Upgrades and Uplifting Moments

Software is ubiquitously upgraded almost everyday; we receive regular updates and patches to be installed to our operating systems. We take great pride when we upgrade our houses, hoping to deliberately bump its perceived value skywards. We relish in the next android phone launched by Apple, opting for an iPhone with an additional alphabet attached to it. Applications-developing companies hope that owners of their shareware games upgrade – by buying at their Appstore – to a paid version, embellished with more bells and whistles than a music store.

Corporations provide recognition and rewards of its performers by way of bonuses, incentives and promotions. High-potentials earn an accelerated career pathway, allowing their ambitions and aspirations to be fulfilled sooner. Beyond pure performance appraisals, peer appraisals can also matter in a 360 Degree Feedback System (360DFS).

It feels nice to be acknowledged. The knowledge that we are positioned higher than our counterparts and colleagues may enhance our confidence. We feel empowered by our sense of achievement and its raises our self-esteem and self-worth. Once a professional athlete earns world championship status, his/her status is upgraded; same goes for amateur athletes who secure a podium spot in the Olympic Games. Your value, credibility and influence rise in tandem to your accomplishments.

I found out today that I was promoted 23 positions above the previously posted results of the Newton 30K run held on Sunday. This now, assuredly, places me in the top-5 percent that I suspected I earned; confusion in the timing and results' layout created significant displeasure with the competitors. My timing stayed the same, validated by my own recording on my Garmin 310XT watch; this data matters more to me than relative ranking. I have observed that as easy as it is to host a sporting event, that irate participants easily disengage from future support. Tribes can downgrade your efforts and good intentions as their results and experiences are emotional issues. It can cost us a bit for an upgrade, yet a downgrade (by others) can cost us so much more.

Leadership Lessons: When was the last time you upgraded some of your beliefs? What have you done to upgrade yourself? How much do you assist in the development and growth of your staff? What have you done to enhance the capability of your staff, so that they might choose to stay relevant and employable?

Ranking & Your Place In the Universe

How much does ranking matter to you?

Every year, we are exposed to rankings of countries in numerous categories of interest: best airport in the world, safest country, least corrupted country for business, most tourists, etc. Both print and broadcast media play up and leverage on these data, accolades and awards; and countries, committees and communities do challenge these well-intentioned measures if they discover that they pale in comparison to others.

At the workplace, we have performance appraisal and ranking – your chance for promotion hinges on this. If your work is noticed, and you are known as a performer among the managers, you may have a better shot when they do their confidential ranking process. In sports, ranking indicates your performance against others within a race, the sport, and your competitive peers. The processes of peer-ranking and peer-appraisal (especially in 360-Degree Feedback System) can also yield useful information and feedback.

British uber-triathlete, Chrissy Wellington just ranked as the fastest woman over the Ironman-distance in Challenge Roth. She was the fastest woman, broke the world record timing for women, and ranked fifth overall! That means that she out-performed many male professionals in that race. Singaporean 5,000-metre track specialist, Mok Ying Ren was a SEA Games gold medalist in triathlon who excelled in marathons and half-marathons since he made the shift to single sport.

The reason why we race could include:

1)    Motivation to finish a course.

2)    Motivation to complete a physical event for the first time.

3)    To compare our personal performance against previous data.

4)    To gain confidence with each better performance.

5)    To review evaluate our performance, racing strategies, and analyse our results and investment.

6)    To test our physical and mental limits to a new challenge.

7)    Benchmarking our performance against others in the same field.

This two-year-old blog on leadership was #2 on Google Search on ‘Leadership Lessons’ over the last two weeks, and slid down serpentine fashion to top-50, then back up at #2, just behind two major print/online magazines. Realistically, this should happen due to a myriad of factors like SEO ranking and positioning. The more active you are in your content provision, are up-to-date, contemporary, and in your connections (networking) the more likely you will gain a higher prominence. We also moved from relative obscurity to #86 for Leadership Blogs measured against a comprehensive cache of online tools. What these measurements do is encourage us to do better, and provide more useful content to our loyal readers. That is why engagements (comments, feedback, requests) are useful to lead us to where you would like to go.

I did share that I placed three positions off my rankings in running races and multi-sport races over the past year, and I used these results to steer my training and racing strategies towards better recent showings. I evaluated my results, analysed them, and then adjusted my strategies to meet future goals and ambitions.

Leadership Lessons: Be aware of the various ways to raise awareness of your top performers on your team. Help find ways to recognize your team throughout the year. Place them in a place of most potential (as Dewitt Jones stated). Use reference points and guideposts to measure your staff performance, and create new strategies to help them excel. Ensure that each member is more than adequately trained, exposed, experienced and prepared for any conditions and exigencies. Teach them to cook and eat. Life is about experiences that we can relish in!