Champions Do Extra: 6 Leadership Habits That Separate Top Performers

Episode #398 Champions Do Extra: 6 Leadership Habits That Separate Top Performers

DOING EXTRA IS TABLE STAKES

A friend of mine passed a book onto me a couple of weeks ago. It’s the autobiography of a rugby player by the name of Brad Thorn; a cracking read titled Champions Do Extra.

Not a little extra; not extra when it’s convenient. Extra when it’s hard; extra when no one’s watching; extra when the result is uncertain and the work has to be done right now.

During his impressive career, Thorn represented two different countries in two different rugby codes. He was still competing at the highest level at the ripe old age of 41 before going on to become a head coach.

I know that most of you aren’t rugby players, so how does this principle translate to the world of leadership? In this newsletter, I explain why discomfort is a door to unlock, rather than a barrier to prevent you from progressing.

I start by looking at the core principles from Brad Thorn’s book; I tell a story that I’ve never told before about a time in my corporate career where I made the decision to do extra; and I give you six tips for how to do extra, so that you can reap the benefits of your effort in the leadership and business world.

ADAPTING THORN’S PRINCIPLES FOR BUSINESS

I’ve pulled out some of the core principles from the book Champions Do Extra, and I’m going to run through them with a business flavour.

1. Don’t let discomfort hold you back from the things you want to do

Any discomfort you might experience is just a barrier that has to be overcome. But it’s so easy to turn away from it: whether it’s having a difficult conversation or admitting a failure to your team.

You don’t have to do it: when you struggle with it internally, no one really knows how that conversation went inside your head, and what you ended up deciding. Only you know. And when you know, you know: it holds you back.

2. Live by the reward for effort credo

I often think about extra effort as being the thing that separates those who succeed from those who don’t.

In this world, you don’t get what you’re entitled to; you get what you earn. Just that mindset of having to earn the rewards is something that’s going to put you in a completely different space from your peers.

Over the years, I’ve had the odd back problem: this is the result of running too many miles on hard surfaces (and when I wasn’t doing that, I was spending too many hours sitting at a desk). To keep my back in good health these days, I do a mat Pilates routine a few times a week.

My favourite go-to exercise is the plank. I can always tell where I am in my regime based on how long I can hold the plank position for. There have been times when I’ve been in great shape and I’ve been able to hold it for almost 10 minutes.

Right now, I’m back to just over five minutes. And, I’ve got to tell you, I generally want to quit by around the third minute; but I understand the reward for effort credo. If I want the reward of having complete mobility and zero back pain, then I have to put in the effort of building up my core strength.

I can confidently say that I’ve got a six-pack down there somewhere; it’s just at the moment, you can’t see it because I’ve got a doona over the top of it.

3. Make the most of any opportunity you get to excel.

Every time you’re given a chance to step up, you’ve got to grab it with both hands. It’s also important to realise that every single time you’re in a room with more senior people, it’s a job interview. Senior leaders are always looking for the up-and-coming talent. In every one of those meetings, your stock is either going to go up, or it’s going to go down.

Well, the other possibility, I guess, which is even worse, is that they don’t even know who you are. Don’t make that mistake, whatever you do.

4. Don’t follow the crowd, follow your values

It feels really safe just to agree with the people above you; but that’s not going to get you or your team anywhere.

If your boss is doing dumb shit (which all bosses do from time to time, even me), you’ve got to call it out. Going with the flow is the surest way to stay buried in the crowd.

5. Doing difficult things builds mental strength

… and mental strength is everything! The science on this has come a really long way in recent years. A body of research has been produced on a part of the brain called the anterior mid-singulate cortex or AMCC.

Whenever you do something that’s hard… something that you absolutely don’t want to do, it increases your ability to do hard things. Your AMCC actually expands. Think of it like improving your mental strength and endurance.

There are lots of things in leadership that you won’t want to do. In fact, you’ll have a violent reaction to doing them: like putting respect before popularity; risking your people not liking you; stepping into a crisis that requires strong leadership; taking accountability for a stuff-up that wasn’t directly your fault.

You have opportunities every day to build your mental strength… or not. Willingly doing difficult things is your path to victory.

6. Instead of asking “What’s in it for me?”, ask yourself “How can I contribute?”

This is a fundamental switch in the way you think: as humans, we’re programmed for self-interest and survival. But if we focus on our contribution to any situation, instead of what we can get out of that situation, it completely changes the way we operate.

That’s what’s going to bring out your very best; and then it’s just a matter of having faith that the right people are going to notice.

From the earliest days in my corporate career, I had an unshakeable belief that, if I worked hard, created value, and did the right things (not the easy things), then the rewards would come.

And for the most part, they did. On a few isolated occasions, I was done over by corporate politics, but I look back now and I’m incredibly happy with the way I chose to do things.

7. Never put yourself in a position of “I wish”, or “What if”

Many people I talk to have a mountain of regrets. They couldn’t make the right decision at the time, because it was too hard… or too risky… or too far out of their comfort zone.

Let’s face it, it’s always going to be safer to stay exactly where you are and to not take a risk. And, somewhat unsurprisingly, as humans we have a tendency to prioritise short-term expediency over long-term outcomes.

The immediacy and tangibility of short-term results makes them much more attractive. Why would we waste energy on things that, even though we know they’re better for us in the long-term, are much further away on the timeline, and much less certain?!

But the bottom line is, regrets loom large. As I look back on my almost 64 years on this planet, I have very few, if any, regrets.

My fervent hope for you is that when you’re my age, you can say the same.

DOING EXTRA ISN’T JUST DOING MORE

We’ve produced a number of episodes over the years about success principles. It’s well worth your while to go back and listen to them:

• Ep.384: 10 Ways to Make Your Success Inevitable
• Ep.138: It’s Not What You Know
• Ep.130: Counterintuitive Truths
• Ep.311: 12 Hard Leadership Truth
   

I want to relate one story from my corporate career about a time when I chose to do extra. It wasn’t a situation where I took on a bigger workload or more responsibility. It was one where I chose to focus with relentless tenacity on an issue that I knew needed to be fixed.

I did the extra work that easily could have gone undone.

I was at CS Energy, and as my time went on, we solved some of the biggest commercial issues that were causing a drag on business performance: the balance sheet gearing; the decade-long performance dispute with a critical supplier; the uncommercial investment in operating assets.

We’d also managed to get a pretty good handle on safety, which was a key focus of the executive team.

So I turned my gaze to operating efficiency. In one of our power stations in particular, the productivity of the workforce was appalling. There’s just no other way to say it. We knew this intuitively, but we couldn’t put our finger on the root causes.

I hired a top tier consulting firm to come in and work with the operations teams on-site to find out what was really going on.

It turned out that the effective time our maintenance workers were actually spending on the tools was disturbingly low. In the worst team, the tool time was less than 15%.

What this means is that, for a standard 37-odd hour a week, less than six hours was spent doing productive work in maintaining the assets. God only knows where the other 31 hours were going.

The consultants were able to calculate precisely where the effort was being wasted. The job I set for the GM of that site, for the consulting team we’d hired, and for my executives was to improve that performance.

I went after this with incredible passion and tenacity. I gave the consultants and the site management team run-of-house. I also gave them a direct line of access to me. I personally chaired a steering committee meeting once a week where we looked at the progress in excruciating detail.

We measured improvements (and blockers) on a team by team basis, and we named names.

It’s amazing how quickly the trends appeared and how rapidly we were able to make improvements by making some very simple adjustments.

Of course, this came with a huge amount of resistance from the workforce. I was very clear that I didn’t want to shed any jobs, and I didn’t want to compromise anyone’s lifestyle by hitting them in the wallet.

I just wanted them to work for a living.

It’s fair to say that in some industries in Australia, the concept of a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay has completely disintegrated. The objective now seems to be; get paid as much money as possible for doing as little as you can.

The unions are really clever at doing this. They use a combination of three levers:

1. Base pay increases that far outstrip any reasonable cost of living rises, backed by the promise of future productivity increases which, funnily enough, never materialise;
2. Decreasing the number of standard hours under the pretence of improving work/life balance (which, of course, is a very acceptable ‘hot button’ to push these days); and
3. With declining productivity and fewer standard hours being worked, there’s an increased requirement for overtime where, of course, the penalty rates are increasingly extortionate.

A good illustration of how this plays out came in a news story that I caught a few weeks ago, which revealed some pay statistics for one of the largest construction projects carried out recently in Brisbane. The report stated that the average annualised wage earned by the trades and semi-skilled labourers was $334,000 per annum.

Another one of my industry sources told me that the productive time the workers actually spent working on this project was a little over two-and-a-half days a week.

But I digress…

When faced with this type of situation, it can all feel a little overwhelming, and I could have easily filed this in the too hard basket. But I was passionate about making that difference, and I couldn’t rest as long as I knew that this was going on in one of my operating sites.

So, I decided to do extra. If I wasn’t the most hated man in the company before I did it, I most certainly was afterwards.

6 WAYS TO DO EXTRA, WITH HUGE ROI

Okay, let’s get to the meat and potatoes.

I’m going to outline six specific areas where you can focus on doing extra, which will give you a massive return on investment for your time.

Three of these involve “Taking on extra…”, and three involve “Never being happy with…”.

Note that none of these involve taking on a bigger workload: quite the opposite. It’s about doing high-value things, and eliminating all the low-value noise (the stuff that keeps you busy while you’re avoiding the hard work of leadership).

1. Take on extra risk.

When something needs to be done and it’s high profile, it also carries an element of personal risk. What should you do?

Step into it!

What’s the worst that can happen? In the best case, you’re going to nail it and win unending kudos. In the worst case, everyone knows that it was almost impossible to do anyway, and no one else stepped up to the mark, so at least you get credit for that.

2. Take on extra accountability.

There are always projects floating around in companies that are looking for a home. You can’t take everything on, of course, but you can select key projects based on the impact that they can potentially have.

If you can fit these within your capacity envelope, you can really do great things. It’s amazing how few leaders are willing to take personal accountability for outcomes, for better or for worse. This is a massive differentiator.

3. Take on extra personal development.

This is an absolute no-brainer. You need to be constantly doing more than the next person to learn about your industry and your business, and to develop your own skill as a leader and an executive.

If you have no interest in business or developing yourself professionally, you might be in the wrong place. Be curious. Always challenge yourself to learn and grow. I spend my leisure time reading and listening to business content. It’s what I do for fun and it helps me to constantly improve.

And just the fact that you’re reading this tells me that we’re on the same page, so keep it up.

4. Never be happy with the value gap.

There’s always going to be a gap between what your team delivers and the maximum value they could have delivered, if only they’d focused on the right things.

As a leader, you should be obsessed with finding the highest value things for your team to work on, and bridging that value gap.

The only thing I know about your business for sure is that you will never have enough time, money, or people to do all the things that you would ideally like to do. This is why you have to pursue value relentlessly; to constantly strip out and remove that unnecessary activity for its own sake.

Kill the busy work, find the value, and never be satisfied that you’re there.

5. Never be happy with your team’s capability.

Always look to do extra with team performance and talent. Most leaders just let their people set the standard, and they tolerate whatever their people bring in on any given day.

But if you want to stand out, you have to do more than that. Make sure you focus every single day on bringing every single individual up to the minimum acceptable standard. Then of course, stretch your best people to do more.

This one really sorts out the dogs from the fleas, because team performance is built on individual effort, capability, and motivation. Only you can bring that out as a leader, by doing extra.

6. Never be happy with the pace of improvement.

In all of my executive roles, everything happened too slowly. I was never satisfied with the pace of change, improvement, and growth.

I developed a productive impatience that was contagious for my team. If you want to do extra, set a pace that challenges you and everyone around you.

MAKE THE CHOICE TO DO EXTRA

You can easily choose to just go along with a crowd to do the things that are safe… and no one’s really going to question it anyway. But champions do extra.

Somewhere in those specific six areas, you’re going to find a way to do more today… to take on extra risk, or accountability, or personal development… to never be happy with the value gap; or your team’s capability; or the pace of improvement.

You may be held back by the negative thought, “What if I put all this extra effort in and I don’t succeed?” There’s definitely a level of uncertainty, and if you want to overcome that, it takes a level of belief.

But if you don’t choose to do extra, the outcome is entirely predictable: because you’ll still be exactly where you are right now!