To attract and create success, you must choose to close the gap between what you know you should do and what you really do. During our work and private life each of us holds three roles that are not mutually exclusive, these are player, coach, and team member. Each of these roles has characteristics that are applicable to the others as well, and each of them benefits from the others.
Below will be listed the best qualities to fill the aforementioned roles, each quality is based on and evolves from the previous one and the last quality indicated in each list is the result of the previous ones.
What are the characteristics of a good “player”?
The player is an individual who is part of a team, organization, or company. The best features to be successful in your job when playing the role of “player” are:
#1 — Self-awareness
It is good to be aware of your strengths and weaknesses. If we have no idea who we are or what we do, nothing we learn will really matter.
Being self-aware means being able to evaluate yourself honestly, accepting your flaws, and making a commitment to improving. If you are aware of what you are good at, you are able to focus on that element so much that you are indispensable and be aware of what to avoid.
However, one must be able not to fall into the trap of arrogance, and the best way to avoid this is to learn to listen to those around us and know us best.
However, by listening to those around us, to their praise as well as their criticisms, we can discover where we need to focus, such as our attitude and commitment, and allow what we cannot control to go since it absorbs energy we could be spending elsewhere.
A good example of this is coach John Wood’s teaching of his players. Wood, during each season at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), taught his players how to wear socks properly to prevent blisters. Thanks to this insignificant detail the players were still fresh at the end of the game. An insignificant but controllable detail allowed the players to do their job at their best.
⇒ Practice: To be more aware we can ask ourselves the following questions.
- What are we good at?
- What should be improved?
- What is our plan to improve ourselves?
#2 — Passion
Passion is our engine, it pushes us to do what we have to and it can identify and separate our work from that of others. The attitude and way of approaching a job/action are what determines the sense of satisfaction we feel in carrying it out. If you instill passion in your work, you have an integrated sense of motivation that makes action easier in difficult times and prepares us to be ready when opportunities arise.
Sometimes the same obstacles can instill passion, and the desire to overcome them can help us to see them more as a learning opportunity, it is in fact through the discomfort that we learn and grow more and not remain in our bubble of safety and comfort. Talent alone if it is not activated by passion is useless.
⇒ Exercise 1: Apply a change of mind using “I have the pleasure/honor / good fortune of (writing an article, cooking a dish, etc …)” instead of the obligatory verb “I must”.
⇒ Exercise 2: Write down three main obstacles encountered and answer the question “How can they become sources of motivation?”
Originally posted on Medium
