I met with Scott Beattie recently, an old friend from high school who went on to become an enormously successful wrestling coach and was recently inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.
He is a few years removed from coaching and currently working as a teacher to some of the most challenging students in his school system. As he described some of the many hurdles that he and his students must overcome to achieve progress, I realized how mentally engaged he still is and how much he cares about all of his students. Unfortunately with this group of students victories are few and hard to come by, but Scott seems to soldier on undeterred by the many setbacks.
Scott told me about one of the victories, a kid who was struggling with anger issues and obesity. He said he knew the kid was intelligent, and so he emphasized this positive quality to the boy to help him recognize his own talent.
Many times when we try to make big changes in our lives we become overwhelmed early and quit. That’s exactly what happened to this boy. He was ready to quit and regress back into his old ways. Scott sat him down for a bit of a tough-love conversation. He told the student that the way he looked at it was: “If you fail, I fail.” The boy listened to what Scott had to say and seemed moved that someone actually cared about him that much. He continued working hard and made steady progress going forward.
As I digested what Scott said I realized that this same attitude which worked so well in a teacher-student relationship would also work well in the business world. Imagine the difference that it would make in your company if every level of management from the top down took the approach that if you fail, they fail.
Have a great weekend,
Ro