The following transcription is from Mark Sanborn’s talk at Maximum Impact. He talks about the 5 P’s of a Remarkable Performance: Preparation, Practice, Performance, Pitfalls, and Polish. He is also the author of the books The Encore Effect, The Fred Factor and You Don’t need a Title to Be a Leader.
Read the rest of his presentation below.
It’s time to start living the life we’ve imagined. The problem isn’t that we’re not living the life we imagined it’s that we havein’t imagined a life different than we’re living. It’s one thing to live an imagined life, but it;s another hting to not have a imagination big enough not to. We have people who are larger than life. We call them people are caricaturs of how people should be. But people expand our awareness of opportunities and how we can live. It’s quite astounding to follow a speaker like Liv Murray. someone who’se living a life of success and meaning.
her success shows we can live lives of scucess as well. His son Bart was once asked if All of Tony’s stories are true. If the story was embellished. Oh Dad’s stories are true. But he remembers Big. It’s important to remember big and imagine big. What I’d like you to do is I’d like you to play what if. What if is what enlarges our imagination. What if we were the CEO who was so good that he built such a desirable company that that they came to us. What if we were the kind of communications that people would come to hear us speak. And that kind of communicator is Pat Summit. The coach of the Lady Owls Volleyball team. She packs ot a room wherever she appears.
What if you were the kind of pastor who was not only so good at inspiring that people came back. Tony Bannet says that the diversity of the audience look like the scenes out of star wars. What if you were a wait person that when people came to your resteraunt they would wait for a table to open up. My wife and I have a wait person like that. What if you were the kind of person, the kind of husband, the kind of spouse that people wanted more of. People didn’t just tolerate you. They wanted more of your time and attention.
Shakesepeare sad all the world is a stage. What I would suggest to you that w eall appear on different stages. The stage of the church, of work, of home., The metaphore is not that we should be actors pretending to be whom we’re not. But that people are depending on us for the kind of perofrmances that will enlarge their lives. That will empower them. That will feed their dreams. What if you were the kind of atuhor that every time time people went into a book storre the didn’t notice you had a new book but you had a new section.
Are you an encore performer? Are you an ecnore leader? Are you an encore parent? There’ sthe stage of the manufacturing room, the call center, the home. There’s many stages and if it’s ok with you I’d like to ive you about 90 minutes of idas in 30 minutes. What I want you to do is not just to make notes. Not just the quotes and the things that I’ll say but the ideas that you’ll use after the simulcast is over. That will bbe far more valuabe than just the words
My gues ios that most of you have a PDA. Personal Digital ssistant. It will make you more efficient. It may hel you become more effective. What I would like to give you today is a different kind of PDA. What I would like to give you is a Performance Development Agenda. A Performance Development Agenda is something that says we’ll be very personal about what we do. When I meet with clients they want to meet the next level of success in their business or life.
Would you agree with me that it’s sort of clicheish. I would like you to wrrite down 2LU. Encore performers aim two levels up. You leap frog the people who are trying to get to the next leevl. You want to be the only person who does what you do. It’s behond the category. There’s two things that create an encore perofrmance. The first is that it’s different. The world has so few voices and so many echoes. The mudnane doesn’t get our attention. It’s engaged byt he different. What is it that you do that is different about aothers that do it. Encore performances are not only different but they must be valued.
You see sometimes we confuse weird with different. You can be in sales and wear a boa constricture. It makes you different but I doubt it will make you valued. I will give you threee goals for your PDA. Now Im going to give you specifics but the goals will be waht guides you.
The first is to become a more remarkable performer. Raise you rperformance two levesl up. As a leader, as a manager, as a friend, as a colleague.
But don’t stop there. Become a more remarkable Person. We forget what we do is important but who we are is critical. We need to be the people who don’t just perform better but be better.
The third level is more important yet. The goal to make others more remarkable in their performances and their lives. Leaders grow us. They help us surpass ourselves. They make subetter that we thought we were capable of being. They help to make usr emore remarkable. That is the goal of the ecore leader. We hear about passion on our culture. I was a panelist. lots of people called in. One of the things that Donny is found of saying. I know you’re going to make it I can hear the passion in your voice.
We compared voice. As well as Donny Doich is. He’s wrong. Passion enough isn’t enough. It won’t make you successufl. To be a remarkable performer you need both passion and process. You need agallon of gas without a car. If you have fuel with no engine but no engine you will bet slowed down. Passion is one of the most minusnderstood and overrated concepts. First of all, let’s talk about why i’s overrated. We think Passion is enough.
As I’ve learned from watching people. The people have passion but there is no process for them to follow. We think passion comes from simply being passionate about what you do. but there are a whole lot of my day that I ain’t passionate about. We have little tiny rat dogs. I love my pups. But I am not passionate about taking them out @ 5:30 in the morning. I’m not an encore performer when it comes to letting the dogs out. I do it out of duty. If passion is derived onl from what you o. I want to give you the four sources of passion.
Being passioned about what you do. Im passionate about communicatiing. No one is on stage because it’s a job or an opportunity. We’re here becasuse we are passionate about the speaking. There are some other elements that go into it.
Second thing to be passionate about is how you d o it. You can be passioante about reinventing that job. You can make your job more magnificent. I was once asked to present a seminar on teambuilding. At time I was a contract on teambuilding. While I wasn’t passionate about teambuilding so I started to do research. I wrote and designed. I created a program that became a book. I wasn’t passionate about what I did but I was passionate about how I did it.
The third thingyou can be passionate is who you do it for. You can be passioante about the client, the colleageu, the loved one.
The fourth source of passion is to be passionate about why we do it. Nietzsche is often quoted. Nietschze said he or she who has a reason why can bear lamost any how. I don’t know what your reason why is, but it’s just as important as what and for how and for whom. You can draw from so that more of your day is from apssion as opposed to simply obligation. I fpassion is the fuel, then what is the …
Five P’s
To become an oncore peformener the first P is preperation.
I believe that most games are won or lost before either team enters the court. Most days are urined or made remarkable before you leave the house for work. Preperation i sthe most overlooked part of success in our lives today. It’s amazing how much time and money we will spend to create an experience, but little tim on preparing. When I speak at conferences who have traveled across and spent hundreds of dollars and just before the session begins they’re trying to decide hwich session they’re goig to attend. I love the quote “You prepare for what you love.” Do you remember when you first met your wife and husband? How much attention you put into it. Then before you know it date nights happen and we wonder why they’re not remarkable. You prepare for what you love. One of the great pleasures of my career is to get to know Peter Bimark. The gold winning olympic team is I love how he takes th eprinciples for athleticisim and paplies them to life. Truth is transferable hwat is teua tthe =plaing gfield is true at the ofifce is true at the home is true in the community. When I wrote my book the encore effectI asked for mpersmission to share a story that he teelsls. You are pracitcing 6 to 8 hours a day. You are maximizing the amount of practice. We say in gymnastics that the difference beteen a medalist and a non medalist is1 15 extra minutes. Not 2 extra hours a day. The next time you’re ready to throw in the towel I want you to think back to Peter Bimkar. They were a gold medal team because they were willing to invest in the preparation.
Practice. Preperation is Intellectual, Practice is physical. How amny of you go into a company and practice up. ou know what we do? We practice in play. We need to be intentional. one of the greatest levers is to ask yourself what have I learned? Someone once said tthat change never sticks unless. At the endo ft he yaer I could continue the. Never give a six year old a coice. I learned that the fundamentals of music is the scales.
Summarize Critical Activities.
What are the cirtical activities of managmenet, manufacturing, or engineering. oNce you know that you need to
Learn Essential Skills
What skills must I learn to succeed aththe critical activities? You ahve to practice the scales and practice them alot. They talk about their 10000 hour rue. I spoke about it briefly in my book it’s based on the same research. The same research said that those who were truly experts were those who spent 10000 hours in practice. And that could be discouraging. We’d be 116 beore we have 10000 hours. What I suggest is take 10 minutes at a time. Cumulatively those 10 minutes become the 10000 hours. If you’re not better it’s because you’re not practicing the scales.
Preperation. practice. Performance.
When I was 16 years of age I drove to see the legendary motivational speaker. Og Mandino. Like many of them I realized that it was a remarkable performance because Og had given me ideas to change my actions. It was many years later. We saw three plays. We saw Death of a Salesman. It was very poweful. The audience cheared. What made that remarkable was Ritten made us think. We saw Steel pier. We all stood and cheered. But what made it remarkable was it made us feel good. The last play we saw was Whoopi Goldberg in a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. At the end the audience. What made it remarkable was Whoopi Goldberg made us life.
Remarkable performances make us act, think, feel good, and laugh.Are you making people behave differentkly? Dot hey feel better? Are you able in the midst of a very trying economy to make peopl laugh? That’s what makes your performacne remarkable.
If you listen to country music you know that Michael peterson is an award winning singer songwriter. He mentioned he was af an of our book teh FRED Factor. He’s written some great music. What’s interesting is that Michael has led a very interesting life. He was a football player in college. When he was moving into the athleetes dorm on his first day he was carrying his stairwell to the steroe. He was six and 300 pounds. he had to let this guy go by. He was demoralized. He was a big guy but not nearly as big as that guy. And that guy decided if hte leinement were that big he didn’t have a chance. He described the guy in the stairwell. His roommate said said don’tworry, he’s not a lineman. He’s our kicker.
Michael said Why is that? A guy that big? He’s not a lineman because he can’t move people. Great performers move people. They make them think. Feel. Act. And laugh better. That’s what makes a performance remakrable. It appeals to each of those different elements.
Pitfalls. DL Moody said he’s never had more problems wth another man or wman than he has with himself. Everyone goes to a meeting was 10 minuets late they say traffic was bad for me. Most pitfalls can be avoidied by preperation and anticiatpion. You can anticipate and be ready for it. You can see what happens when there’s a fire alarm in the middle of a sales presentation. There was a third kind of pitfall. THe kind you’ll never know about itll it happens. Speaking to a forgune 500 company. Four hundred people in dark suits and whie shirts and red ties. that morning two hours before I went on I cut myself. We’ve all cut ourselves and nicked ourselves shaving. I was bleeding profusely. I stuck toilet paper to my face. Now I ve toilet people stuck to my face. I ttook me two hours to stop beleeding. I was able to deal with this problem. I was on stage when I felt something running down the side of my face. We’ve all beld on stage. but never like this. I look down nd I can see the blood dropping on the stage. The owman on the front was fainting. What do you do?
You do the only thing you can do. You admit the pitfall. What makes a performance remarkable isn’t perfection, it’s hmanness. If we deny or avoid it we’re inauthentica. It’s where we say folks I have never had this happen before. I was able to make a few jokes about the unavoidalbe pitfalls of life. God Gave us a sense of humobecause he knows there would be problems we couldn’t solve. If we’ve prepard and practiced.
Polish.
My friend Tom Winnegar lives in Minneanapolis. Tom is a professional pspeaker. he was able to imagine a life without a speach imependiment. He alearned alot from his grandpa. Grandpa made fine furniture Tom was the fine speaer. It was the oil of the hands and the linseed that would makea remarkable finish. So Anopa said he would build her a new bench. he let her pick out the wood. EH buil the bench and told Tom to pollish the bench. Every day Tom would polish the becnh ONe day he said to Anpa when should I stop oloishing? Th next day Tom came in and he found ampa in the shop and he had suffered a heart attack an dpassed. but Tom remembered the wisdom. Ampa said Tom, you keep polishing until the onwer comes to take it home. You keep polishing the performance that is your life. That’s the polish. Scool is never out for th eprofessional. We are lalsurrounded by encore performers. I came home from work I put my briefcase down that it was our Dr.s I had been waiting to hear frmo him. I picked up thephone and my doctor was in tears. He said Mark the biopsy is back. You have prostate cancer. I am so sorry. I hung up the phone. I had come to terms with the fact that I wouwld proably have a postivei diagnosis. I said honey I have prostate cancer but what is remarkable is the doctro is upset as I am. I have never sen that kind of empathy. I was reminded that Ted even though I haven’t been close that Ted is the kind of encore performer because not just his skill and intellect, but because of his empathy. His heart. It reminded me we can do the same jobs every day for everybody insuch aw way that they will not onl appreciate what we do but they will apprecaite it.