The week after my first session with my boss was very interesting. I accepted his advice and began to ask myself if I could do a lot of things. Can I become a major manufacturer in the company? Can I go back to school and get a Ph.D. Can I write a best-selling book? Can I get the perfect physical form and run this marathon one day and much more. Perhaps the most significant aspect of this exercise was listening to my self-deception when my initial answers came.
For example, when I asked myself if I could write a best-selling book, my automatic conversation was NO! I was struck by the excitement of supporting thoughts — and how quickly they came — why I could not. Things like I have never written a book before; It was really the one you know, not how well you can write; And I even thought that there are many, many other writers are better than I, who have never written a best-selling book.
After this initial onslaught of negativity, I then decided to conduct some research by the authors, who first books became bestsellers. The obvious example was John Grisham, Time to Kill, published in 1988. It took him four years to write this book, and he not only became a bestseller, but he was one of three authors to sell 2 million copies of the first print. As I continued to watch, there were others; the first books also became bestsellers.
So suddenly I had to reluctantly admit that I have the ability and the potential to write a best-selling book, but I clearly lacked knowledge and training (writing experience). As I thought about it, I was quite sure that my next meeting with my mentor would be devoted to learning that I was confident that this was the missing link in order to develop more of my abilities and potential: knowledge and training.
When we got together, we reviewed my experience with the question: “Can I?” And he pointed out how important my initial internal reactions and especially my conversation are. He said that we will return to this in the upcoming session. When I told him my “aha” about knowledge and learning, he smiled again and asked me another question:
“Mike, what do you know about the importance of consuming large amounts of fruits and vegetables in your daily diet?”
Well, that was easy! I told him all about the research that I had heard and read about emphasizing the importance of fruits and vegetables. I told him about important vitamins and minerals found in leafy green vegetables, about phytochemical diseases that are found only in these products. Then I told him about the importance of dietary fiber, which are crucial for maintaining a healthy intestinal tract and, of course, to prevent constipation and even reduce the risk of intestinal cancer. I was ready to continue even more until he stopped me and asked another question:
“Mike, how many servings of fruits and vegetables did you have yesterday?”
I discussed how I viewed my meal that day. For breakfast, I had bacon and eggs caught cold with brown and white toast (lots of butter, of course). I went for Chinese cuisine for lunch and tried lunch of chicken fried rice. For lunch I had a steak sandwich with garlic mashed potatoes. Oh, and there was some kind of broccoli as a side that I pushed with a fork, but was very much ignored.
He then said, “So, Mike, a fair assessment to say that you already have more knowledge about good eating habits than you use?” He’s there for me. Then he went down the list. He asked me if I knew more about exercise than daily workout (what kind of daily workout?). Yes. Did I know more about good organizational habits than my garage at home or can my closet indicate? Yes. He asked about when I was in college, if I knew more about good study habits and home skills, than I practiced? Yes again!
And that is when he lowered the boom on me. He said: "Mike, just like not about how many opportunities you have, what determines your results, it's also not about how much you know what determines your results: actions and results."
So I bought a workout. I told him that maybe if I had more workouts — basically more knowledge — maybe I use it more. He immediately reminded me of the sales trainings that I did when I was first hired. He reminded me of all the phone scenarios and proven methods that I was given. He asked me how many of them I used daily. (Few - I was still closing it.) He asked me, where was my book at that moment? Was he on my desk, open to the denials I needed for my next call? No, I had to admit that it was in the middle drawer of my desk, under a bunch of other forgotten documents.
He asked me one more question: “Mike, do you know more about the importance of good qualification methods and skills than your last few sales talks might seem?” Yes, that was annoying. YES! “Do you know more about closing skills and correct handling of objections than your last few closures testify to?” Well, I give up. At the same time, I recognized that yes, I knew more about most things than about my actions, behavior and results.
He told me that, although knowledge and training are important, they are not drivers of actions or results. They were not more successful than anyone else. He told me that knowledge is cruel, and that we can always use more training, but by themselves they were not going to force me to use more opportunities and abilities that I already agreed with them. He told me that this is not what I know, rather, this is what I do with what I know, what makes the difference.
Well, since I am motivated to use more of what I already know and use more of my capabilities and capabilities? I was suddenly convinced that the missing part was motivation, wasn't it? When he heard me say that, that little smile, now I'm a smirk, I was sure, crept into his face. He told me that we will dive into this topic next week.
In the meantime, he challenged me again - and I'm going to challenge you - to come up with areas in my life where I would like to achieve more, and then he asked me to start making a list of things that I already knew in these areas and whether I used knowledge and training for maximum results in these areas. Regardless of whether this knowledge affects my behavior or allows me to use more of my abilities and potential.
This was the beginning of an interesting exercise, and I highly recommend that you try it for yourself this week. Choose an area — as many areas as you choose, and ask yourself if you know more than you use. If this is a fact, ask yourself how much or a little about the current knowledge that you have in this area that you are using. The answers for me were frank, and I think they will be for you too.
