t attract them either. But the high road creates positive relationships with others and attracts people to us—even in the midst of conflict.
Taking the high road requires two things. The first is courage. It certainly isn’t one’s immediate inclination to turn the other cheek and treat people well while they treat you badly. How does one find the courage to do that? By relying on the second thing, about which clergyman Dr. James B. Mooneyhan writes:
There is a great cancer working at the integrity of our society. It gets in the way of our efficiency and hampers our success. It robs us of the promotions we seek and the prestige we desire. The great tragedy is that none of us are immune to it automatically. Each of us must work to overcome it.
This malignancy is the lack of the ability to forgive. When someone wrongs us we make mental notes to remember what was done or we think of ways to “get back at them.” Someone gets the promotion we wanted so badly and resentment toward that person begins to build. Our spouse makes a mistake or does something offensive to us and we see what we can do to get even or at least make sure they never forget the hurt they have caused us.
We keep score of wrongs committed against us, we reveal a lack of maturity. Theodore Roosevelt once said, “The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.” Those who do not forgive are persons who have not yet learned this truth and they are usually unsuccessful people.
If you wish to improve this area of your life, here are some things that should help. First, practice forgiving . . …Secondly, think good thoughts of those persons . . It is difficult to have hostile feelings toward one in whom you see good. Finally, let people know through your actions that you are one who can forgive and forget. This will gain respect for you.
Remember this: Committing an injury puts you below your enemy; taking revenge only makes you even with him, but forgiving him sets you above.
No one makes the most of his talent in isolation. Becoming your best will require the participation of other people. When you take the high road with others, you make yourself the kind of person others want to work with—and you put yourself in the best position to help others at the same time.
Our Courage Will Be Tested . . . When Being “Out Front” Makes an Easy Target
Many people admire leaders and innovators. Organizations give them honors; historians write books about them; sculptors chisel their images on the face of mountains. However, while many people lift leaders up, others want to knock them down. C. V. White describes this tension well:
The man who makes a success of an important venture never waits for the crowd. He strikes out for himself. It takes nerve, it takes a lot of grit; but the man that succeeds has both. Anyone can fail. The public admires the man who has enough confidence in himself to take the chance. These chances are the main things after all. The man who tries to succeed must expect to be criticized. Nothing important was ever done but the greater number consulted previously doubted the possibility. Success is the accomplishment of that which people think can’t be done.
If you are a leader or even an innovative thinker, you will often be ahead of the crowd, and that will at times make you an easy target. That requires courage.
For many years, I hosted an event in Atlanta called Exchange. It was a weekend leadership experience for executives. I usually did some leadership teaching, brought in some high-profile leaders to answer questions, and arranged a unique leadership experience. One year we took the group to the King Center so that they could be impacted by the life and legacy of a great leader, Martin Luther King Jr. We then took them over to Ebenezer Baptist Church. And as a surprise we had arranged for King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, and daughter Bernice to be there so that everyone could meet them.
One question asked of Mrs. King was what it was like being with Dr. King during the civil rights movement, and she talked about the loneliness of being a pioneer and taking new territory. She said that her husband was often misunderstood, and she pointed out how much courage it took to stand alone.
We will almost certainly never have to face the hatred and violence that Martin Luther King Jr. did, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t need courage to lead. Often leaders are misunderstood, their motives are misconstrued, and their actions are criticized. That, too, can be a test— one that makes us stronger and sharpens our talent if only we have the courage to endure it.
Our Courage Will Be Tested …. .Whenever We Face Obstacles to Our Progress
Advice columnist Ann Landers wrote, “If I were asked to give what I consider the single most useful bit of advice for all humanity, it would be this: Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life and when it comes, hold your head high, look it squarely in the eye and say, ‘I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me.’”
Adversity is always the partner of progress. Anytime we want to move forward, obstacles, difficulties, problems, and predicaments are going to get in the way. We should expect nothing less. And we should even welcome such things. Novelist H. G. Wells asked, “What on earth would a man do with himself if something didn’t stand in his way?” Why would he make such a comment? Because he recognized that adversity is our friend, even though it doesn’t feel that way. Every obstacle we overcome teaches us about ourselves, about our strengths and weaknesses. Every obstacle shapes us. When we succeed in the midst of difficulty, we become stronger, wiser, and more confident. The greatest people in history are those who faced the most difficult challenges with courage and rose to the occasion. That was certainly true of Winston Churchill.
Pat Williams, in his book American Scandal, writes about Churchill’s last months. He says in 1964, former president and World War II general Dwight D. Elsenhower went to visit the former prime minister. Elsenhower sat by the bold-Spirited leader’s bed for a long period of time, neither speaking. After about ten minutes, Churchill slowly raised his hand and painstakingly made the “V” for victory sign, which he had so often flashed to the British public during the war. Eisenhower, fighting back tears, pulled his chair back, stood up, saluted him, and left the room. To his aide out in the hallway, Eisenhower said, “I just said goodbye to Winston, but you never say farewell to courage.
TALENT + COURAGE = A TALENT-PLUS PERSON PUTTING THE TALENT-PLUS FORMULA INTO ACTION
It’s tempting to learn about the life of someone like Churchill or Eisenhower and believe that certain people are born with courage and are destined for greatness while others must sit on the sidelines and simply admire them. But I don’t think that is true. I believe that anyone can develop courage. If you desire to become a more courageous person, then do the following:
1. Look for Courage Inside, Not Outside. Yourself
During the Great Depression, Thomas Edison delivered his last public message. In it he said, “My message to you is: Be courageous! I have lived a long time. I have seen history repeat itself again and again. I have seen many depressions in business. Always America has come out stronger and more prosperous. Be as brave as your fathers before you. Have faith! Go forward!” Edison knew that when we experience fear, we must be willing to move forward. That is an individual decision. Courage starts internally before it is displayed externally. We must first win the battle within ourselves.
I love the story about the shortest letter to the editor written to England’s newspaper the Daily Mail. When the editor invited readers to send in their answers to the question, “What’s wrong with the world?” writer G. K. Chesterton is reputed to have sent the following:
Dear Sir,
I am.
Yours Sincerely,
G.K. Chesterton
The old saying goes, “If we could kick the person responsible for most of our troubles, we wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week.” Courage, like all other character qualities, comes from within. It begins as a decision we make and grows as we make the choice to follow through. So the first step toward becoming a talent-plus person in the area of courage is to decide to be courageous.
2. Grow in Courage by Doing the Right Thing Instead of the Expedient Thing
Florence Nightingale observed, “Courage is .. the universal virtue of all those who choose to do the right thing over the expedient thing. It is the common currency of all those who do what they are supposed to do in a time of conflict, crisis, and confusion.” The acquisition of courage can often be an internal battle. We often desire to do what is most expedient. The problem is that what is easy and expedient is frequently not what is right. Thus the battle. But psychotherapist and author Sheldon Kopp stated, “All the significant battles are waged within self.”
As you strive to do what you know to be right, you must know yourself and make sure you are acting in integrity with your core values. There’s a saying that inside every individual there are six people. They are . . .
Who You Are Reputed to Be
Who You Are Expected to Be
Who You Were
Who You Wish to Be
Who You Think You Are
Who You Really Are
You must strive to be true to who you really are. If you do and you do the right thing, then you will increase in courage.
3. Take Small Steps of Courage to Prepare You for Greater Ones
Most of us want to grow quickly and be done with it. The reality is that genuine growth is slow, and to be successful, we should start with small things and do them every day. St. Francis de Sales advised, “Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly start remedying them—every day begin the task anew.”
People’s lives change when they change something they do every day. That’s how they change the “who they wish to be” into “who they really are.” What kinds of things can you do every day? You can have the courage to be positive as you get up in the morning to face the day. You can have the courage to be gracious in defeat. You can have the courage to apologize when you hurt someone or make a mistake. You can have the courage to try something new—any small thing. Each time you display bravery of any kind, you make an investment in your courage. Do that long enough, and you will begin to live a lifestyle or courage. And when the bigger risks come, they will seem much smaller to you because you will have become much larger.
4. Recognize That a Leadership Position Won’t Give You Courage, but Courage Can Make You a Leader
In my years of teaching leadership, I have found many people who believed that if only they could receive a title or be given a position, that would make them a leader. But life doesn’t work that way. Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher remarked, “Being a leader is a lot like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are one, you aren’t.” The position doesn’t make the leader; the leader makes the position.
In similar fashion, people should not expect the acquisition of a leadership position to give them courage. However, anytime people continually display courage, they will likely become leaders because others will look up to them, emulate them, and follow them. Jim Mellado, president of the Willow Creek Association, described leadership as “the expression of courage that compels people to do the right thing.”
5. Watch Your Horizons Expand with Each Courageous Act
The life you live will expand or shrink in proportion to the measure of courage you display. Those who are willing to take risks, explore their limits, face their shortcomings, and sometimes experience defeat will go farther than people who timidly follow the safe and predictable path. Founder of Success magazine, Orison Swett Marden, stated it this way:
The moment you resolve to take hold of life with all your might and make the most of yourself at any cost, to sacrifice all lesser ambitions to your one great aim, to cut loose from everything that interferes with this aim, to stand alone, firm in your purpose, whatever happens, you set in motion the divine inner forces the Creator has implanted in you for your own development. Live up to your resolve, work at what the Creator meant you to work for the perfecting of His plan, and you will be invincible. No power on earth can hold you back from success.
If you want to become a talent-plus person, you must show courage. There is no other way to reach your potential.
When I began my leadership career, I was very ineffective as a leader. I believed I had talent. I had been able to influence and lead others at every phase of my school career. But when I got out into the real world, I fell far short of my expectations. My talent was being tested, and I was falling short. My problem was that I wanted to please everybody. Making people happy was the most important thing to me. The bottom line was that I lacked the courage to make right but unpopular decisions. How did I turn things around? By making small decisions that were difficult. With each one, I gained more confidence and more courage, and I began to change. The process took me four years.
At the end of that time, I felt I had learned many valuable lessons, and I wrote the following to help me cement what I had learned:
Courageous Leadership Simply Means I’ve Developed:
1. Convictions that are stronger than my fears.
2. Vision that is clearer than my doubts.
3. Spiritual sensitivity that is louder than popular opinion.
4. Self-esteem that is deeper than self-protection.
5. Appreciation for discipline that is greater than my desire for leisure.
6. Dissatisfaction that is more forceful than the status quo.
7. Poise that is more unshakeable than panic.
8. Risk taking that is stronger than safety seeking.
9. Right actions that are more robust than rationalization.
10. A desire to see potential reached more than to see people appeased.
You don’t have to be great to become a person of courage. You just need to want to reach your potential and to be willing to trade what seems good in the moment for what’s best for your potential. That’s something you can do regardless of your level of natural talent.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Perseverance Sustains Your Talent
Perseverance is not an issue of talent. It is not an issue of time. It is about finishing. Talent provides hope for accomplishment, but perseverance guarantees it. Playwright Noel Coward commented, “Thousands of people have talent. I might as well congratulate you for having eyes in your head. The one and only thing that counts is: Do you have staying power?”
Daring to Dream
In July 2000, Vonetta Mowers landed in Sacramento, California, ready to compete in the U.S. Olympic trials for a place on the American team that would travel to Sydney, Australia, for the summer games. She had been training for it her whole life.
Vonetta had dreamed about being in the Olympics since she was a small child. She ran everywhere as a kid, and at age nine, when she had a chance to try out with an inner-city track club called the Alabama Striders in Birmingham, she gladly seized it. When the coach later looked over the list of times children ran in the 50-yard dash and saw that V. Jeffrey had the fastest time of all the kids in Jonesboro Elementary School, he assumed the time had come from one of the older boys. He was shocked to find out that it belonged to Vonetta—a third grade girl! Vonetta quickly became a star among the club’s runners.
An excellent athlete, Vonetta lettered in track, volleyball, and basketball in high school and was named MVP of her track team three seasons. In college she focused exclusively on track, competing in the 200 and 400-meter sprints, long jump, triple jump, heptathlon, and relays. She was named all-American seven times.
At age twenty - Six, Vonetta was competing as an elite athlete, and she was on course to make the Sydney team. She had tried out for the 1996 team at age twenty-two, competing in the 100-meter dash and long jump, but she hadn’t made it. That had been tough for her. But she had dreamed of competing in the Olympics since she was nine, so she decided to put in four more years of grueling training, delayed starting a family, and gave it one more try. “In the years after college, while I worked as an assistant track coach,” writes Flowers, “I continued my own training. I devoted countless hours to lifting weights, eating right, and staying mentally tough. I knew that my time as an athlete was coming to an end, and I’d hoped that the 2000 Olympic trials would prove to be my year to finally find out what it’s like to be an Olympian.” But despite all her hopes, all her efforts, all her talent, Vonetta’s best effort at the 2000 trials wasn’t good enough. She did not finish with a good in failure. Her Olympic dream was over.
Give Up or Go On?
But a funny thing happened while she was in Sacramento. Her husband, Johnny, saw a flyer posted in a hallway. It read,
Continue Your Olympic Dream by
Trying Out for the Bobsled Team
Ideal candidates should be able to perform the following:
30 meters
60 meters
100 meters
Five Consecutive Hops
Vertical Jump
Shot Put Toss
Please call Bonny at [number] or come to
Davidson High School track on [date] for tryouts.
Johnny was very excited about it, but Vonetta wasn’t. She knew nothing about bobsleds, she had never lived anywhere that it snowed, and she was still crestfallen about failing in the summer games trials.
Vonetta was at a crossroads. Her talent had seemed almost limitless, yet it hadn’t carried her to her dream. Now here was another opportunity. But it wasn’t in her sport. It wasn’t even in her Olympics—the summer games. And even if she succeeded in passing the “audition,” it would mean starting over again in a new sport on unfamiliar ground—ice. It would require a degree of perseverance beyond what she had already displayed.
Reluctantly Vonetta agreed to attend the tryouts. She discovered that her experience as a sprinter and triple jumper and her training with weights had prepared her well to become a bobsled brakewoman (the person who pushes the bobsled and rides with the driver). It took her two years of learning, training, and competing—along with the ability to survive the soap opera of drivers changing brakewomen multiple times—but she finally not as a track athlete in the summer games, but as a bobsledder in the wildest Olympics. And in 2002, her perseverance paid off beyond her wildest dreams. Much to everyone’s surprise, Vonetta and her driver, Jill Bakken, won the gold medal! And with that, Vonetta went into the record books as the first African-American to win a gold medal in a winter Olympics.
Principles of Perseverance
No matter how talented people are, there is no success without perseverance. World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker said, “I can give you a six-word formula for success: Think things through—then follow through.” Many people like to think things through; few follow through.
If you desire to become a talent-plus person, you need to understand some things about perseverance:
1. Perseverance Means Succeeding Because You Are Determined to, Not Destined To
Green bay Packers coach Vince Lombard! Said, “The difference between a successful person and others is not lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of determination.” The greatest achievers don’t sit back and wait for success because they think they deserve it. They keep moving forward and persevering because they are determined to achieve it.
You can see this determination in successful people in every walk of life and in every age. Hannibal, the Carthaginian general who fought the Romans during the Second Punic War, asserted, “We will either find a way or make one.” He lived out that attitude of perseverance when he led an unexpected campaign that took him over the Alps to defeat the Romans.
Talented people who succeed show similar determination. Joseph Lanier, one-time chairman and CEO of West Point-Pepperell, Inc., stated, “We are determined to win the battle. We will fight them until hell freezes over, and then, if we have to, we’ll fight them on the ice.” That kind of determination serves people well whether they are running an organization or pursuing a profession.
Actor Tom Hanks has been in some incredible movies of seemingly every type: comedy, suspense, action, romantic comedy, fantasy, and mystery. From Sleepless in Seattle, Forrest Gump, and Toy Story to Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan, and Philadelphia, his movies have day received popular and critical acclaim. He has been called a modern day Jimmy Stewart. As of early 2006, the movies he’s appeared in have made more than $3 billion at the box office. He has also expanded his efforts into writing, directing, and producing. What actor wouldn’t want a career like his?
Looking back, one might be tempted to assume that he was so talented that he was destined to succeed. Yet it didn’t appear that way early on. When he started in his career, he couldn’t seem to get any steady work. He tried to act in commercials but couldn’t break in. He auditioned repeatedly for television shows but was constantly rejected. Finally in 1980, he landed a steady job on a sitcom called Bosom Buddies. It lasted two years and paid Hanks only $5,000 per episode. But it also earned him the opportunity to guest star on other TV shows. That exposure eventually led to his first big break, a starring role in the movie Splash.
What made the difference for Hanks? Perseverance! He never let rejection dissuade him from persevering in his career. He kept going—when he couldn’t get a part, when he couldn’t land a regular job, when the parts he was offered were mediocre. Ten years into his career, Hanks is reported to have said, “I’ve made over twenty movies and five of them are good.” Today he has made nearly fifty movies, many of them first-rate. He has won two Academy Awards. And he earns $25 million per film now! His success has nothing to do with destiny—it has to do with determination.
2. Perseverance Recognizes Life Is Not a Long Race, but Many Short Ones in Succession
Have you heard the saying, “Life is a marathon”? Whoever first said it was almost certainly trying to encourage people to keep trying when things get tough and to have a patient yet tenacious approach to life. But I think whoever said it didn’t quite get it right. Life isn’t one very long race. It’s actually a long series of shorter races, one after another. Each task has its own challenges. Each day is its own event. True, you have to get out of bed the next day and race again, but it’s never exactly the same race as before. To be successful, you just need to keep plugging away. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh observed, “In life or in football, touchdowns rarely take place in seventy-yard increments. Usually it’s three yards and a cloud of dust.”
I’ve read that explorer Christopher Columbus faced incredible difficulties while sailing west in search of a passage to Asia. He and his crews encountered storms, experienced hunger and deprivation, and dealt with extreme discouragement. The crews of the three ships were near mutiny. But Columbus persevered. The account of the journey written by Columbus said the same thing, day after day: “Today we sailed on.” And his perseverance paid off. He didn’t discover a fast route to the spice-rich Indies; instead he found new continents. But as he sailed, his focus was clear—making it through the day. Winning each short race. And that’s key. Management consultant Laddie E Hutar affirmed that “success consists of a series of little daily victories.”
3. Perseverance Is Needed to Release Most of Life’s Rewards
At a sales convention, the corporate sales manager got up in front of all two thousand of his firm’s salespeople and asked, “Did the Wright brothers ever quit?”
“No!” the sales force shouted.
“Did Charles Lindbergh ever quit?” he asked.
“No!” The salespeople shouted again.
“Did Lance Armstrong ever quit?”
“No!”
He bellowed for a fourth time, “Did Thorndike McKester ever quit?” There was a confused silence for a long moment.
Then a salesperson stood up and asked, “Who in the world is Thorndike McKester? Nobody’s ever heard of him.”
The sales manager snapped back, “Of course you never heard of him—because he quit!”
How many highly successful people do you know who gave up? How many do you know who have been richly rewarded for quitting? I don’t know any, and I bet you don’t either. It’s said that Walt Disney’s request for a loan was rejected by 301 banks before he finally got a yes. The loan he received allowed him to build Disneyland, the first and most famous theme park in history.
Inventor Thomas Edison asserted, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” It’s the last step in the race that counts the most. That is where the winner is determined. That is where the rewards come. If you run every step of the race well except the last one and you stop before the finish line, then the end result will be the same as if you never ran a step.
4. Perseverance Draws Sweetness Out of Adversity
The trials and pressures of life—and how we face them—often define us. Confronted by adversity, many people give up while others rise up. How do those who succeed do it? They persevere. They find the benefit to them personally that comes from any trial. And they recognize that the best thing about adversity is coming out on the other side of it. There is a sweetness to overcoming your troubles and finding something good in the process, however small it may be.
I came across a poem by Howard Goodman called “I Don’t Regret a Mile” that expresses this idea well. It says, in part:
I’ve dreamed many a dream that’s never come true,
I’ve seen them vanish at dawn,
But enough of my dreams have come true
To make me keep dreaming on
I’ve prayed many a prayer that seemed no answer would come,
Though I’d waited so patient and long;
But enough answers have come to my prayers
To make me keep praying on
I’ve sown many a seed that’s fallen by the wayside,
For the birds to feed upon
But I’ve held enough golden sheaves in my hands
To make me keep sowing on
I’ve trusted many a friend that’s failed me
And left me to weep alone
But enough of my friends have been true-blue
To make me keep trusting on
I’ve drained the cup of disappointment and pain,
And gone many a day without song
But I’ve sipped enough nectar from the roses of life
To make me want to live on
Giving up when adversity threatens can make a person bitter. Persevering through adversity makes one better.
5. Perseverance Has a Compounding Effect on Life
Author Napoleon Hill says, “Every successful person finds that great success lies just beyond the point when they’re convinced their idea is not going to work.” How do you get beyond that point? How do you go beyond what you believe is your limit? How do you achieve lasting success? Do the right thing, day after day. There are no shortcuts to anything worthwhile.
Every day that you do the right things—work hard, treat others with respect, learn, and grow—you invest in yourself. To do these things every day takes relentless perseverance, but if you do them, your success compounds over time. Weight-loss expert and author Judy Wardell Halliday supported this idea: “Dreams become reality when we keep our commitment to them.”
6. Perseverance Means Stopping Not Because You’re Tired but Because the Task Is Done
Former diplomat and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom Robert Strauss commented, “Success is a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don’t quit when you’re tired—you quit when the gorilla is tired.” If you think about it, perseverance doesn’t really come into play until you are tired. When you’re fresh, excited, and energetic, you approach a task with vigor. Work is fun. Only when you become tired do you need perseverance.
To successful people, fatigue and discouragement are not signs to quit. They perceive them as signals to draw on their reserves, rely on their character, and keep going. One problem of many people is that they underestimate what it will take to succeed. Enlightenment political philosopher Montesquieu declared, “In most things success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.” When we haven’t counted the cost of success, we approach challenges with mere interest; what is really required is total commitment. And that makes all the difference.
7. Perseverance Doesn’t Demand More Than We Have but All That We Have
Author Frank Tyger observed, “In every triumph there is a lot of try.” But perseverance means more than trying. It means more than working hard. Perseverance is an investment. It is a willingness to bind oneself emotionally, intellectually, physically, and spiritually to an idea or task until it has been completed. Perseverance demands a lot, but here’s the good news: everything you give is an investment in yourself.
The Five Enemies of Perseverance
French scientist Louis Pasteur said, “Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lives solely in my tenacity.” Perseverance begins with the right attitude—an attitude of tenacity. But the desire to persevere alone isn’t enough to keep most people going when they are tired or discouraged. Perseverance is a trait that can be cultivated. And the initial step to developing it is to eliminate its five greatest enemies:
1. A Lifestyle of Giving Up
A little boy had been promised an ice-cream cone if he was good while accompanying his grandfather on some errands. The longer they were gone, the more difficult the boy was finding it to be good. “How much longer will it be?” the boy asked.
“Not too long,” replied the grandfather. “We’ve got just one more stop before we get ice cream.”
“I don’t know if I can make it, Grandpa,” the little boy responded. “I can be good. I just can’t be good enough long enough.”
When we were kids and we didn’t follow through on a task, people often gave us a break. That’s to be expected. Children tend to jump from one activity to another and to bounce from idea to idea. Adults can’t do that and expect to be successful. Scientists L. G. Elliott advised, “Vacillating people seldom succeed. They seldom win the solid respect of their fellows. Successful men and women are very careful in reaching decisions and very persistent and determined in action thereafter.”
If you desire to be successful and to maximize your talent, you need to be consistent and persistent. Talent without perseverance never fruition. Opportunities without persistence will be lost. There is a direct correlation between perseverance and potential. If you have a habit of giving up, you need to overcome it to be successful.
2. A Wrong Belief That Life Should Be Easy
Debra K. Johnson tells about an incident with her seven-year-old daughter who wanted to take violin lessons. When they went to a music store together to rent an instrument, Debra began lecturing her about the expense of lessons and the commitment that would be required of her if she got her the violin. “There will be times you’ll feel like giving up,” Debra said, “but I want you to hang in there and keep on trying.”
Her daughter nodded and, in her most serious voice, responded, “It will be just like marriage, right, Mom?” Having the right expectations going into anything is half the battle. John C. Norcross, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Scranton, has studied people and their goals, and he has found a characteristic that distinguishes those who reach their goals from those who don’t: expectations. Both types of people experience the same amount of failure during the first month they strive for their goals. But members of the successful group don’t expect to succeed right away, and they view their failures as a reason to recommit and a reminder to refocus on their goals with more determination. Norcross says, “Those who are unsuccessful say a relapse is evidence that they can’t do it.”
3. A Wrong Belief That Success Is a Destination
The NBA’s Pat Riley has won many championships as a basketball coach. In his book The Winner Within, he writes, “Complacency is the last hurdle any winner, any team must overcome before attaining potential greatness. Complacency is the success disease: it takes root when you’re feeling good about who you are and what you’ve achieved.” It’s ironic, but past success can be the fiercest enemy to future success.
In February 2006, I was invited to join some friends who were going to the Super Bowl on a private plane. I sat next to Lester Woerner, the owner of the plane and a very successful entrepreneur and businessman. He started investing in real estate when he was a teenager, helped build one of the finest turf grass companies in the country in his twenties and thirties, and now in his forties is the chairman of Woerner Holdings with investments in agriculture, real estate, and financial securities. Within minutes we were engaged in conversation, and one of the questions I asked him was how he maintained success after having achieved it.
Lester described a day when he came to the realization that he had “made it,” and he started to wonder what was next for him. “I started to change,” Lester explained. “I went from thinking why not about every opportunity that approached me to thinking but why when an opportunity arose. I lost the hunger.”
When Lester stopped seizing opportunities, the opportunities began drying up. And he hit a plateau.
“How did you break out of it?” I asked.
“The first thing was to recognize that I was on a plateau; the second was to close the door on yesterday’s success,” he answered. “Once I did that, I was able to take steps to change, to begin going after opportunities again.
I told Lester that I found that people tend to celebrate and then to relax when they see success as a destination.
“It’s good to celebrate and even take a rest,” Lester responded, “but not for long. We must close the door on yesterday’s success.”
If you think you have arrived, then you’re in trouble. As soon as you think you no longer need to work to make progress, you’ll begin to lose ground.
4. A Lack of Resiliency
Harvard professor of psychiatry George E. Vaillant, in his book Aging Well, identifies resiliency as a significant characteristic of people who navigate the many transitions of life from birth to old age. He writes, “Resilience reflects individuals who metaphorically resemble a twig with a fresh, green living core. When twisted out of shape, such a twig bends, but it does not break; instead it springs back and continues growing.”
That’s an excellent description of how we must be if we desire to persevere through adversity and make the most of the talent we have. We must not become dry, brittle, and inflexible. And we must endeavor to bounce back, no matter how we may feel. We would be wise to remember the words of former NBA player, coach, and executive Jerry West: “You can’t get much done in life if you only work on the days you feel good.”
5. A Lack of Vision
Everything that is created is actually created twice. First it is created mentally; then it is created physically. Where does that mental creation come from? The answer is vision.
People who display perseverance keep a larger vision in mind as they toil away at their craft or profession. They see in their mind’s eye what they want to create or to do, and they keep working toward it as they labor. For example, years ago I read an account of an amateur golfer who played a round with Sam Snead, member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, recipient of the PGA Tour Lifetime Achievement Award, and three-time captain of the U.S. Ryder Cup team. On the first hole, Snead shot a seven—three over par, an unusually poor score for a golfer of his caliber. As the pair exited the green, Snead didn’t seem to be bothered by his triple bogey. When his amateur companion asked Snead about it, he responded, “That’s why we play eighteen holes.” Snead’s vision of the big picture helped him to maintain perspective, remain resilient, and persevere. By the end of the round, Snead finished four strokes under par.
TALENT + PERSEVERANCE = A TALENT-PLUS PERSON PUTTING THE TALENT-PLUS FORMULA INTO ACTION
Clearing away the five enemies of perseverance is a preliminary step to becoming a talent-plus person in the area of perseverance. Right thinking always precedes right action. If you want to be able to sustain your talent, then take the following steps:
Purpose: Find One
Rich De Voss, owner of the NBA’s Orlando Magic, remarked, “Persistence is stubbornness with a purpose.” It is very difficult for people to develop perseverance when they lack a sense of purpose. Conversely, when one has a passionate sense of purpose, energy rises, obstacles become incidental, and perseverance wins out.
Perhaps you’ve seen America’s Most Wanted, the television program that re-creates the crime stories and encourages viewers to help authorities locate and capture the criminals who are wanted for these often violent crimes. The program’s host is John Walsh. Many people think he is an actor or journalist—a television professional hired to host the show. But he isn’t, and his story is quite remarkable.
Walsh owned his own company, and along with three partners, he built deluxe hotels. But one day his six-year-old son, Adam, disappeared. The child had been abducted, but because there was no evidence of a crime, the authorities were slow to help Walsh and his wife find their only child. They searched for sixteen days. Tragically, by the time he was found, it was too late. He was dead.
Walsh’s life was thrown into chaos. He lost thirty pounds. His house went into foreclosure. And he lost his business—he just couldn’t bring himself to return to his work. He had lost all hope. Then one day Dr. Ronald Wright, the county coroner, looked at Walsh and asked, “You’re thinking about suicide, aren’t you?”
“What do I have to live for?” Walsh replied. “I have nothing. My only child has been murdered. I can’t even talk to my wife. I have no job, my house is in foreclosure, my whole life is over.”
“No, it isn’t,” Wright responded. “You are articulate. You mounted the greatest campaign for a missing child in the history of Florida. Go out and try to change things.”
Walsh says that it was the best advice he’d gotten from anyone. It gave him purpose. And that sense of purpose did more than give him a reason not to kill himself. It energized him to serve and help others. In 1988, he began hosting America’s Most Wanted, which he continues to do as I write this. The show has been responsible for the capture of hundreds of fugitives, including fourteen who were on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted lists.
If you want to maximize your talent as a talent-plus person, you need to find your purpose. That is the only way you will be able to persevere, as John Walsh did, even when facing the most difficult circumstance
Excuses: Eliminate Them
One of the most striking things that separates people who sustain their success from those who are only briefly or never successful is their strong sense of responsibility for their own actions. It is easier to move from failure to success than it is from excuses to success.
According to Bruce Nash, author of a series of “Hall of Shame” books on sports figures, one notorious person for making excuses was Rafael Septien, former placekicker for the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys. Nash writes, “We’re all guilty of using excuses. When we do, we place in the company of at sports heroes. Take Rafael Septien, for example. Rafael Septien has no peers—when it comes to making up lamebrained excuses for missed field goals.” Among the excuses, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, that Septien offered:
· “I was too busy reading my stats on the scoreboard.”
· “The grass was too tall.” (Texas Stadium doesn’t even have grass; its surface is artificial turf.)
· “The 30-second clock distracted me.”
· “My helmet was too tight and it was squeezing my brain. I couldn’t think.”
· “No wonder [I missed]. You placed the ball upside down” (said to his holder).
If you want to maximize and sustain your talent, don’t allow yourself to offer excuses when you don’t perform at the best of your ability. Instead, take complete responsibility for yourself and your actions. And keep in mind the words of George Washington Carver, who said, “Ninety-nine percent of failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.”
Stamina: Develop Some
Former world heavyweight champion boxer Muhammad Ali, called “The Greatest,” asserted, “Champions aren’t made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them—a desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have last-minute stamina, they have to be a little faster, they have to have the skill, and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill.” All people who achieve and maintain success possess stamina. Truly, stamina is a key to perseverance, and perseverance is a key to becoming a talent-plus person.
In February 2006, I accompanied a group of leaders from two organizations, EQUIP and Lidere, on a trip to Central and South America. We traveled together by private plane. Our mission was to launch a leadership training initiative in seven countries.
The first leg of our journey was to Honduras. We were scheduled to train a group of leaders there at a conference, and part of our plan was to have leadership books available for anyone who might want to buy them. Abraham Diaz, who works with Marcos Witt at Lidere, took charge of working out the details of getting the books through customs in Guatemala and then on to Honduras, which we needed to happen in one day in order for them to make it to the conference on time the next day. Little did we know that getting those books to the conference was going to be an exercise in perseverance. Here, in Abraham’s own words, is what happened after he landed in Guatemala:
Before I left Atlanta, where we were to meet with the rest of the group, I spent two days in Houston receiving all the instructions I needed. The books were coming down in another plane, and the plan was to keep the books in the plane so that when we arrived we wouldn’t have to go through the process of importing all the material. But the company in Guatemala that we hired to bring the books in didn’t follow instructions. They said that they had turned all the books over to Customs officials. It took two and a half hours to find this out. Now they didn’t have any control of those boxes, and I had to go directly Customs to see where they were located.
2:30 p.m.—I went to Customs’ main office to find the boxes. But they couldn’t search for them. They needed me to go back to the company which brought in the books and get the documents they received when they turned over the boxes. I went back to get them, but was told I would have to wait for the person in charge of this matter.
3:00 p.m.—The person in charge arrived. He informed me that I needed to pay a fee at another location so that he could release these documents. I went to the other location and made the payment.
3:30 p.m.—I went back to the handling company and received the papers which included the airway bill number and invoice that Customs required.
4:00 p.m.—I arrived back at Customs and they started searching for the hundreds of boxes. As they reviewed their information, they realized the number of boxes that arrived was one less than the number reported in the documents, so they said they could not release them to me. To get them, I needed to provide a letter, stamped and approved by another Customs official, stating that I relinquished my right to the missing box.
4:30 p.m.—I walked to this office. I saw a man there who appeared to be important. When I started to explain my problem, he invited me into his office. It turned out he was the administrative director of Customs for all of Guatemala. He started typing the letter I needed himself. Then he got all of the signatures and stamps I needed to get the boxes out. I finally felt like I might succeed.
5:15 p.m.—I went back to the warehouse where international shipments are held. They kept me waiting for forty-five minutes while they processed other orders.
6:00 p.m.—The warehouse official said that in order for them to release the boxes, I had to make two different payments for storage and other charges. I went to the other location to make the payment, but I had only U.S. dollars with me, which they wouldn’t take. So I jumped into a cab and went to a nearby bank to exchange money.
6:30 p.m.—I returned to make the payment and waited in line for more than twenty minutes before I could pay the fees.
7:00 p.m.—I returned to the warehouse and waited for the person who would take the receipts showing I made the proper payments. After waiting forty-five minutes, he finally arrived. He looked over the papers. He couldn’t believe I had been able to do all the procedures in a few hours. He made some phone calls and looked over the papers again.
8:00 p.m.—He finally gave the okay and called the people who would operate the machinery to move the boxes to the front of the warehouse.
9:00 p.m.—I found out the workers who move the boxes in the warehouse were not the same people who would move them to the plane, so I started searching for someone who could perform this service. I waited for nearly an hour for the person in charge to show up so that I could find out how much it was going to cost and whether he had workers to do it.
10:00 p.m.—After coming to an agreement, workers started loading boxes and moving them to where the plane was. I then realized that the FBO [fixed base of operations] at this airport had no place to store the boxes overnight, so I worked it out for the people who moved them to stay with the boxes until 5:00 a.m. the next morning.
11:00 p.m.—The captain of our plane called me to let me know that his aircraft could not take all the boxes we had because of the weight. As the boxes arrived from the warehouse, I began contacting other pilots with small planes near ours to find one who was willing to take the remaining boxes to Honduras. I finally found one who was willing to do it.
The next morning, we departed and flew to Honduras—where we had to start a similar process all over again!
A lot of leaders in Honduras were very grateful for the perseverance of Abraham Diaz. Because of him, they were able to get the books they needed.
Earlier in this chapter I stated that life is not one long race but a series of many short ones in succession. Abraham Diaz’s experience is a perfect illustration of this truth. On that day in Guatemala, he ran race after race for eight and a half hours—and the official who finally gave the okay to him was amazed that he had been able to do it. The next day he ran another race. And the day after that.
Abraham is a talented leader. He demonstrates the number one characteristic of good leaders: the ability to make things happen. That takes perseverance. That’s true no matter what your talent is or what skills you possess. Without perseverance, a talented person is little more than a flash in the pan.
Daring to Dream
In July 2000, Vonetta Mowers landed in Sacramento, California, ready to compete in the U.S. Olympic trials for a place on the American team that would travel to Sydney, Australia, for the summer games. She had been training for it her whole life.
Vonetta had dreamed about being in the Olympics since she was a small child. She ran everywhere as a kid, and at age nine, when she had a chance to try out with an inner-city track club called the Alabama Striders in Birmingham, she gladly seized it. When the coach later looked over the list of times children ran in the 50-yard dash and saw that V. Jeffrey had the fastest time of all the kids in Jonesboro Elementary School, he assumed the time had come from one of the older boys. He was shocked to find out that it belonged to Vonetta—a third grade girl! Vonetta quickly became a star among the club’s runners.
An excellent athlete, Vonetta lettered in track, volleyball, and basketball in high school and was named MVP of her track team three seasons. In college she focused exclusively on track, competing in the 200 and 400-meter sprints, long jump, triple jump, heptathlon, and relays. She was named all-American seven times.
At age twenty - Six, Vonetta was competing as an elite athlete, and she was on course to make the Sydney team. She had tried out for the 1996 team at age twenty-two, competing in the 100-meter dash and long jump, but she hadn’t made it. That had been tough for her. But she had dreamed of competing in the Olympics since she was nine, so she decided to put in four more years of grueling training, delayed starting a family, and gave it one more try. “In the years after college, while I worked as an assistant track coach,” writes Flowers, “I continued my own training. I devoted countless hours to lifting weights, eating right, and staying mentally tough. I knew that my time as an athlete was coming to an end, and I’d hoped that the 2000 Olympic trials would prove to be my year to finally find out what it’s like to be an Olympian.” But despite all her hopes, all her efforts, all her talent, Vonetta’s best effort at the 2000 trials wasn’t good enough. She did not finish with a good in failure. Her Olympic dream was over.
Give Up or Go On?
But a funny thing happened while she was in Sacramento. Her husband, Johnny, saw a flyer posted in a hallway. It read,
Continue Your Olympic Dream by
Trying Out for the Bobsled Team
Ideal candidates should be able to perform the following:
30 meters
60 meters
100 meters
Five Consecutive Hops
Vertical Jump
Shot Put Toss
Please call Bonny at [number] or come to
Davidson High School track on [date] for tryouts.
Johnny was very excited about it, but Vonetta wasn’t. She knew nothing about bobsleds, she had never lived anywhere that it snowed, and she was still crestfallen about failing in the summer games trials.
Vonetta was at a crossroads. Her talent had seemed almost limitless, yet it hadn’t carried her to her dream. Now here was another opportunity. But it wasn’t in her sport. It wasn’t even in her Olympics—the summer games. And even if she succeeded in passing the “audition,” it would mean starting over again in a new sport on unfamiliar ground—ice. It would require a degree of perseverance beyond what she had already displayed.
Reluctantly Vonetta agreed to attend the tryouts. She discovered that her experience as a sprinter and triple jumper and her training with weights had prepared her well to become a bobsled brakewoman (the person who pushes the bobsled and rides with the driver). It took her two years of learning, training, and competing—along with the ability to survive the soap opera of drivers changing brakewomen multiple times—but she finally not as a track athlete in the summer games, but as a bobsledder in the wildest Olympics. And in 2002, her perseverance paid off beyond her wildest dreams. Much to everyone’s surprise, Vonetta and her driver, Jill Bakken, won the gold medal! And with that, Vonetta went into the record books as the first African-American to win a gold medal in a winter Olympics.
Principles of Perseverance
No matter how talented people are, there is no success without perseverance. World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker said, “I can give you a six-word formula for success: Think things through—then follow through.” Many people like to think things through; few follow through.
If you desire to become a talent-plus person, you need to understand some things about perseverance:
1. Perseverance Means Succeeding Because You Are Determined to, Not Destined To
Green bay Packers coach Vince Lombard! Said, “The difference between a successful person and others is not lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of determination.” The greatest achievers don’t sit back and wait for success because they think they deserve it. They keep moving forward and persevering because they are determined to achieve it.
You can see this determination in successful people in every walk of life and in every age. Hannibal, the Carthaginian general who fought the Romans during the Second Punic War, asserted, “We will either find a way or make one.” He lived out that attitude of perseverance when he led an unexpected campaign that took him over the Alps to defeat the Romans.
Talented people who succeed show similar determination. Joseph Lanier, one-time chairman and CEO of West Point-Pepperell, Inc., stated, “We are determined to win the battle. We will fight them until hell freezes over, and then, if we have to, we’ll fight them on the ice.” That kind of determination serves people well whether they are running an organization or pursuing a profession.
Actor Tom Hanks has been in some incredible movies of seemingly every type: comedy, suspense, action, romantic comedy, fantasy, and mystery. From Sleepless in Seattle, Forrest Gump, and Toy Story to Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan, and Philadelphia, his movies have day received popular and critical acclaim. He has been called a modern day Jimmy Stewart. As of early 2006, the movies he’s appeared in have made more than $3 billion at the box office. He has also expanded his efforts into writing, directing, and producing. What actor wouldn’t want a career like his?
Looking back, one might be tempted to assume that he was so talented that he was destined to succeed. Yet it didn’t appear that way early on. When he started in his career, he couldn’t seem to get any steady work. He tried to act in commercials but couldn’t break in. He auditioned repeatedly for television shows but was constantly rejected. Finally in 1980, he landed a steady job on a sitcom called Bosom Buddies. It lasted two years and paid Hanks only $5,000 per episode. But it also earned him the opportunity to guest star on other TV shows. That exposure eventually led to his first big break, a starring role in the movie Splash.
What made the difference for Hanks? Perseverance! He never let rejection dissuade him from persevering in his career. He kept going—when he couldn’t get a part, when he couldn’t land a regular job, when the parts he was offered were mediocre. Ten years into his career, Hanks is reported to have said, “I’ve made over twenty movies and five of them are good.” Today he has made nearly fifty movies, many of them first-rate. He has won two Academy Awards. And he earns $25 million per film now! His success has nothing to do with destiny—it has to do with determination.
2. Perseverance Recognizes Life Is Not a Long Race, but Many Short Ones in Succession
Have you heard the saying, “Life is a marathon”? Whoever first said it was almost certainly trying to encourage people to keep trying when things get tough and to have a patient yet tenacious approach to life. But I think whoever said it didn’t quite get it right. Life isn’t one very long race. It’s actually a long series of shorter races, one after another. Each task has its own challenges. Each day is its own event. True, you have to get out of bed the next day and race again, but it’s never exactly the same race as before. To be successful, you just need to keep plugging away. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh observed, “In life or in football, touchdowns rarely take place in seventy-yard increments. Usually it’s three yards and a cloud of dust.”
I’ve read that explorer Christopher Columbus faced incredible difficulties while sailing west in search of a passage to Asia. He and his crews encountered storms, experienced hunger and deprivation, and dealt with extreme discouragement. The crews of the three ships were near mutiny. But Columbus persevered. The account of the journey written by Columbus said the same thing, day after day: “Today we sailed on.” And his perseverance paid off. He didn’t discover a fast route to the spice-rich Indies; instead he found new continents. But as he sailed, his focus was clear—making it through the day. Winning each short race. And that’s key. Management consultant Laddie E Hutar affirmed that “success consists of a series of little daily victories.”
3. Perseverance Is Needed to Release Most of Life’s Rewards
At a sales convention, the corporate sales manager got up in front of all two thousand of his firm’s salespeople and asked, “Did the Wright brothers ever quit?”
“No!” the sales force shouted.
“Did Charles Lindbergh ever quit?” he asked.
“No!” The salespeople shouted again.
“Did Lance Armstrong ever quit?”
“No!”
He bellowed for a fourth time, “Did Thorndike McKester ever quit?” There was a confused silence for a long moment.
Then a salesperson stood up and asked, “Who in the world is Thorndike McKester? Nobody’s ever heard of him.”
The sales manager snapped back, “Of course you never heard of him—because he quit!”
How many highly successful people do you know who gave up? How many do you know who have been richly rewarded for quitting? I don’t know any, and I bet you don’t either. It’s said that Walt Disney’s request for a loan was rejected by 301 banks before he finally got a yes. The loan he received allowed him to build Disneyland, the first and most famous theme park in history.
Inventor Thomas Edison asserted, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” It’s the last step in the race that counts the most. That is where the winner is determined. That is where the rewards come. If you run every step of the race well except the last one and you stop before the finish line, then the end result will be the same as if you never ran a step.
4. Perseverance Draws Sweetness Out of Adversity
The trials and pressures of life—and how we face them—often define us. Confronted by adversity, many people give up while others rise up. How do those who succeed do it? They persevere. They find the benefit to them personally that comes from any trial. And they recognize that the best thing about adversity is coming out on the other side of it. There is a sweetness to overcoming your troubles and finding something good in the process, however small it may be.
I came across a poem by Howard Goodman called “I Don’t Regret a Mile” that expresses this idea well. It says, in part:
I’ve dreamed many a dream that’s never come true,
I’ve seen them vanish at dawn,
But enough of my dreams have come true
To make me keep dreaming on
I’ve prayed many a prayer that seemed no answer would come,
Though I’d waited so patient and long;
But enough answers have come to my prayers
To make me keep praying on
I’ve sown many a seed that’s fallen by the wayside,
For the birds to feed upon
But I’ve held enough golden sheaves in my hands
To make me keep sowing on
I’ve trusted many a friend that’s failed me
And left me to weep alone
But enough of my friends have been true-blue
To make me keep trusting on
I’ve drained the cup of disappointment and pain,
And gone many a day without song
But I’ve sipped enough nectar from the roses of life
To make me want to live on
Giving up when adversity threatens can make a person bitter. Persevering through adversity makes one better.
5. Perseverance Has a Compounding Effect on Life
Author Napoleon Hill says, “Every successful person finds that great success lies just beyond the point when they’re convinced their idea is not going to work.” How do you get beyond that point? How do you go beyond what you believe is your limit? How do you achieve lasting success? Do the right thing, day after day. There are no shortcuts to anything worthwhile.
Every day that you do the right things—work hard, treat others with respect, learn, and grow—you invest in yourself. To do these things every day takes relentless perseverance, but if you do them, your success compounds over time. Weight-loss expert and author Judy Wardell Halliday supported this idea: “Dreams become reality when we keep our commitment to them.”
6. Perseverance Means Stopping Not Because You’re Tired but Because the Task Is Done
Former diplomat and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom Robert Strauss commented, “Success is a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don’t quit when you’re tired—you quit when the gorilla is tired.” If you think about it, perseverance doesn’t really come into play until you are tired. When you’re fresh, excited, and energetic, you approach a task with vigor. Work is fun. Only when you become tired do you need perseverance.
To successful people, fatigue and discouragement are not signs to quit. They perceive them as signals to draw on their reserves, rely on their character, and keep going. One problem of many people is that they underestimate what it will take to succeed. Enlightenment political philosopher Montesquieu declared, “In most things success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.” When we haven’t counted the cost of success, we approach challenges with mere interest; what is really required is total commitment. And that makes all the difference.
7. Perseverance Doesn’t Demand More Than We Have but All That We Have
Author Frank Tyger observed, “In every triumph there is a lot of try.” But perseverance means more than trying. It means more than working hard. Perseverance is an investment. It is a willingness to bind oneself emotionally, intellectually, physically, and spiritually to an idea or task until it has been completed. Perseverance demands a lot, but here’s the good news: everything you give is an investment in yourself.
The Five Enemies of Perseverance
French scientist Louis Pasteur said, “Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lives solely in my tenacity.” Perseverance begins with the right attitude—an attitude of tenacity. But the desire to persevere alone isn’t enough to keep most people going when they are tired or discouraged. Perseverance is a trait that can be cultivated. And the initial step to developing it is to eliminate its five greatest enemies:
1. A Lifestyle of Giving Up
A little boy had been promised an ice-cream cone if he was good while accompanying his grandfather on some errands. The longer they were gone, the more difficult the boy was finding it to be good. “How much longer will it be?” the boy asked.
“Not too long,” replied the grandfather. “We’ve got just one more stop before we get ice cream.”
“I don’t know if I can make it, Grandpa,” the little boy responded. “I can be good. I just can’t be good enough long enough.”
When we were kids and we didn’t follow through on a task, people often gave us a break. That’s to be expected. Children tend to jump from one activity to another and to bounce from idea to idea. Adults can’t do that and expect to be successful. Scientists L. G. Elliott advised, “Vacillating people seldom succeed. They seldom win the solid respect of their fellows. Successful men and women are very careful in reaching decisions and very persistent and determined in action thereafter.”
If you desire to be successful and to maximize your talent, you need to be consistent and persistent. Talent without perseverance never fruition. Opportunities without persistence will be lost. There is a direct correlation between perseverance and potential. If you have a habit of giving up, you need to overcome it to be successful.
2. A Wrong Belief That Life Should Be Easy
Debra K. Johnson tells about an incident with her seven-year-old daughter who wanted to take violin lessons. When they went to a music store together to rent an instrument, Debra began lecturing her about the expense of lessons and the commitment that would be required of her if she got her the violin. “There will be times you’ll feel like giving up,” Debra said, “but I want you to hang in there and keep on trying.”
Her daughter nodded and, in her most serious voice, responded, “It will be just like marriage, right, Mom?” Having the right expectations going into anything is half the battle. John C. Norcross, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Scranton, has studied people and their goals, and he has found a characteristic that distinguishes those who reach their goals from those who don’t: expectations. Both types of people experience the same amount of failure during the first month they strive for their goals. But members of the successful group don’t expect to succeed right away, and they view their failures as a reason to recommit and a reminder to refocus on their goals with more determination. Norcross says, “Those who are unsuccessful say a relapse is evidence that they can’t do it.”
3. A Wrong Belief That Success Is a Destination
The NBA’s Pat Riley has won many championships as a basketball coach. In his book The Winner Within, he writes, “Complacency is the last hurdle any winner, any team must overcome before attaining potential greatness. Complacency is the success disease: it takes root when you’re feeling good about who you are and what you’ve achieved.” It’s ironic, but past success can be the fiercest enemy to future success.
In February 2006, I was invited to join some friends who were going to the Super Bowl on a private plane. I sat next to Lester Woerner, the owner of the plane and a very successful entrepreneur and businessman. He started investing in real estate when he was a teenager, helped build one of the finest turf grass companies in the country in his twenties and thirties, and now in his forties is the chairman of Woerner Holdings with investments in agriculture, real estate, and financial securities. Within minutes we were engaged in conversation, and one of the questions I asked him was how he maintained success after having achieved it.
Lester described a day when he came to the realization that he had “made it,” and he started to wonder what was next for him. “I started to change,” Lester explained. “I went from thinking why not about every opportunity that approached me to thinking but why when an opportunity arose. I lost the hunger.”
When Lester stopped seizing opportunities, the opportunities began drying up. And he hit a plateau.
“How did you break out of it?” I asked.
“The first thing was to recognize that I was on a plateau; the second was to close the door on yesterday’s success,” he answered. “Once I did that, I was able to take steps to change, to begin going after opportunities again.
I told Lester that I found that people tend to celebrate and then to relax when they see success as a destination.
“It’s good to celebrate and even take a rest,” Lester responded, “but not for long. We must close the door on yesterday’s success.”
If you think you have arrived, then you’re in trouble. As soon as you think you no longer need to work to make progress, you’ll begin to lose ground.
4. A Lack of Resiliency
Harvard professor of psychiatry George E. Vaillant, in his book Aging Well, identifies resiliency as a significant characteristic of people who navigate the many transitions of life from birth to old age. He writes, “Resilience reflects individuals who metaphorically resemble a twig with a fresh, green living core. When twisted out of shape, such a twig bends, but it does not break; instead it springs back and continues growing.”
That’s an excellent description of how we must be if we desire to persevere through adversity and make the most of the talent we have. We must not become dry, brittle, and inflexible. And we must endeavor to bounce back, no matter how we may feel. We would be wise to remember the words of former NBA player, coach, and executive Jerry West: “You can’t get much done in life if you only work on the days you feel good.”
5. A Lack of Vision
Everything that is created is actually created twice. First it is created mentally; then it is created physically. Where does that mental creation come from? The answer is vision.
People who display perseverance keep a larger vision in mind as they toil away at their craft or profession. They see in their mind’s eye what they want to create or to do, and they keep working toward it as they labor. For example, years ago I read an account of an amateur golfer who played a round with Sam Snead, member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, recipient of the PGA Tour Lifetime Achievement Award, and three-time captain of the U.S. Ryder Cup team. On the first hole, Snead shot a seven—three over par, an unusually poor score for a golfer of his caliber. As the pair exited the green, Snead didn’t seem to be bothered by his triple bogey. When his amateur companion asked Snead about it, he responded, “That’s why we play eighteen holes.” Snead’s vision of the big picture helped him to maintain perspective, remain resilient, and persevere. By the end of the round, Snead finished four strokes under par.
TALENT + PERSEVERANCE = A TALENT-PLUS PERSON PUTTING THE TALENT-PLUS FORMULA INTO ACTION
Clearing away the five enemies of perseverance is a preliminary step to becoming a talent-plus person in the area of perseverance. Right thinking always precedes right action. If you want to be able to sustain your talent, then take the following steps:
Purpose: Find One
Rich De Voss, owner of the NBA’s Orlando Magic, remarked, “Persistence is stubbornness with a purpose.” It is very difficult for people to develop perseverance when they lack a sense of purpose. Conversely, when one has a passionate sense of purpose, energy rises, obstacles become incidental, and perseverance wins out.
Perhaps you’ve seen America’s Most Wanted, the television program that re-creates the crime stories and encourages viewers to help authorities locate and capture the criminals who are wanted for these often violent crimes. The program’s host is John Walsh. Many people think he is an actor or journalist—a television professional hired to host the show. But he isn’t, and his story is quite remarkable.
Walsh owned his own company, and along with three partners, he built deluxe hotels. But one day his six-year-old son, Adam, disappeared. The child had been abducted, but because there was no evidence of a crime, the authorities were slow to help Walsh and his wife find their only child. They searched for sixteen days. Tragically, by the time he was found, it was too late. He was dead.
Walsh’s life was thrown into chaos. He lost thirty pounds. His house went into foreclosure. And he lost his business—he just couldn’t bring himself to return to his work. He had lost all hope. Then one day Dr. Ronald Wright, the county coroner, looked at Walsh and asked, “You’re thinking about suicide, aren’t you?”
“What do I have to live for?” Walsh replied. “I have nothing. My only child has been murdered. I can’t even talk to my wife. I have no job, my house is in foreclosure, my whole life is over.”
“No, it isn’t,” Wright responded. “You are articulate. You mounted the greatest campaign for a missing child in the history of Florida. Go out and try to change things.”
Walsh says that it was the best advice he’d gotten from anyone. It gave him purpose. And that sense of purpose did more than give him a reason not to kill himself. It energized him to serve and help others. In 1988, he began hosting America’s Most Wanted, which he continues to do as I write this. The show has been responsible for the capture of hundreds of fugitives, including fourteen who were on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted lists.
If you want to maximize your talent as a talent-plus person, you need to find your purpose. That is the only way you will be able to persevere, as John Walsh did, even when facing the most difficult circumstance
Excuses: Eliminate Them
One of the most striking things that separates people who sustain their success from those who are only briefly or never successful is their strong sense of responsibility for their own actions. It is easier to move from failure to success than it is from excuses to success.
According to Bruce Nash, author of a series of “Hall of Shame” books on sports figures, one notorious person for making excuses was Rafael Septien, former placekicker for the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys. Nash writes, “We’re all guilty of using excuses. When we do, we place in the company of at sports heroes. Take Rafael Septien, for example. Rafael Septien has no peers—when it comes to making up lamebrained excuses for missed field goals.” Among the excuses, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, that Septien offered:
· “I was too busy reading my stats on the scoreboard.”
· “The grass was too tall.” (Texas Stadium doesn’t even have grass; its surface is artificial turf.)
· “The 30-second clock distracted me.”
· “My helmet was too tight and it was squeezing my brain. I couldn’t think.”
· “No wonder [I missed]. You placed the ball upside down” (said to his holder).
If you want to maximize and sustain your talent, don’t allow yourself to offer excuses when you don’t perform at the best of your ability. Instead, take complete responsibility for yourself and your actions. And keep in mind the words of George Washington Carver, who said, “Ninety-nine percent of failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.”
Stamina: Develop Some
Former world heavyweight champion boxer Muhammad Ali, called “The Greatest,” asserted, “Champions aren’t made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them—a desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have last-minute stamina, they have to be a little faster, they have to have the skill, and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill.” All people who achieve and maintain success possess stamina. Truly, stamina is a key to perseverance, and perseverance is a key to becoming a talent-plus person.
In February 2006, I accompanied a group of leaders from two organizations, EQUIP and Lidere, on a trip to Central and South America. We traveled together by private plane. Our mission was to launch a leadership training initiative in seven countries.
The first leg of our journey was to Honduras. We were scheduled to train a group of leaders there at a conference, and part of our plan was to have leadership books available for anyone who might want to buy them. Abraham Diaz, who works with Marcos Witt at Lidere, took charge of working out the details of getting the books through customs in Guatemala and then on to Honduras, which we needed to happen in one day in order for them to make it to the conference on time the next day. Little did we know that getting those books to the conference was going to be an exercise in perseverance. Here, in Abraham’s own words, is what happened after he landed in Guatemala:
Before I left Atlanta, where we were to meet with the rest of the group, I spent two days in Houston receiving all the instructions I needed. The books were coming down in another plane, and the plan was to keep the books in the plane so that when we arrived we wouldn’t have to go through the process of importing all the material. But the company in Guatemala that we hired to bring the books in didn’t follow instructions. They said that they had turned all the books over to Customs officials. It took two and a half hours to find this out. Now they didn’t have any control of those boxes, and I had to go directly Customs to see where they were located.
2:30 p.m.—I went to Customs’ main office to find the boxes. But they couldn’t search for them. They needed me to go back to the company which brought in the books and get the documents they received when they turned over the boxes. I went back to get them, but was told I would have to wait for the person in charge of this matter.
3:00 p.m.—The person in charge arrived. He informed me that I needed to pay a fee at another location so that he could release these documents. I went to the other location and made the payment.
3:30 p.m.—I went back to the handling company and received the papers which included the airway bill number and invoice that Customs required.
4:00 p.m.—I arrived back at Customs and they started searching for the hundreds of boxes. As they reviewed their information, they realized the number of boxes that arrived was one less than the number reported in the documents, so they said they could not release them to me. To get them, I needed to provide a letter, stamped and approved by another Customs official, stating that I relinquished my right to the missing box.
4:30 p.m.—I walked to this office. I saw a man there who appeared to be important. When I started to explain my problem, he invited me into his office. It turned out he was the administrative director of Customs for all of Guatemala. He started typing the letter I needed himself. Then he got all of the signatures and stamps I needed to get the boxes out. I finally felt like I might succeed.
5:15 p.m.—I went back to the warehouse where international shipments are held. They kept me waiting for forty-five minutes while they processed other orders.
6:00 p.m.—The warehouse official said that in order for them to release the boxes, I had to make two different payments for storage and other charges. I went to the other location to make the payment, but I had only U.S. dollars with me, which they wouldn’t take. So I jumped into a cab and went to a nearby bank to exchange money.
6:30 p.m.—I returned to make the payment and waited in line for more than twenty minutes before I could pay the fees.
7:00 p.m.—I returned to the warehouse and waited for the person who would take the receipts showing I made the proper payments. After waiting forty-five minutes, he finally arrived. He looked over the papers. He couldn’t believe I had been able to do all the procedures in a few hours. He made some phone calls and looked over the papers again.
8:00 p.m.—He finally gave the okay and called the people who would operate the machinery to move the boxes to the front of the warehouse.
9:00 p.m.—I found out the workers who move the boxes in the warehouse were not the same people who would move them to the plane, so I started searching for someone who could perform this service. I waited for nearly an hour for the person in charge to show up so that I could find out how much it was going to cost and whether he had workers to do it.
10:00 p.m.—After coming to an agreement, workers started loading boxes and moving them to where the plane was. I then realized that the FBO [fixed base of operations] at this airport had no place to store the boxes overnight, so I worked it out for the people who moved them to stay with the boxes until 5:00 a.m. the next morning.
11:00 p.m.—The captain of our plane called me to let me know that his aircraft could not take all the boxes we had because of the weight. As the boxes arrived from the warehouse, I began contacting other pilots with small planes near ours to find one who was willing to take the remaining boxes to Honduras. I finally found one who was willing to do it.
The next morning, we departed and flew to Honduras—where we had to start a similar process all over again!
A lot of leaders in Honduras were very grateful for the perseverance of Abraham Diaz. Because of him, they were able to get the books they needed.
Earlier in this chapter I stated that life is not one long race but a series of many short ones in succession. Abraham Diaz’s experience is a perfect illustration of this truth. On that day in Guatemala, he ran race after race for eight and a half hours—and the official who finally gave the okay to him was amazed that he had been able to do it. The next day he ran another race. And the day after that.
Abraham is a talented leader. He demonstrates the number one characteristic of good leaders: the ability to make things happen. That takes perseverance. That’s true no matter what your talent is or what skills you possess. Without perseverance, a talented person is little more than a flash in the pan.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Practice Sharpens Talent
It is you play at the level at which you practice. Consistently good practice leads to consistently good play. It sharpens your talent. Successful people understand this. They value practice and develop the discipline to do it. If you want to sum up what lifts most successful individuals above the crowd, you could do it with four little words: a little bit more. Successful people pay their dues and do all that is expected of them—plus a little bit more.
Looking for Success
In London, England, a young man sought to find his way in life. Only fifteen years old in 1827, young Charles possessed intelligence, ambition, and—he hoped—talent enough within himself to make his dreams for success a reality.
The boy grew up in a lower-middle-class family that had always struggled financially. His parents tended to spend a little more money than his father earned. And they had many mouths to feed, since the couple had eight children. As a result, they were continually borrowing money, putting off creditors, and moving from one place to another. In 1824, when his father was sent to debtors’ prison, twelve-year-old Charles was put to work gluing labels on bottles in a factory. He hated it.
Charles had gone to school for several years before his time in the factory, and when the family’s financial situation became less dire, he attended school again. He was a good student, but at age fifteen, with the family facing more hard times, he knew his school days were over. He was sent off to work, this time as a law clerk. At first he was glad to be doing tasks much different from those of his previous experience. In the factory, he had been among poor, illiterate boys doing dirty and tedious work. But it didn’t take long for his work in the law office to become tedious to him. After a year and a half apprenticing there, he switched legal firms, but it much better. After a few months, he resigned.
Unlike his parents, with whom he still lived, Charles had managed to save some money while working, so he decided to take his time figuring out what kind of work he wanted to do. He spent long hours in the reading room at the British Museum. A profession that interested him was journalism. Not only did it appeal to his love of literature, but it would require no further formal education or any kind of apprenticeship. His uncle was a reporter, and his father wrote occasional pieces as well. How could he achieve his goal? Through hard work and lots of practice. With the benefit of books from the museum and some coaching from his uncle, John Henry Barrow, Charles began teaching himself the Gurney system of shorthand writing. Because of his diligence, it didn’t take him long. Having “tamed the savage stenographic mystery,” he became a freelance court stenographer at age eighteen.
From Obscurity to Excellence
His choice surprised his family, and they did not believe he would be successful. “None of us guessed at it,” his father said, “and when we heard that he had become a reporter . . my brother-in-law Barrow . . and other relations anticipated a failure.” But he didn’t fail. He was so good that his uncle soon hired him as a staff member of the Mirror of Parliament and later gave him managerial duties. By the time he was twenty-one, he was considered to be “the most rapid, the most accurate, and the most trustworthy reporter then engaged on the London press.”
Charles felt good about his professional progress and he was earning money, but he desired more. He desired greater income and greater fulfillment. He decided to start doing another kind of writing—more creative works. He wanted to be more than just a reporter; he wanted to become an author. He began by writing “sketches” of people and places, drawing upon his experiences traveling throughout Britain as a reporter and upon his observations while taking long daily walks throughout London. When the first sketch, “A Dinner at Poplar Walk,” was complete, Charles hoped to get it published, dropping it into “a dark letter box, in a dark office, up a dark court in Fleet Street with tear and trembling.” He was ecstatic when in December of 1833, his piece appeared in the Monthly Magazine. He was paid nothing for his effort, nor was his name included with his work. But that didn’t matter. He was developing his talent by practicing his craft. He was on his way to becoming a professional author.
Practicing His Craft
He wrote more sketches in his “spare” time. With the creation of each new piece, he sharpened his talent. For a year and a half, he wrote for no payment, receiving only recognition from editors and readers as his pieces were published. His work was gaining such attention that his employer, the Evening Chronicle, requested that he create sketches regularly for the magazine. He agreed to do it at no charge, but also suggested that he would welcome some extra money in addition to his regular pay. His employer raised his salary from five to seven guineas a week.
The first half dozen sketches he had written were published unsigned. Later, he used the pen name “Boz.” Over the next three years, he published sixty sketches in various magazines. Much to his surprise and delight, he was approached in 1836 by a young publisher who wanted to collect his writings into a volume along with ten prints from a well-known illustrator. It would be called Sketches by Boz. It was such a success that it went through four printings in its first year. It also earned him enough respect and recognition to be hired for another writing job: a collection of stories to be offered in monthly installments with illustrations. His years of practicing his craft by writing sketches were finally about to pay off. He knew he wanted to call this new work The Pickwick Papers, and he decided he would use his real name: Charles Dickens.
From Excellence to Fame
When we hear the name Charles Dickens today, most people think of long, old-fashioned novels that are required reading in English literature classes, But in his day, Charles Dickens’s works were as popular as today’s biggest hit television shows or movies. And there was no author in the entire world more popular than Dickens.
Jane Smiley, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and biographer of Dickens, suggests that Dickens was “the first true celebrity of the popular arts—that is, a man whose work made him rich and widely famous. As close to a household name as any movie star is today” and the “first person to become a ‘name brand.”
Dickens is also considered by many to be the most talented author in England’s history—after Shakespeare. But before his fame, many people didn’t recognize his talent. Dickens biographer Fred Kaplan writes, “When he left his legal clerkship to attempt to be a reporter, his family thought he had aimed too high. When, in the next two years, he went from legal to parliamentary reporting, they expected a failure. Understandably, they were unprepared for the explosive release of energy and talent that transformed him in a three-year period into an internationally celebrated writer.” How did he transform that talent? He practiced his craft by writing those sketches. Kaplan says, “The sketches were a testing ground for an apprentice author whose talent enabled him to progress precociously.”
The idea for Dickens to write his first novel in installments was a good one. He went on to write all of them in that fashion. Most were published in monthly installments called monthly numbers. People bought and read each installment similar to the way we now tune in to our favorite television series. People who missed the novel as a series could buy a complete bound version once the series was finished—just as we can now purchase a complete season of a TV series on DVD.
The Pickwick Papers was Dickens’s first novel written in this fashion. The first monthly number sold fewer than 500 copies in April of 1836. However, Dickens kept fine-tuning the story and characters, and by the fourth “number,” sales were up to 4,000. That may not seem like much, but consider this. The novel as an art form was only 100 years old, and most novels sold an average of only 300 to 400 copies. And with each episode, Dickens’s sales continued growing. As the last few numbers came out, each sold a remarkable 40,000 copies. Dickens’s first novel was more successful than any other novel in history to that point. At age twenty-five, he achieved success as an author that was unmatched until the next century. Over the next twenty years, more than 1.6 million copies of Pickwick sold in one form or another.
Jane Smiley believes that Dickens’s first three major works— Sketches by Boz, The Pickwick Papers, and Oliver Twist—were examples of his practicing his craft to sharpen his talent. She writes,
Every novelist seeks . . to extend his range of expression …. .In his twenties, [Dickens] was not unlike other youthful authors. Even though he was a genius, he had artistic ambitions that he was not yet technically equipped to fulfill, and he used his first three books to write his way toward fulfilling them.
During his thirty-five-year career, Dickens wrote more than a dozen full-length novels (some of which are considered masterpieces), several travel books, and numerous Christmas stories. And all those years, he also edited various monthly magazines and traveled extensively giving readings of his work. He was probably the most popular author in Britain’s history. But as talented as he was, he didn’t start out at the top. Even a genius needs practice to sharpen his talent and reach his potential.
The Power of Practice
There’s a myth about highly talented people—it’s that they are simply born that way. But the truth is that no people reach their potential unless they are willing to practice their way there. Recently I was traveling with Tom Mullins, a former football coach who wrote The Leadership Game, which contains successful leadership principles he gleaned from interviewing eight college national champion football coaches. As I talked about the idea of practice with him, he nearly leaped out of his seat. When Tom talks about anything related to leadership, it’s like he’s back in the locker room talking to his team at halftime when they’re losing. I mean he gets excited!
“Let me tell you, John,” he said, “all the national champion coaches told me the key to going from good to great came in two areas: the preparation of the team and the practice of the players. They were forever upgrading their preparation and sharpening their practices.” That made sense to me because preparation positions talent and practice sharpens it.
Before we go any further, there are three things you need to know about practice:
1. Practice Enables Development
How do we grow and develop? Through practice. People refine old skills and acquire new ones through practice. That is where the tension between where we are and where we ought to be propels us forward.
Former pro basketball player and U.S. senator Bill Bradley says that he attended a summer basketball camp when he was fifteen years old. There former college and pro basketball star “Easy” Ed Macauley told him, “Just remember that if you’re not working at your game to the utmost of your ability, there will be someone out there somewhere with equal ability who will be working to the utmost of his ability. And one day you’ll play each other, and he’ll have the advantage.”
If you desire to improve and develop, then you must practice. It allows you to break your own records and outstrip what you did yesterday. Done correctly, practice keeps making you better than you were yesterday. If you don’t practice, you shortchange your potential.
2. Practice Leads to Discovery
In one of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts strips, Charlie Brown laments to his friend Linus, “Life is just too much for me. I’ve been confused from the day I was born. I think the whole trouble is that we’re thrown into life too fast. We’re not really prepared.”
“What did you want,” Linus responds, “a chance to warm up first?”
We may not get a chance to warm up before entering childhood, but we can warm up by practicing the many activities we pursue once life has begun. And it is often during these “warm-ups” that we learn able things about ourselves. If you commit yourself to practice, here are a few things you are likely to learn:
Practice both shows and builds commitment. The true test of commitment is action. If you say, for example, that you are committed to becoming a great dancer but you never practice, that’s not commitment. That’s not dance. That’s just talk. But when you follow through and practice, you show you very time you follow through, your commitment becomes stronger.
Your performance can always be improved. Consultant and author Harvey Mackay says, “A good leader understands that anything that has been done in a particular way for a given amount of time is being done wrong. Every single performance can be improved.” Since there always a better way, your job is to find it.
The “sharpening” process is better in the right environment. You can’t discover your abilities and improve your skills in an environment where you are not allowed to make mistakes. Improvement always requires some degree of failure. You must seek a practice area where experimentation and exploration are allowed.
You must be willing to start with small things. Human relations expert Dale Carnegie advised, “Don’t be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do little things well, the big ones tend to take care of themselves.” As you first start to practice, the gains you make may be small. But they will grow. They compound like interest. Swimming coach Daniel F. Chambliss says that great athletes pay attention to small details and practice them consistently. He observes, “Swimming is swimming, we can say—in practice, or in meets, it’s all the same. If you swim sloppily for 364 days a year, nothing great is going to happen on the day of that big meet, no matter how excited you get.”
Very small differences, consistently practiced, will produce results. A curious thing happens when you practice. At first the gains are small, as I said. Then they begin to grow. But there comes a time, if you persevere, when the gains become small again. However, at this season these small gains make big differences. In the Olympics, for example, the difference between the gold medalist and the athletes who finish without a medal is often just hundredths of a second.
There is a price to pay to reach the next level. One of the things you often learn in practice is what it will cost to reach a goal or go to the next level. As you get ready to practice, I recommend that you abide by the Taxicab Principle, which is something I learned traveling overseas: Before you get into the cab, find out how much the ride is going to cost. If you don’t, you may end up paying much more than the ride is worth! As you practice, keep in mind the words of screenwriter Sidney Howard, who remarked, “One half of knowing what you want is knowing what you must give up before you get it.”
Many people regard practice as an essentially negative experience. It doesn’t have to be that way. The best way to make practice exciting is to think of it in terms of discovery and development.
3. Practice Demands Discipline
One reason some people see practice as a grind is that it requires discipline. Even activities with intense physical demands also require lots of mental discipline. Bill McCartney, former national championship head football coach of the Colorado Buffaloes, used to tell me, “Mental preparation to physical preparation is four to one.”
Developing discipline always begins with a struggle. There is no easy way to become a disciplined person. It has nothing to do with talent or ability. It is a matter not of conditions, but of choice. But once the choice is made and practice becomes a habit, two things become obvious. The first is a separation between the person who practices and the one who doesn’t. Cyclist Lance Armstrong emphasizes that “success comes from training harder and digging deeper than others.” He would know, having won a record seven Tour de France championships. The second thing that emerges is a winning spirit. The harder you work, the harder it becomes to surrender.
Greek philosopher Aristotle observed, “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” That habit is developed during practice.
The Five Pillars of Practice
I talked to a lot of leaders and coaches about practice while I was working on this chapter. And each one of them had a little different take on how to approach practice effectively. Warren Bottke is a PGA master professional who has helped thousands of amateurs and professionals improve their golf game. As Warren and I talked, we settled on five elements upon which great practice rests.
Pillar #1: An Excellent Teacher or Coach
One of my core beliefs is that everything rises and falls on leadership. I teach that truth to businesspeople all the time, but it also applies in other areas of life, including practice. People who perform at their peak practice effectively, and they practice effectively under the leadership of a great teacher.
Howard Hendricks, professor and chairman of the Center for Christian Leadership in Dallas, says, “Teaching is causing people to learn.” How do good coaches do that? In part, they inspire. But good teachers do more than that. They tailor their instruction to their students. A good teacher or coach, like all good leaders, knows the strengths and weaknesses of each person. He knows whether a person is a right-brain creative/intuitive type or a left-brain analytical type. He knows whether a person learns visually, verbally, or kinesthetically. And he can tell when someone needs a pat on the back or a kick in the pants.
When Dickens started in his career, his uncle coached him as a reporter. With practice, he became the best in England. As he began writing creative pieces, a few key editors gave him feedback and, more important in his case, encouraged him to keep doing that kind of writing. Because his talent was so great, Dickens quickly outpaced the ability of those who would coach him. But throughout his life, he remained connected with other professional writers from whom he could receive advice and feedback, people such as Thomas Carlyle, Wilkie Collins, William Makepeace Thackeray, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and John Forster.
Pillar #2: Your Best Effort
Industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie declared, “There is no use whatever trying to help people who do not help themselves. You cannot push anyone up a ladder unless he is willing to climb himself.” People don’t improve and reach their potential without putting forth great effort. That’s why composer and orchestra leader Duke Ellington used to make a simple but demanding request of the musicians who played for him. “Just give me your best,” he asked. Ellington worked hard and expected the same from others, knowing that hard work would not kill anybody (although it does seem to scare some people half to death).
Joe Theismann, who currently works as an announcer for ESPN, quarterbacked the Washington Redskins to two Super Bowl appearances in 1983 and 1984. The team won the first time and lost the second time. Today he wears his Super Bowl winner’s ring and his “loser’s” ring as reminders of the importance of effort. Why? Because his two experiences couldn’t have been more different. During their championship season, Theismann was thrilled to be in the Super Bowl and gave his very best to win. But not the next year. About the next year, Theismann explained, “I was griping about the weather, my shoes, practice times, everything.” He clearly wasn’t giving his best effort. “The difference in those two rings,” said Theismann, “lies in applying oneself and not accepting anything but the best.”
Pillar #3: A Clear Purpose
PGA Golfer Warren Bottke says that when he works with a new client, the first thing he does is to establish the purpose of practice. That usually means identifying a specific goal for each practice session. But the overarching purpose of practice is always improvement leading to excellence.
Pepperdine University sociology professor Jon Johnston makes a distinction between excellence and mere success:
Success bases our worth on a comparison with others. Excellence gauges our value by measuring us against our own potential. Success grants its rewards to the few but is the dream of the multitudes. Excellence is available to all living beings but is accepted by the few. Success focuses its attention on the external—becoming the tastemaker for the insatiable appetites of the … consumer. Excellence beams its spotlight on the internal spirit . . Excellence cultivates principles and consistency.
As you practice, make excellence your target, and give your best to achieve it. Willow Creek founder Bill Hybels says, “Most people feel best about themselves when they have given their very best.” If excellence is your goal and you arrive at it, you will be satisfied even though you never achieve success.
Pillar #4: The Greatest Potential
Have you ever noticed that two people on the same team with the same coach can practice with equal focus, effort, and purpose and have very different results? It’s a fact that equal practice does not mean equal progress. I learned this fact when I was nine. By then I had been taking piano lessons for a couple of years. As 1 played, I thought to myself, I’m pretty good at this. But then one day I played at a piano recital, and it turned out to be a reality check. Elaine, a girl who had been taking piano lessons for only six months, played a more difficult piece than mine. How could she be so much better than I was so quickly? The answer is simple: her potential was much greater than mine. It didn’t matter how much focused effort I put into practicing the piano. I was never going to go as far as Elaine could. Music wasn’t one of my best gifts, I enjoyed playing, but I wasn’t going to achieve excellence in it.
A few years ago after I spoke on leadership for Chick-fil-A, someone asked me during a Q&A session how to develop future leaders. I believe that when I quickly answered, “Find potential leaders, people thought I was being flippant. But my point was that it’s much easier to train people in the area of their greatest potential. When I evaluate people’s potential, I ask two questions: (1) Can they? And (2) Will they? The answers to these questions reveal something about their ability and their attitude. If both are right, the potential for excellence is high.
When Charles Dickens began thinking about writing fiction, he was already the best reporter in England. He could have remained where he was and been at the top of his profession. But something inside him must have known that as good as he was, he was not in the area of his most remarkable strength. So he took the risk of shifting his focus in search of his greatest potential.
You need to do the same. And once you figure out where your greatest potential lies, then start to practice there. If you don’t, not only will you fail to increase your ability, but you’ll eventually lose some of the ability you started with. You see, having potential works exactly opposite from the way a savings account does. When you put your money in a savings account, as time goes by, your money compounds and grows. The longer you leave it untouched, the more it increases. But when it comes to potential, the longer you leave it untouched, the more it decreases. If you don’t tap into your talent, it wastes away.
One way that you can get the best from yourself is to set high standards for your greatest potential. Dianne Snedaker, cofounder and general partner of Wingspring, advises,
If you are interested in success, it’s easy to set your standards in terms of other people’s accomplishments and then let other people measure you by those standards. But the standards you set for yourself are always more important. They should be higher than the standards anyone else would set for you, because in the end you have to live with yourself, and judge yourself, and feel good about yourself. And the best way to do that is to live up to your highest potential. So set your standards high and keep them high, even if you think no one else is looking. Somebody out there will always notice, even if it’s just you.
You can tell that you’re not making the most of your potential when the standards set for you by others are higher than the ones you set for yourself. Anytime you require less of yourself than your boss, spouse, coach, or other involved person does, your potential will go untapped.
Pillar #5: The Right Resources
Even if you do many things right, including finding a good coach or mentor, focusing in your area of greatest potential, giving your best, and doing so with purpose, you can still fall short without the right resources. During World War II, General George Patton was one of the most talented and accomplished commanders for the Allied forces. He was innovative, focused, and fearless. He was a good strategist and tactician. And he possessed the tanks and men to strike boldly against the Nazis to help bring an end to the war. But one thing he often lacked: gasoline. Without fuel, his tanks were useless.
Resources are nothing more than tools you need to accomplish your purpose. Every human endeavor requires resources of some kind. To practice well, you need to be properly equipped.
TALENT + PRACTICE = A TALENT-PLUS PERSON PUTTING THE TALENT-PLUS FORMULA INTO ACTION
There is one more secret to successful practice that will help you to sharpen your talent, and I believe it elevates top achievers above everyone else. Dickens displayed it. So did Joe Namath, Rueben Martinez, Meriwether Lewis, and the other highly talented people whose stories I recount in this book. It’s summed up by the phrase “a little extra.” Here’s what I believe it takes for someone to become a talent-plus person in the area of practice:
1. A Little Extra Effort
Historian Charles Kendall Adams, who was president of Cornell University and later the University of Wisconsin, observed, “No one ever attains very eminent success by simply doing what is required of him; it is the amount of excellence of what is over and above the required that determines greatness.” All accomplishments begin with the willingness to try—and then some. The difference between the ordinary and the extraordinary is the extra!
A little extra effort always gives a person an edge. Art Williams, the founder of Primerica Financial Services, once told me, “You beat fifty percent of the people in America by working hard; you beat forty percent by being a person of honesty and integrity and standing for something; and the last ten percent is a dog-fight in the free enterprise system.” If you want to win that dogfight, then do a little extra.
2. A Little Extra Time
Successful people practice harder and practice longer than unsuccessful people do. Success expert Peter Lowe, who has gleaned success secrets from hundreds of people who are at the top of their profession, says, “The most common trait I have found in all successful people is that they have conquered the temptation to give up.”
Giving a little extra time requires more than just perseverance. It requires patience. The Law of Process in my book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership says, “Leadership develops daily, not in a day.” That can be said of any talent we try to cultivate and improve.
As you work to give a little extra time to your efforts, it is wise to maintain a longer view of the process of improvement. Such a perspective really helps. Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor who created the memorial to the American presidents at Mount Rushmore, was asked if he considered his work to be perfect. It’s said he replied, “Not today. The nose of Washington is an inch too long. It’s better that way, though. It will erode to be exactly right in 10,000 years.” Now that’s patience!
3. A Little Extra Help
Anybody who succeeds at anything does so with the help of others. Alex Haley, the author of Roots, used to keep a reminder of that in his office. It said, “If you see a turtle on top of a fence post, you know he had help getting there.”
I know that in my professional pursuits, I’ve always needed help. And I’ve been fortunate that others were willing to give it to me. Early in my career in the 1970s, I contacted the top ten leaders in my field and offered them $100 to meet with me for thirty minutes so that I could ask them questions. Many granted my request, and (fortunately for my thin wallet at the time) most declined to accept the $100. And today, I still make it a point to meet with excellent leaders from whom I desire to learn.
When I think about the ways that people have helped me in all aspects of my life, I am humbled and grateful. Some have given me advice. Others have presented me with opportunities. And a few, like my wife, Margaret, have lavished unconditional love on me. I know I am a very fortunate man.
4. A Little Extra Change
A letter was returned to the post office. Handwritten on the envelope were the words, “He’s dead.” Through an oversight, the letter was inadvertently sent again to the same address. It was again returned to the post office with another handwritten message: “He’s still dead!”
Let’s face it. Most people are resistant to change. They desire improvement, but they resist changing their everyday routine. That’s a problem because, as leadership expert Max DePree says, “We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.” To sharpen your talent through practice, you need to do more than just be open to change. You need to pursue change—and you need to do it a little bit more than other achievers. Here’s what to look for and how to focus your energy to get the kinds of changes that will change you for the better:
· Don’t change just enough to get away from your problems— change enough to solve them.
· Don’t change your circumstances to improve your life—change yourself to improve your circumstances.
· Don’t do the same old things expecting to get difference results— get different results by doing something new.
· Don’t wait to see the light to change—start changing as soon as you feel the heat.
· Don’t see change as something hurtful that must be done—see it as something helpful that can be done.
· Don’t avoid paying the immediate price of change—if you do, you will pay the ultimate price of never improving.
Poet and philosopher Johann von Schiller wrote, “He who has done his best for his own time has lived for all times.” You can do your best only if you are continually seeking to embrace positive change.
When you have worked hard in practice to sharpen your talent and you begin to see results, please don’t think that it’s time to stop practicing. You never arrive at your potential—you can only continue to strive toward it. And that means continual practice.
Charles Swindoll’s friend William Johnson, who owns the Ritz-Carlton hotels, was pleased when the organization won the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award. When Swindoll congratulated him, Johnson quickly gave others the credit for the achievement. But he also said that it made him and others in the organization work even harder to earn the respect that came with the award. Johnson summed up his attitude: “Quality is a race with no finish line.” If you don’t strive for excellence, then you are soon settling for acceptable. The next step is mediocrity, and nobody pays for mediocre! If you want to reach your potential and remain a talent-plus person, you have to keep practicing with excellence.
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