A colleague was sharing with me her joy in having won
some excellence award at work. It was interesting for me to listen to her
reflect on her journey over the last year and the things that changed in mind-set
and attitude that set her on a journey that culminated in this excellence
award. I then asked her what she saw as the meaning of this, and how it
impacted on the way she would be seen in future. This was an aspect that she
had not given herself the luxury to think about, she said, at which point I
asked her to reflect on some of those she knows had won this award. She felt
some of them had built on this recognition, but some seem to have disappeared
from recognition. This was not so much whether they would win awards again, but
more that their impact at work was no longer being felt.
We broadened our discussion to examine the phenomenon of some
reaching a high point of success and the inability to maintain that. I told her
about the leadership professor who once told me that “nothing fails like success”. It took me quite a while for me to
grasp the meaning of what he said, but he explained it to me. And the key point he made was that when you
reach a very high point, it is not easy to stay at that level forever. His
advice was that one could use the analogy of sports; where some are one season
wonders, yet others find a way to display a level of consistency over time.
They will have moments and seasons where things do not go well, but notwithstanding,
they continuously exhibit the behaviour of champions.
For those who have been able to do this, we recognise
them not so much for the triumphs, but for the consistency in terms of effort,
determination, hard work, drive, initiative, engagement and many other similar
traits. Interestingly, in organisations, we do not walk around with the results
of our performance evaluations written on us. People see us for the manner in
which we approach things, and conclude about us based on that, than some
mechanical view of our performance. Those who are success-minded are never
victims of negative results, but rather victors over the challenges they face.
The great Brazilian footballer Pelé is not recognized simply
because he was a world champion at seventeen, but for the efforts that he put over
many years. These were seen by an admiring public even during the times Brazil
could not win the championship. Pelé himself said that “Success is no accident. It is hard work,
perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you
are doing or learning to do.”
Bill Gates warns that “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they
can't lose.” Those who maintain consistency and success over time
understand fully that they need to have the ability to journey on undulating
paths, and survive different seasons. They fully appreciate that failure is a
key component of the success journey, from which great champions learn. In our
conversation, I emphasised to my colleague that the recognition she had
received was not the final destination, but simply a platform on which to
build. But, as we reflected on the experience of others we observed, she was
alert to the risk of her being lulled into a place of complacency, thinking
that things will happen easily for her.
The biggest lesson from our conversation was that we
never forget those things we did to get to a point of recognition. Whilst those
would not be a guarantee of results in future, at least we know we have
something that we can build on. Being a one-season wonder is more dangerous
than maintaining even an average performance over time. Performing with the
characteristics over a champion consistently, even during the periods where
things do not go according to plan, is likely to result in the success we aim
for.
