Puppies 4 Sale

It was just a few weeks ago that I wrote about the pleasure of work. Well, here I am again writing about something at work that was just inspirational. We had a guest speaker, Dan Clark. He wrote the book Puppies for Sale, which is one that read years ago.

Anyway, this guy was just inspiration in a jar. I was sitting in the second row and I have to tell you there was about 10 people sobbing by the end of his talk. His stories just take you on an emotional ride. There were a couple of real nuggets that I thought about and digested afterwards.

One of the things he said was that 'it isn't what you do when the coach is watching, it is what you do when the coach isn't looking that counts.'

That one kind of stuck with me because, as I have mentioned before, Pacesetting is my natural leadership style, but it isn't sustainable in the long term. Now, here is a guy who is saying that, essentially, being a pacesetter is what you need to do to be authentic. He was saying that you have to meet that pace by yourself if you expect others to try to match it. He used an allusion to illustrate the point. He had some athlete jump over a line that was 12 inches above the ground. The athlete had the ability of a 20+ inch vertical leap but only jumped slightly above the line. He performed below his capability.

That's the thing that stuck with me from this session; that I, you, everybody can perform at that high level all the time. Don't do it to show off, but do it for yourself, because if something is worth doing it is worth doing it well.