Why take on a tough challenge?

This is second part of a series of blogs showing how we can achieve more by rethinking our attitude towards failure. In this blog post I’m looking at why you might want to take on a tough challenge.

Tough doesn’t mean big. Your challenge can be pushing ahead with the orphanage in Cambodia or getting the bathroom redone. It can be choosing a new more satisfying career or it could be doing the GST return. What ‘tough’ challenges have in common is that you’re procrastinating on starting them. You want the outcome, but you’re blinking  because it involves certain hard work for uncertain reward and possible risk.

You might be thinking that this point is blooming obvious. I thought so too. Then I was giving one of my workshops about how to take on tough challenges, to a group of admin staff, and, so we could get into the fun stuff I asked the participants to come up with their own tough challenge. It’s a slightly awkward question, but most of the group started scribbling away in the workbooks. However, there was also a certain number of thin-lipped cold stares coming from people sitting mostly at the back. These people were very happy with just the way things are thank you very much.

This post is for them.

One of the first things I did, after thinking I might take part in the trans-Atlantic rowing race, was to go and see a sports coach, Jon Ackland.

I walked into his office and he had a huge white sheet of paper in front of him, with lots of little squares on it. It was my training plan, and he was busy filling all the boxes with how many hours of what I should be doing each day to get fit for the race.

He looked up from his desk and said, ‘Oh Kevin, I just need to know for your training plan, are you going to win the race or just take part?’

Given that I had only just decided I was going to be in the race this question seemed a little premature.

So I said ‘I’m going to try really hard and see what happens then.’  Which seemed a perfectly reasonable answer. But then he turned on me and said ‘No! No! No! That’s completely wrong! The only way you’ll have a CHANCE of winning this race is if you DECIDE to win. Then everything about the way you prepare for this race will change!’ He went on, ‘I don’t care what it is but I need to know now! Are you going to win? Or just take part?’

So he’s asking me to raise the stakes. He’s asking me to take on a HARDER challenge with a bright line between success and failure. And in fact has a very good chance of failure.

Hang on a second, why on Earth should I commit to a goal that I’ll probably fail at?

Risking failure sucks – but stagnation is worse

We consider taking on tough challenges because we want things to be better. We want a situation to be different. So how does that happen? Well, we could do nothing or we could do something.

For most people in most situations doing nothing is unlikely to be successful. That CV isn’t going to write itself. The bank account doesn’t stuff itself with money and the garage isn’t going to go fill itself with Lamborghini. Your life is certainly heading somewhere and when you’re in a moving car it’s generally better to have both hands on the steering wheel.

The problem is your brain is a reward seeking missile. Left to ourselves our natural state is to focus on pleasure, on the next bright and shiny thing, or what need to do right now to make sure that things don’t get a lot worse.

Unfortunately doing just what you want to do each day doesn’t result in a better life. (Just in higher video game scores and more weight). Improving our situation lies on the other side of sustained hard work and sacrifice.

So that’s the first reason why we take on tough challenges – to avoid stagnation and improve our situation.

Tough challenges are the doorway to some top shelf emotions

A Harvard professor, Teresa Amabile, recently had thousands of workers record what happened at work each day and also how motivated they felt. The days when motivation was at its highest were the days when progress was made towards a goal. The best part of your day is when you’ve achieved something. Accomplishment is the sweetest of emotions.

How do we get that sense of achievement? By taking on tough challenges. To prove me wrong you have to name me a worthwhile and easy challenge. To be rewarding, at some point, the challenge has to be beyond our reach.

Recently I was thinking about taking part in the Tarawera Ultra. A 100k running race through the forests between Rotorua and Kawerau. It would be an immense challenge for me. I had run a marathon a few years earlier, but this would be nearly two and half times as long. And it was only two months out so very little time to train. The most likely outcome is that I would nose into the mud at about the 45km mark. But wouldn’t it be an amazing achievement to get to the end? To run a 100km! Do I enter or not?

I didn’t know what I should do, but while I was going back and forwards on this I found myself looking at the FAQ page on the race website. It turns out that I wasn’t the only person who had this problem. In fact, the very first question was:

‘I don’t know if I can do this.’

In other words – why should I take on a challenge that I might fail at? Can you guess what their answer was? It wasn’t, ‘You can do it!’ – that wouldn’t have been true for everyone. It wasn’t, ‘You won’t know unless you try’. That’s true but doesn’t really address the question.

Their answer to the question was, ‘That’s the point.’

I liked that very much.

The reason that we take on these difficult challenges is to see what we are capable of. To have that exhilaration that comes from breaking our limits. If you knew you could run a 100km then what’s the point? It would be like … making a cup of tea, nice, but not exactly thrilling.

Let’s flip it around. What if you were physically prevented from taking on challenges that were beyond you? What if you were only allowed to do things that you already knew how to do, or had already done before? Only take on challenges that were 100% guaranteed of getting the outcome. Does that sound like a life? Or like a prison?

There is a question that I’m afraid gets asked far too often by motivational speakers, which is, ‘What would you knew if you couldn’t fail?’. I think it’s supposed to encourage you to think beyond your limits. Unfortunately, this question, if unconstrained, quickly leads to some absurd answers. What would I do if I knew I couldn’t fail? What would I do if I knew that I could only succeed? Jump off a tall building. Grab the guitar off The Edge at a U2 concert. Ask Beyoncé out on a date. That sort of thing. But inevitably I would die of boredom.

(BTW, a much better question is, ‘How much better would you feel about your challenge if you could figure out a way to control the risk?’ That’s what we’ll be looking at a later blog in this series.)

Tough challenges are a tool to get the most out of yourself

I’ll offer one last reason for why you want to take on tough challenges and it’s to do with the psychology of performance.

I’ve already introduced Jon Ackland, my coach for the trans-Atlantic race. Like all good coaches Jon was very dogmatic about winning. He would spend a lot of time impressing upon me the importance of winning. He would say things like, “You’ve got to win, it’s all about winning. Participation is for pussies. There’s no second place there’s only first loser!’ And so on.

That didn’t seem quite right to me. Sure winning is important but is it an absolute?

So I pushed back, ‘Hang on! It can’t be ALL be about winning. What if you were in a marathon race and you only won because your main opposition wasn’t there?
Or you lost because they cheated?
Or you were winning until you swerved to save a small child?
Winning can’t always be everything. Losing can’t always mean failing.’

But he wouldn’t have that. And so we went back and forth about this until finally he said something that stopped me in my tracks. In a moment of extraordinary insight he resolved the dilemma between winning vs participating.

He said, ‘Of course winning isn’t everything. The best that you can do is the best that you can do. But you can’t get the best out of yourself unless you commit to a difficult goal.’
That’s it! To get the best out of yourself you need to commit to a tough challenge, to tell yourself that achieving it is … well if not everything then very important. But to stay sane part of you has to remember that, at the end of the day, the best you can do is the best you can do.

Make sense?

So, three reasons that you might want to take on a tough challenge:
- To grow your skills and capabilities;
- To find out what you’re capable of; and
- To get the best out of yourself.

Hmmm, just re-reading that I haven’t been quite consistent, that last point only works if you’re taking on a big goal. Getting yourself over the line just to make your bed isn’t really getting the best out of yourself.

But I’ve spent too much time already trying to make this argument to finesse the points any further. If you already believe me that taking on a tough challenge is worthwhile I hope you’ve long since
skipped over to the next post. If you were indifferent before you started reading then I’m not sure words on a page are going to convince you.

I know because I’ve been this guy (see image of bloke on sofa) and he’s not listening.

We might know that taking on tough challenges are good for us - but just knowing usually isn’t enough to get us to take action. He’s not thinking about the benefits, he’s focused on the risks and the pain, especially the pain of failure. And that’s what we’re going to be looking at in the next post.

How to get the most motivation from your motivational speaker

Recently I saw an invitation to an event where a panel of industry experts were going to talk about mental toughness, something that I would normally rush to see.

Then I saw the format – it wasn’t going to be a presentation, it was going to be exclusively a question and answer session. Oh dear, that seldom works. You’ve seen them yourself. Most Q&A sessions (with some exceptions - see below) can be variable to say the least. 

But that did raise an interesting question - how do you get the most motivation from a motivational speaker? How do you get alignment between what your organisation needs and what the speaker deliver? How can you shape the event and guide the speaker to ensure that you get the best return on your investment?

This is a process that I’ve been through a few hundred times so here are my thoughts about some good questions and not so good questions that you might try asking or avoiding when briefing your next speaker.

“Here’s, ideally, what we want you to achieve.”

This is sweet music to the ears of most speakers. Most speakers, and all the good ones, are very keen to bring the most value to you as a client. We don’t want to ask you ‘How did it go?’ afterwards, we want to know that it went well beforehand.

So it’s very important to be clear as possible about what you would like the audience to be thinking, feeling and doing after the presentation. The other place to start is …

“Here’s what the problem is. Here’s the history of actions we’ve been taken.”

A good speaker is more like a consultant. They should be able to assess the situation and use their tools (anecdotes, observations, facts and activities) to help bring about change.

It’s very important to know what else has been done so that the presenter’s materical can best fit into the solution. They should also be able to tell you about the results that you can expect.

Not every speech starts with a problem!If the purpose of the event is just to for example, reward clients – that’s absolutely fine. But that’s quite different from an event intended to improve teamwork. They both should be entertaining but one will have message.

Which brings us to which messages and how many.

"Here's the 15 points we would like you to make."

Can you remember the last time you heard a motivational speaker? How many points can you remember? Probably not many. A speaker can fire about six idea bullets, you want them all to hit a target.

If you have any ideas for what those bullets should be, ie how you would like it addressed that’s great, the speaker will have some as well. If you’ve been to the speaker’s website and seen the range of speeches advertised then don’t be concerned about mixing and matching different elements. Speeches are put together as ‘modules’ and most of the time the relevant chunks can be swapped between.

One of my clients recently got very specific. Here is what they asked me to cover.
-    The importance of goal setting
-    How do they get excited about their goal?
-    How should they plan to achieve it?
-    How should they reward themselves?
-    Something about resilience

Done and done!

“What do you talk about? What points do you make? And how do you make them?”

It might seem obvious but this is a good question.

There are broadly two types of speakers - ‘Event based speakers’ and ‘Subject matter experts’. Event-based speakers (like me!) talk about something that they did, like being an All Black, or becoming NZer of the year, or trekking to the South Pole. To provide a satisfying story experience they will necessarily have a beginning, the call to take on the quest, some obstacles, and a resolution. From this narrative ‘spine’ they can jump off and focus on different points. You might be expecting just a patty, but you're going to get a bun and some special sauce as well.

It’s a good idea, and quite fun, at the briefing to hear the speaker’s early ideas about how they are going to meet your aims, and hear the anecdotes they use to make their points.

You will also hear what the speaker typically talks about. When I describe how I shape my presentations and topics that are received particularly well, clients often decide that they would like those elements to be part of the solution too.

“You have 60 minutes.”

Duration and objective go hand and hand. In general the longer the presenter talks for the more value you get. Up to a point - the brain can only take in what the bum can handle. You know your audience and what their concentration span is. For some audiences an hour is a long time to be sitting, for others, up to 2 hours is fine (provided there is a brief stand up break in the middle). After dinner concentration spans are usually shorter.

Knowing the finish time is as important as the duration. Conferences almost always run late. If the speaker’s session starts late it’s essential to be clear whether sticking to the agreed duration is more important than finishing at the agreed time – for example, to let people catch flights.

“Tell them that they have to do X.”

This is tricky.

Every audience loves it when it feels like the speaker has tailored the content to them, recognises the event, the location, special things about the day, uses the conference theme, weaves in the company values and specific challenges and goals and adjusts the examples and anecdotes so that it best works the audience and organisation. This is all good.

On the other hand, it is possible to overly brief the speaker so that they start using the same words and phrases that management has been using to get a desired behaviour out of the staff. When this happens the speaker can lose credibility with the audience.

A speaker’s message should reinforce what the client wants, but do it in a way that appears happily coincidental. Here’s what I mean. Let’s say a client has a problem with teamwork and that different parts of the organisation are working in silos, with sales being the worst culprits. In this case it would be unwise for the speaker to say anything like ‘Sales – you’ve got to buck your ideas up and stop over-promising you’re stressing out the other teams.’

Instead, the speaker can relate a story about their own experience. I can weave in an anecdote about how Jamie and I faced this problem of conflicting priorities out in the Atlantic or in the South Pole trek, and how we resolved it. I can talk about a technique we used that was really useful for us. People will get the idea.

I’ve had feedback from the client where they’ve said, ‘My staff are finally saying to me things I’ve been trying to tell them for months!’ That’s a perfect outcome.

"Shall we have a 45min Q&A at the end?"

Absolutely, but we need to set it up so we dodge some potholes as Q&A’s can be awkward and unproductive.

In theory a Q&A with the speaker should allow the audience to probe deeper on the topics that interested them, and get clarity on how to apply the tools and techniques.
The Q&A should be where the rubber hits the road. Where the audience gets to throw a few stones at what’s been said, satisfy themselves it’s useful and get some specific help putting their plans in place to implement.

In theory.

Unfortunately, what happens in practice is when put on the spot people’s minds go blank and they are squeamish about talking in front of their peers. So they tend to go for safe questions. I nearly always get asked ‘What are you going to do next?’ Which is a nice non-threatening conversation starter, but talking about my plans doesn’t really help move them forward. (I should really respond ‘What are YOU going to do next?’!)

The audience can also get sidetracked. I was at a Q&A with the All Black coach Steve Hansen recently. The facilitator opened with something like ‘Now we aren’t here to ask Steve about rugby, we here to find out how he runs a high performance organisation.’

So the questions were mostly about rugby.

The last problem with Q&A sessions is that they get hijacked by people who have a certain niche issue that doesn’t apply to the majority.

Here’s a surefire way to improve the Q&A – submit the questions electronically during the presentation. There are some great solutions out there like ‘Slido’ that allow the audience to tap in questions from their phone. This can be done in real time during the presentation so the questions reflect the whole content, not just what was said just before the Q&A started. The app also allows audience members to vote questions up or down and so the presenter gets a bit of a poll on the question’s relevance.

The Q&A session should not be the whole session, there needs to be some content beforehand. It comes down to how adults learn best. The best way to learn is when you get tested to find out what you need to know, then get some structured content from a credible source, punched home with some powerful anecdotes.

Most of the time we miss the diagnosis part at the start (except if you get my ‘Breakthrough Workshop’!) but if the content is strong then it still works. A much more haphazard way of learning is to get the laundry lists of ideas, or random anecdotes that can come out of unstructured, uncensored Q&A’s.

‘Don’t mention the war!’ – dealing with sensitivities

A client was recently telling me about a speaker they had had who had made some good points, but had so offended the audience in the first five minutes that for the rest of the hour all of his wisdom fell on stony ground.

Companies have wildly different cultures. In some companies I’ve spoken too you could drop F-bombs all day and they would have thought you’re a vicar. In other organisations you can start a riot by using the wrong pronoun. Your company is probably somewhere in the middle. But if you have any sensitivities it’s really important for the speaker to know.

There may be some words in your industry that are real hot buttons. For example, sometimes franchisees like to be referred to as ‘branches’, other times that would be exactly the wrong word to use!

In one company I spoke to, I talked about ‘revenue’ – suddenly it felt like I had broken wind in front of the pope. It turns out that the correct term was something like ‘ledger value’.

Follow these tips and you’ll get the most motivation from your motivational speaker! I would love to hear your thoughts! Please use the comments below.