This is quite a remarkable book that was recommended to me by someone I was working with recently in Charleston, SC. Lonnie Plaster and I have known each other for several years and I admire and respect him as a real estate manager, but have not really gotten to know him well. A chance conversation over dinner brought about this book recommendation.
Initially, my interest was from a management perspective - how do you help the people with whom you are working to realize their dreams? The concept is not new to me. The person I regularly refer to as my business coach, Dennis Bruce, uses this concept with his agents as well. He did a workshop for my staff in Home Service Connections on my last day in that position. He introduced the idea of first identifying dreams and then visualizing them. He didn't call it dream management which is the term coined by Matthew Kelly in this book, but that's what it is.
I suppose because I am so focused on how Dennis helps me with my business goals, that I didn't consider that what I am working toward every day is more than just business related. He's really been a "Dream Manager" in the sense that this book is focused on - how our work relates to the dreams we have for ourselves. The author points out that there are several things that are universal to working people everywhere: to do meaningful work; to advance and make progress; and to be appreciated. That is what drives us more than any paycheck. But when an employer takes an active interest in helping their employees to identify their dreams (both short term and long term,) they are creating a culture where they are committed to doing as much for their people as they expect their people to do for the organization. In actively helping employees to identify and achieve their goals, the company benefits in decreased turnover and a more productive, engaged and loyal workforce.
Perhaps real estate sales managers recognize this more clearly because they are motivating, leading and inspiring independent contractors - which is vastly different than managing employees. When a regular paycheck is not the automatic result of simply showing up, it requires a great deal more skill to keep people focused and motivated. It makes sense that keeping them focused on their own dreams is the best way to keep them highly motivated. But that's just as true for employees, and yet few employers I know seem to have even the vaguest idea of this fact.
The book was an epiphany for me on two fronts: First was the realization that I am fortunate to have a Dream Manager who volunteered for the job and has stuck with it despite my unbelievable and baffling resistance to much of his advice; and secondly that I have settled for far too long in working for an organization with little interest in what they can do for me. I don't know why I have so stubbornly persisted in the face of such long term and evident indifference, but recognizing it for what it is has given me permission not to settle for it anymore. I don't have to settle for it.
I think this is an awesome book and whether it was luck or it was fate, it has given me an entirely new outlook in how to pursue my own dreams. I highly recommend it.
Showing posts with label professional development. Show all posts
Showing posts with label professional development. Show all posts
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Talent is Overrated - Geoff Colvin
Subtitled: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else. The book is well researched and presents compelling data for the case against the concept of innate talent. Toward the end of the book Colvin addresses the possibility that there are genes for things like intrinsic motivation; but at its most basic level, his theory suggests that high achievers reach astonishing heights in whatever they do because they work very hard at it in a highly specific way.
Colvin looks at many disciplines including music, athletics, chess and business, and takes on case studies involving Mozart, Tiger Wood and Jerry Rice, The Polgar Sisters, and Jack Welch among many others. In each instance research debunks the myth that talent accounts for accomplishment, and that achievement is somehow effortless if "talent" is what you are born with. Instead, these studies show how "deliberate practice" - and a lot of it - makes the difference in developing extraordinary skills.
Careful research they conducted also illustrates how the amount of actual time spent in such deliberate practice creates a cumulative effect, for which there appears to be no real short cut. It takes an artist about 10 years of intensive training and practice to turn out something that is considered really good. It doesn't matter whether you start your training at the age of 3 or the age of 20, there is still a requisite amount of highly specific practice you must do to get beyond good to reach great.
The book does point out that as we get older we end up behind the curve in our efforts if we didn't begin early enough. Younger people are coming up who've put in the time and practice and we aren't going to "catch up" to them in the number of hours they've invested versus what we are now investing.
In the latter part of the book, Colvin talks about these principles in relationship to companies. He really looks quite closely at companies like GE and how they consistently turn out so many high performers in business. He concludes that some of it is the culture and how that culture lends itself to developing individual performance. In a chapter entitled "Where Does Passion Come From?" there is a section headed "How Organizations Blow It." Here is the first paragraph:
It must be noted that, on this subject, as with the other findings on great performance, most organizations seem to be managed brilliantly for preventing people from performing at high levels. Since intrinsic drives are strongest, people will work most passionately and effectively on projects they choose for themselves. How many companies allow that? A few do, as noted in the previous chapter, and those companies have produced outstanding results. Yet most other companies steadfastly refuse to learn from them. Executives may protest that they have a business to manage and can't let employees run around working on who-knows-what. Fine; but those executives mustn't complain when their company's ideas are no better than the competition's. Nor should they claim to be mystified when employees lack passion and engagement.
Amen to that. I found a brilliant solution to this dilemma myself: I simply quit my job, pursued my vision and passion, and now I sell what I have to offer back to the company that I left. It actually works out pretty well - although my own perception is that I give twice as much as I get. But I wouldn't settle for less than pursuing what I believe to be strategically important to the future of the real estate industry and the people in it. It's disappointing that there are people who regularly settle for less. In fact, quite a lot of them.
I loved this book and highly recommend it! There is no time like the present, and no better time than NOW to be the person we can still become. It's really a matter of working harder as well as smarter on the skills we need in order to be high performers in a world where "experience" gets outdated very quickly. It's worth taking the time to read this book. Being great at what we do is not out of our reach.
Colvin looks at many disciplines including music, athletics, chess and business, and takes on case studies involving Mozart, Tiger Wood and Jerry Rice, The Polgar Sisters, and Jack Welch among many others. In each instance research debunks the myth that talent accounts for accomplishment, and that achievement is somehow effortless if "talent" is what you are born with. Instead, these studies show how "deliberate practice" - and a lot of it - makes the difference in developing extraordinary skills.
Careful research they conducted also illustrates how the amount of actual time spent in such deliberate practice creates a cumulative effect, for which there appears to be no real short cut. It takes an artist about 10 years of intensive training and practice to turn out something that is considered really good. It doesn't matter whether you start your training at the age of 3 or the age of 20, there is still a requisite amount of highly specific practice you must do to get beyond good to reach great.
The book does point out that as we get older we end up behind the curve in our efforts if we didn't begin early enough. Younger people are coming up who've put in the time and practice and we aren't going to "catch up" to them in the number of hours they've invested versus what we are now investing.
In the latter part of the book, Colvin talks about these principles in relationship to companies. He really looks quite closely at companies like GE and how they consistently turn out so many high performers in business. He concludes that some of it is the culture and how that culture lends itself to developing individual performance. In a chapter entitled "Where Does Passion Come From?" there is a section headed "How Organizations Blow It." Here is the first paragraph:
It must be noted that, on this subject, as with the other findings on great performance, most organizations seem to be managed brilliantly for preventing people from performing at high levels. Since intrinsic drives are strongest, people will work most passionately and effectively on projects they choose for themselves. How many companies allow that? A few do, as noted in the previous chapter, and those companies have produced outstanding results. Yet most other companies steadfastly refuse to learn from them. Executives may protest that they have a business to manage and can't let employees run around working on who-knows-what. Fine; but those executives mustn't complain when their company's ideas are no better than the competition's. Nor should they claim to be mystified when employees lack passion and engagement.
Amen to that. I found a brilliant solution to this dilemma myself: I simply quit my job, pursued my vision and passion, and now I sell what I have to offer back to the company that I left. It actually works out pretty well - although my own perception is that I give twice as much as I get. But I wouldn't settle for less than pursuing what I believe to be strategically important to the future of the real estate industry and the people in it. It's disappointing that there are people who regularly settle for less. In fact, quite a lot of them.
I loved this book and highly recommend it! There is no time like the present, and no better time than NOW to be the person we can still become. It's really a matter of working harder as well as smarter on the skills we need in order to be high performers in a world where "experience" gets outdated very quickly. It's worth taking the time to read this book. Being great at what we do is not out of our reach.
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