What Does A Gold Medal Performance Look Like To You?
Hey Everyone,
It’s GUEST BLOGGER TIME! Today’s Guest Blogger is Marysia Czarski from Velocity-Partnerships (www.velocity-partnerships.com). The blog below is from her original post made on February 25th, 2010.
What does a Gold Medal Performance look like to you?
Last night (February 24th) Joannie Rochette won a bronze medal in women’s figure skating. If I was to leave it there, you might have a number of opinions about that result. The background to this story, as you probably know is that Joannie’s Mom and Dad had joined her in Vancouver late last week. On Saturday night, three days before Joannie was to be on the ice, her mother died of a heart attack. Her Mom was only 55. Joannie could have reacted in so many ways including completely withdrawing from the games. Joannie chose to continue her Olympic quest and in fact laid down the two best performances of her skating career. And she won the bronze medal, however for Joannie, and for Canada it was golden in every way possible. For Joannie, she said just competing was a fantastic result for her.
I asked the question ‘what does a gold medal performance look like to you’ because it is an interesting inquiry into ‘results’. Before you knew the background to Joannie, you may not have thought that her result was outstanding. When you hear from it the context of what has happened in her life over the last week, suddenly it changes light, and you realize she was brilliant and inspiring. Therefore the leadership lesson from Joannie’s experience is keep the context in perspective when looking at results. Know what ‘gold’ looks like for you and your business team, and why that is important. Finally whatever ‘gold’ does look like, ensure everyone understands it, can be inspired by it, and knows how to work towards it so they can work ‘inside’ of that shared commitment, instead of just ‘working’. That transparency, engagement and focus has the greatest chance of allowing results to emerge that may even pleasantly surprise you.
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