I created the Criteria of Achievement below as a guide to help us focus on reaching our goals. I was inspired after reading Bill Walsh's Book, The Score Will Take Care of Itself.
Bill Walsh was the head coach of the 49ers, and in his ten years, they won six West Divisions titles and a total of three Super Bowl championships. Bill Walsh is considered one of the greatest head coaches in NFL history. When he started with the 49ers, he went about implementing 'Standards of Performance' that required maximum mental and physical effort, sacrifice and commitment. They applied to everyone in the organisation, from the cleaner to the star quarterback. Bill's 'Standards of Performance' dictated that he and his team behave like the champions they would later become; winning the Super Bowl in 1981, just two years after finishing with the worst record in the National Football Conference.
I've modelled my Criteria of Achievement on Bill's Standards of Performance to help provide me with a compass that will direct my attitude and behaviours in a way that I hope will bring about success.
- Work with motivation and Work intelligence towards constant improvement
Having a dedicated work ethic isn't enough; you need a focus that drives development in the disciplines required to achieve your goals. Otherwise, you can end up busy doing work for work's sake.
Don't confuse taking action with achievement. i.e. when you need someone to help you, like provide feedback on a project, don't only send them an email and then feel you've achieved your objective. When they don't reply, don't say to yourself, 'Well I sent the email'. Think about how else you could get the result. Write another email that frames your request differently, give them a call or go and see them.
Taking action in itself is very rewarding. The trap we can fall into, is that we don't align those tasks to our goals, or that we don't ensure that the work we do delivers significant value. I once spent weeks building a sales tracker for work that I felt very proud of, but apart from looking nice, it added very little extra value towards driving sales in the stores that I was working with at the time. The spreadsheet was only marginally more beneficial than the report the company had already developed. To make it worse, I had to spend another week teaching all my stores how to read it. Looking back now I can see that my pride in the sales tracker was due to me confusing activity with achievement.
- Appreciate wholeheartedly those around me and what they do
You can't achieve anything worthwhile in a vacuum. The people around you provide support and encouragement that enable you to achieve your best results. For me, my partner is such an incredible support. She helps me find the time and space I need to both work full time and set up my own coaching business. She also acts as an editor for the website and is a fantastic sounding board for developing my ideas.
It can be so easy to take people for granted. When you do, they understandibly become less motivated to take actions that support you; this can, over time lead to a situation where you may feel that it's just you against the world. The more appreciative you are, the more support you receive, it's one of the laws of the Universe.
- Strive to learn and to teach; to continually develop my abilities
Without continuing to develop your understanding of the subjects and skills that you need to master, you can be left behind. To create the forward momentum, you need to be continuously making new distinctions; figuring out new ways of doing things. Teaching is one of my highest values, it ties to my core meaning – to enable others to reach their true potential.
- Treat others better than I would like to be treated
You become the best by delivering more value than anyone else. This criterion helps me set a benchmark when I'm coaching someone. I imagine what I would expect from the best coach in the world and then I set about over delivering on that. This thought process provides an energy and a drive that makes coaching so enjoyable.
If you set mediocre standards for yourself and your services, you fall into the trap of only doing what's necessary. It can then become difficult to motivate yourself to take action and procrastination can set in.
- Exhibit grace at all times, especially in defeat and achievement
Grace is the ability to keep your head when all around are losing theirs. It's the ability to stay calm, to not be overcome by your emotions and stay in a peak state that enables you to make the right decisions at the right time.
Without grace, you can become overwhelmed by the scale of what you need to achieve; or discouraged when you inevitably encounter road blocks. Without grace, when you achieve your goals you can become arrogant and take it easy, rather than be humble and take the action necessary to build on your success.
- Focus on the specifics of progress and incessantly work towards improvement
The devil is in the details. It's the little things that you do every day that makes the difference. It can be easy to trick yourself into thinking that it's this one project or one client that matters and that everything else is just noise.
But it's those little things that add together to create one very big important thing, and therin lies your success. The one project or client might not come off and then what are you left with? Anything worth doing is worth doing properly, so it's important to know which details are going to create progress and commit to them.
- Act with positivity and certainty
Certainty is a powerful belief to hold. If you have faith in yourself and you communicate with positivity internally and with those around you, it drives positive action. You become certain that you will achieve your goals and taking decisive action becomes easy. Because you know you'll be successful, those that support you will be willing to do so much more, because they too will feel a sense of certainty.
- Communicate with myself and others fearlessly and distinctly, with honesty and empathy
So often we can leave the most important things unsaid because we allow fear to overwhelm us. This can leave us powerless. We need to use that fear as a guide – it's telling us that we need to be careful about how we share the information.
In The Art of Communication, Thich Nhat Hanh shares The Four Elements of Right Speech which is a guide to communicating in a loving and truthful way.
- Tell the truth. Don't lie or turn the truth upside down.
- Don't exaggerate.
- Be consistent. This means no double talk: speaking about something in one way to another for selfish or manipulative reasons.
- Use peaceful language. Don't use insulting or violent words, cruel speech, verbal abuse, or condemnation.
The Buddha and his students also created four criteria of speech to use when teaching, so they could be sure that they were using the four elements of right speech. The second of these; "speak according to the understanding of the person listening" is a useful guide, as it says we may speak differently to different people. This might sound like we are using 'double speak' but we're not. It's about sharing our version of the truth in a way that is empathetic to the other person's view of the world. Our truth may hurt others and we need to use empathy to help us find a way to share it, without causing needless suffering.
- Listen to what is said, as well as what is unsaid, without judgment and with an open heart.
Conversations with others can turn into a competition where instead of listening, we end up devising our next point. We also can easily rush into solution mode. It's an instinct coded in our DNA to want to try to solve an issue that a friend or colleague brings to us. But this instinct often leads us astray. It takes our focus away from what is being said and we miss critical information. It stops us asking questions that build trust and that might actually help uncover the issue behind the issue.
- Tame fear and use it as a guide to improvement
We need to remember fear is a guide, not a master. When we allow fear to overcome us, we become poor imitations of ourselves. We need to ask, what is fear trying to tell me? When we experience fear, it's because there is something in our future that we need to prepare for. We should ask ourselves, 'What is it that I need to do to prepare for what is about to happen?' By doing this, fear becomes our teacher.
- Honour my endeavour whatever the outcome
If we focus too much on the result, we forget the process that got us there. Sometimes we do everything we should, and we still don't get the result we're after. If we are too down on ourselves because we didn't get the result, we find it difficult to find the motivation to carry on. Other times we can get lucky and get the result without taking any action. If we focus too much on the result, then we can become complacent and fail to focus on improvement.
- Commit to going above and beyond for my priorities
This is about having a do whatever it takes. This stretches you to constantly go beyond your comfort zone which leads to constant growth.
- Always be present to the beauty of every moment; even when under pressure
It's important to have goals, but we shouldn't forget that it's the journey to achieving them that makes life worth living. If you can't be happy in your Mitsubishi Lancer with a battered bumper, then you won't be happy in a brand new Tesla Model X.
- Put the happiness of my family; above my own
Every decision I make is for the benefit of my family. They are what gives me ultimate pleasure in the long term.
- Be relentlessly focused and maintain high levels of concentration
We all have the same amount of time, we all have is 24 hours a day. The difference between achievement and average performance is the ability to focus and concentrate on what we want to bring into the world during the time that we have.
- Cut out the distractions and the ineffective
Having goals is one thing but taking action to achieve them is what will deliver results. It's important to be ruthless with anything that is not moving you in the right direction and anything that is giving you limited return for your input.
Staying Consistent with my Criteria of Achievement.Having created my own Criteria of Achievement the challenge now is to make it my new reality. The trap I need to avoid is confusing the action of writing my Criteria of Achievement with the result I'm after, which is living the criteria constantly, so they become who I am.
To help I have my criteria of achievement on my office wall and review it every day. I review them every morning and spend 2 to 5 Mins imagining how I'm going to live this criterion. I imagine what actions am I going to take in the day ahead to embody them. In the evening I take another 2 – 5 min to review my day and score myself out of ten. I also ask myself did I truly live up to the Criteria of Achievement? Where could I improve? What could I do differently tomorrow?
I also have a copy on my phone so that I can review it at any point, especially when I find my self-facing a challenging situation. I used it as a guide of how I should act i.e. if I find that I'm fearful because I have to present to a senior manager or that am presenting in front of a large group, I read my Criteria of Achievement and realise that I need to use fear as a guide. To remember that it is inspiring me to action, that I either need to do some more prep work or that I need to have faith in myself and act with positivity and certainty.
Whatever the situation I find myself in my Criteria of Achievement helps me stay present and shows me how I need to act to become the man I need to become to achieve my dreams.
Creating and Living Your Own Criteria of Achievement.If you're considering developing your Criteria of Achievement and putting it into action; you'll want to consider.
1: Identify and recognise the distinct activities and beliefs, that will enable you to actualize your goals. What are the behaviours? What are the habits you need to develop? What do you need to learn? Where do you need to direct your focus?
2: Commit to living up to your Criteria of Achievement. With the best of intentions, if we aren't careful, our minds can seek the easy path, where it is comfortable. We must be able to motivate the mind, to push beyond comfort, to continue to seek higher ground.
3: Become highly accomplished in the topics and disciplines required to achieve your goals.
4: Understand and recognise the values, beliefs and philosophy that underpin your Criteria of Achievement.
5: Develop strategies and concepts that drive you. What do you need to do each day to have the motivation and inspiration to seek the higher ground?
6: Connect, connect, connect. Nobody achieves success in isolation. It's not possible for you to become an expert in every discipline that's needed to achieve your goals. Even Usain Bolt the World and Olympic champion sprinter has a team of people around him. Helping with his technique, race strategy, strength training, recovery, health and diet, providing expertise and knowledge he doesn't process.
7: Live and breathe your Criteria of Achievement every minute of every day.
If you do write your own Criteria of Achievement please share in the comments below or on the Inner Coach Facebook Page #criteriaofachievement.
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