What Does it Take to Be a Winner?

Fall

What separates those who achieve spectacular results from those who produce mediocre or average results? Success cannot be attributed to gender, upbringing, privilege, environment, luck, credentials, genetics, intelligence level, age, or experience.

Five major characteristics distinguish super-achievers from average producers.

1. Discipline - Winners control their desires and appetites. They control their emotions. They control their time. The most successful people I know are very serious about their schedule. They understand that time is more valuable than money. They set aside time to study, time to read, and time to plan. How many of us have said, "When things calm down and I get my feet on the ground, I'll do some planning"? How about putting planning time ahead of busy time? It takes real discipline. It's certainly easier not to. Winners know the value of practice. Practice, you say? Yes! If you're in sales, you make presentations, right? If you're in management, you probably do interviews, sales meetings, speeches, and negotiations. Top result producers in many fields set aside a portion of their valuable day to practice their presentations, dialogue, meetings, etc.

Sports coaches know that a less skilled but more disciplined athlete will always take the edge, in the long run, over a more skilled but less disciplined athlete.

Neil Armstrong was asked what it was like to actually step on the moon, he answered, "it was just like a drill," because he'd done 300 perfect simulations; more than any other astronaut. He earned the privilege of stepping on the moon first. He practiced more than the rest. He was more disciplined.

2. Hunger For Knowledge - Winners and high achievers are hungry. Highly successful people are always in a learning mode, like young children. They ask questions like, "How can we do this better, what can we implement to make this job easier, how can we serve our customers better?" Complacency is not a disease winners get, even though the path of least resistance is to stay at our present level than to make the changes necessary to move ahead.

Author Tom Peters said years ago, "We're changing at the rate of bonkers cubed!" Still true today; even more so. In today's business environment, the experts say the shelf life of our current education is 18 months or less. If we stand still, we will soon be obsolete. The best time to change is before you are forced to by circumstances (like a job loss or business slip). Winners have figured this out. They are always hungrily looking for the next change.

3. Enthusiasm - Everyone knows that winners have a positive mental attitude; that's nothing new. But it goes further than that. The most powerful part of a winner's attitude is his enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the outward manifestation of our inner passion. Enthusiasm enables high achievers to keep going. Enthusiasm is a zeal for living. It is the magic that can carry us far beyond our current skills and talents; it helps supersede our deficiencies. The more enthusiastic we are, the more effort we put forth; the more effort we put forth, the more self-confidence we build; the more self confidence we build, the more likely we are to be consistent in our efforts, which produce the results we were looking for in the first place.

Do you want your workplace full of people putting forth consistent efforts, confidently, having fun, while they produce the results you've always wanted? Try sparking a little enthusiasm yourself. Enthusiasm is the best kind of contagious disease I know. If you have read "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell, you may be thinking about starting an epidemic of enthusiasm.

4. Personal Responsibility - Winners take responsibility. They don't blame someone else for their failures. They simply learn by them and make better choices the next time. Rather than use their past as an excuse not to succeed, they make their past become a reason to succeed. Some people dream of earning a fortune by working hard to become a professional athlete, a lawyer, a surgeon, an artist, an entrepreneur. Unfortunately, it seems that more people dream of winning the lottery, or have Publisher's Clearing House show up and hand them a fortune. Waiting for luck, magic and miracles to make us wealthy proves we don't want to take responsibility and make the sacrifices required to earn our success on our own. The biggest winners I know have failed their way right to success; meaning, they are willing to make mistakes, admit them, take responsibility, face the music, learn the necessary lessons, and move on without fear of making more mistakes.

5. Commitment - Winners are committed. The classic film "A League of Their Own" tells the story of the first professional women's baseball league, formed during World War II. The league athletes faced hardships and ridicule, as they traveled across the country to play baseball. In one scene, one of the star players is about to quit the team, just before the big playoffs. The coach responds "But I thought you loved baseball?" The teary-eyed player admits, "I did, but it just got too hard." The coach says, "Of course it's hard; if it wasn't hard, everybody would do it." Being successful in many ways, is hard, otherwise, everybody would do it. It's easier to give up on our rocky road to success, than to continue to put forth our efforts when we're not getting the results we want. High achievers are willing to give 110 percent, to keep forging ahead, day after day, doing whatever it takes. Skills can be taught. Commitment can't. We used to have a sign in our office that said, "Did you ever notice how the luckiest people are the hardest working?" If you own your own business you understand what I'm talking about.

Yet, after years of sacrificing your all to make payroll, tossing and turning at night wondering how you're going to pay the overhead, and trying to set aside a little something for your future, people will call you "lucky." Winners know better. They know what kind of commitment is required to succeed. They know there are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going.

These five common threads weave through the super-achievers, and winners in the world of sales and business. Discipline, hunger for knowledge, enthusiasm, personal responsibility, and commitment: look in the mirror... how many of these threads do you see?