The events of the past few months have given me great opportunity to talk about achieving success, dealing with success, and also the challenges we face when trying to achieve continued success. I’d now like to address the difficult times. The times when we are stuck in a rut and can’t seem to get anything to go our way, and also about overcoming setbacks, failures and these difficult times.
It is reasonable to suggest that the majority of organisations will be experiencing these things.
The events of the past few months have given me great opportunity to talk about achieving success, dealing with success, and also the challenges we face when trying to achieve continued success. I’d now like to address the difficult times. The times when we are stuck in a rut and can’t seem to get anything to go our way, and also about overcoming setbacks, failures and these difficult times.
It is reasonable to suggest that the majority of organisations will be experiencing these things. Experiencing small setbacks often, feeling like they aren’t living up to their potential, but often not knowing precisely what to do to turn the tide in their favour.
Top athletes and teams have an ability to respond to setbacks and failures with seemingly more determination than they had in the first place. That’s what separates the elite from the good, and the good from the average. Life is always going to throw things at us that are beyond our control, it is never plain sailing. It is how we respond to these that defines us. Top teams and organisations can perform to their best when the pressure is on, when they are being written off, when the odds are stacked against them, and this is largely because they have the utmost confidence in themselves.
Therefore, in my opinion, spending time on self-assessment is crucial. As people, we are all very different. Different things motivate us. Different things make us tick. Good managers recognise this, but I think it’s foolish to believe that we can rely simply on others to analyse our strengths and weaknesses. The best athletes in the world seem to be fully aware of what their strengths and weaknesses are. By firstly understanding them ourselves, strategies and plans can be put in place that will have more of an effect on future performance.
Granted, in my sport, we are concerned with the team performance, and this is also the case in most business environments too.
However if the individual members of the team are of a higher standard, then the potential the team has is greater. That is why I feel that self assessment is so important. We know ourselves better than anybody else, and by honestly evaluating ourselves, we have huge potential to implement change for the better.
“Self assessment is vital for everybody because that way you can play to your strengths and work on improving or delegating your weaknesses. The biggest challenge that I have seen with business owners isn’t so much the self assessment, more the self criticism. I have seen business owners paralysed by their own self talk and believing that they are just not good enough, this is fatal for most businesses. Stephen is right that you need to be honest with yourself because then you can get help and make improvements, non of us are perfect. One of the big benefits that our clients have found is that we are honest with them, but not critical, we are here to help not to beat with a stick and feedback is never personal. If you know you are not performing to your maximum capacity why not ask for some honest feedback 01604 214695.”
