Tag: human resources

The Fake It Til You Make It Trap

“How come nobody ever says they were Joe Schmo?” 

Crash Davis – Durham Bulls Catcher

I have always loved this conversation between Susan Sarandon and Kevin Costner in the movie “Bull Durham”.  Sarandon plays Annie Savoy and Costner plays Crash Davis. She teaches part time literature at Alamance Junior College.

He is a minor league catcher with the Durham Bulls who exists in a bittersweet space thanks to his being a very good minor league player but not good enough to stick in the majors. They are talking about reincarnation.

I share this video as a segue to the “Fake It Til You Make It.” for two reasons.

The first being the obvious comedic moment that extends from the idea that we were all famous in a past life and not just a key cog in the wheel of life.

The second reason relates more to his being a great minor league baseball player who holds the all time minor league home run record that he considers a dubious honor. Rather than realize that he is a craftsman he feels it is all part of a greater embarrassment. He struggles to admit that he he chose to invest his life for what was the greatest love in his life until he met Annie. He tried to fake his disdain for the record but at a deeper level he knew that he gave the game all that he could give and that he could live with that. 

It lends to the idea of faking it til we make it. 

Fake it til you make it!  For the sake of space..let’s go with the acronym FITYMI moving forward. I must preface the rest of this blog with my admission that I am on the fence as it relates to FITYMI! Sometimes it works and more often than naught, not so much.

There is a devilish nature attached to the whole idea of fooling people, adopting the pretending until you can produce approach. It can make for a great story as long as it works out. If it doesn’t work out, consider it a stark reminder that putting in the work and honing your craft isn’t a bad idea. 

Sir Richard Branson (founder of the Virgin Group, which controls more than 400 companies) thinks FITYMI is a viable option. Just get in the door and figure things out as you get going!  Fact is anytime a “Sir” says something, people tend to listen with a little more interest and I did!

First and foremost, far be it for me to disagree with a guy who has enjoyed the success Sir Richard has enjoyed. In fact, I kind of agree with him. Faking it til you make it makes sense when you are in an “attack the learning curve” frame of mind. I think it could work if you are faking the role of entry level sales associate, data entry assistant or a client services coordinator.

Do not go with the FITYMI model if you are auditioning for the role of trauma surgeon, pilot, astronaut, explosives specialist and any other gig that you can think of that places human life at risk. 

The FITYMI strategy has its flaws. Beyond the obvious flaw I just shared, the other fly in the ointment is that those who choose to FITYMI, are often not what one would call a go-getter. Maybe a go-getter in getting a job but not a go-getter in the sense of learning the job. If a candidate is willing to fake their resume, chances are they will fake their effort. 

Human beings are creatures of habit. We have the tendency to get excited and race out of the barn like a Kentucky Derby Champion but soon become the workhorse out in the pasture that we actually are. I am reminded of my 13 year old self when I opened my first bank account. I walked out of the bank with $10 in the account with a steely eyed focus on saving my next $1,000,000. Plans changed when I walked into the corner store. My goal of becoming a good little saver did not stand a chance up against my 12 years of habitual candy purchasing. Wanting to be or do something usually requires work. 

All successful people work.  The clouds did not open up when they were born with trumpets resounding and a higher power declaring them great.  They have talent and they worked. They worked really hard and were decisive. Somewhere along the way, they changed their approach to how they pursued success. They had to get beyond the definition of success and focus on the pathway to success. Successful people fall in love with the journey. They turn their gaze away from the trophy and turn their focus on the trials and tribulations that one must endure to get to the trophy. 

Like an athlete building muscle memory, when you consistently opt for the “fake it til ya make it” approach, you will soon get used to faking it!

Before you know it…the faking becomes the norm and not the exception.  Your original destination was the express lane but somehow you got stuck in the collector lane and you are comfortable there.

So, faking it is an option but it only bears value when it is a transitory step toward a greater destination. A step that requires work and an effort that extends beyond adequate. 

FITYMI only works if you are intent on getting out of the faking it lane as fast as you can. It works only if it is a layover between where you were and your next destination. No one wants to spend time at Newark International Airport, Kennedy or LaGuardia! They are hubs that lead to greater adventures.

So, how do we avoid the fake it til you make it trap?

What does it mean to you? We are all going to spend our time doing something. Choose to do something that is valuable to you. Then hone your craft.  The art of developing your expertise and the energy that surrounds that effort transcends any need to fake it. If you are invested you are a sponge. If you are a fence sitter you are watching life go by.

Game plan. Have a clear and concise exit strategy. Have a game plan that features hard and fast deadlines that will force you to get to the next level. Put some pressure on yourself to compete. Don’t get comfortable. 

Be realistic. Set goals that you can reach. Expertise does not come in one fell swoop, it’s incremental and modular in nature. I remember back in grade 3 when I convinced my parents to buy me a geometry set. I vowed I would use every item in the case. I would use both of the set squares, I would protract with the 180° protractor, I would rule the class with the 15 cm ruler, I would never get lost thanks to the metal compass, and so on with the 9 cm pencil, pencil sharpener, eraser and the 10 mm stencil. As expected, I did not use all of them…in fact I barely used any of them. (of note, I had to Google all the items found in a protractor set!)

Change the Acronym: Rather than go with FITYMI…maybe go with another acronym? IIDFIDS – If it doesn’t fit, I don’t sit! 

If the suit doesn’t fit then don’t wear the suit. Find something that fits. 

There is nothing wrong with moving from one challenge that may not fit you to another that may. Sometimes, you will wear a suit that doesn’t fit. Do not get comfortable. Work hard until it fits or visit a career tailor the get fitted right.

Life offers very few absolutes. There are no guarantees. The most valuable commodity we have is our time. What we do with it will determine our path. Spend it wisely! 

Know who you are and who you can become.

________________

Ken Evraire is the owner | principal of TECTONIC TLC Team Lead Coach.

He is a quintessential team player who loves coaching, team building and talking leadership!  He is grateful for the opportunity to work with a roster of fantastic clients ranging from the government sector, not for profit agencies, start ups, Fortune 500 companies and elite sports teams.

He is father to 3 precocious children, has the best ex-wife in the world, is a former professional football player that has since donated his brain. He has run 3x marathons (Honolulu 2x + Barcelona), done stand up comedy and believes the old school coach was wrong…there is indeed an “i” in Team! 

Check Ken out on the following social media pages…

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-evraire-leadership/

Twitter https://twitter.com/Tectonic_tlc

 Facebook https://www.facebook.com/tectonictlc

Is anyone really uncoachable?

Whenever I am told someone is un-coachable, my first thought has never been about the athlete or team member who has been branded with the un-coachable title but rather my thought turns to one simple, singular question. “How was he/she coached?”.

The majority of coaches get the job done and they do so with great passion and patience. Their success is directly aligned with how they define coaching. 

Power vs Empower

They see coaching as the art of persuading and empowering others versus the art of overpowering and securing position over others. 

Successful coaches are driven by the singular goal of setting the table so others can optimize their performance and fulfill their goals.  In doing so, you create the right place and time for the team. You create a worthy investment opportunity. The team will be willing to invest their time and energy to the plan. This reciprocal investment powers teams to success, regardless of the arena of competition. 

From my perspective, with over 20 years of coaching experience and a lifetime of being coached, I have learned that coaching, when broken down to its purest form, is about getting excited about figuring out how to set their teams up for success. 

How to connect, communicate and collaborate with each and every team member in a bid to secure their buy-in. 

Micro Missions

Doesn’t matter if it’s a 1 person team or if it is a team made up of 100’s of employees. The art of figuring out what inspires your team of individuals via micro missions that are specific to each team member is the foundation of leadership and coaching. 

Once buy-in is accomplished, trust is established. With trust comes the opportunity to become an authentic, decisive ally who can lead through new, unpredictable, unexpected challenges. Challenges that will require a tweak, an overhaul, modification or rebuild of the plan that directly affects the team and is embraced by the team. 

Now, all that I have shared seems fairly straightforward and makes complete sense but you may be surprised that there are a lot of coaches who still don’t get it. 

Football is Life

I coach kids tackle and flag football. I am a big proponent of teaching the game of football to the kids in a safe manner. I take great pride in helping the athlete become a student of the game and being prepared for the next level of competition from a concept and strategy perspective. 

The kids begin their “training camp” in August. They are on summer break and are a different kind of tired than they would be in September and October. 

The summer version of tiredness is a by-product of their staying up later and sleeping in. Their clock has been turned off. Fall tiredness has a lot to turn the clock back on. Having to go to bed at a decent hour, wake up on time, get dressed for school, get to school on time and be a student. The fall day is robust whereas the summer day is laid back. Come September, some of the kids become multi-sport athletes, taking on hockey or basketball. 

So, now you have a sense of the kids “work” environment. They are invariably excited about tackling each other. At least for the first couple of practices. That all changes as the temperature rises. That also all changes when the temperature drops and there is less sunlight. 

All are factors coaches need to take into consideration. 

The norm is to have a couple of teams practice on sections of the field. So, we are all within earshot of each other. 

The older team next to us had won a couple of games to open the season and to stay sharp the coaches had the kids hit, hit and hit some more. The kids naturally get tired physically which leads to mental fatigue which leads to bad tackling technique, turnovers and other errors. With visions of an undefeated season running through the mind of the coach, the rationalizing begins and intuitive common sense goes out the window. They hit when they were winning and they kept on hitting when they began losing in September. They were not beaten by better teams. They were beaten by a plan that did not evolve. Life gets in the way and the coach opted to continue to drive a square peg into what had become a round hole. 

What made the team successful in early August just does not work in September and October. 

I use peewee football as an example and I do so believing it mirrors what is the Achilles Heel of many businesses today.  What worked yesterday will not necessarily work tomorrow, next week or next month. Life gets in the way. 

Opportunity is Knocking

When life does get in the way it can be seen as an obstacle or as an opportunity. You can exhale and lose energy or take a deep breath and get excited about the opportunity 

It’s like winning the lottery once and hoping the exact same numbers will come up again. The odds of that occurring are 1 in 20,358,520. It is not going to happen so you better look at a different combination of numbers…you had better look at a different approach to winning and do so knowing there is no guarantee that you will win.  

Coaching is intuitive and unpredictable. Coaching is about factoring in the human spirit. Factoring in  life’s perpetual motion. The never ending effort to create an authentic buy-in within an ever changing world. That is the mission objective. 

Surfing the constant ebb and flow of life’s twists and turns requires a vision that extends beyond the office or locker room. You can have the perfect coaching plan and I guarantee you life will change it. 

I guarantee you that one bad game, one bad quarter, one lost client, one failed presentation, one child’s emergency appendectomy will change the best of coaching plans. 

Coaching isn’t a straight line from point A to point B experience. It’s a meandering, taking 2 steps forward, 1 step to the left, 2 more steps back to the right and 3 additional steps forward dance. 

The fact of the matter is times have changed.  The “when I say jump you ask how high” approach to leadership and coaching has fallen to the wayside.

The old school coach is wrong. There is an “i” in team. 

A great team is made up of a group of individuals who are invested, inspired and invaluable. They work with a sense of integrity, are imaginative and play an integral role in the team’s success. 

The un-coachable are individuals that have not been given a good enough reason to buy in. A great coach finds the reason and that reason and its presentation will differ from one teammate to another. 

Human interaction, the ability to connect, communicate, collaborate and conquer is part of our DNA!  Figuring out how to connect is everything.  

If you are successful in connecting, you may have just turned the un-coachable one into the game changer you and your team needs.

Ken Evraire is the owner |principal of TECTONIC TLC Team Lead Coach.

He is a quintessential team player who loves coaching, team building and talking leadership!  He is grateful for the opportunity to work with a roster of fantastic clients ranging from the government sector, not for profit agencies, start ups, Fortune 500 companies and elite sports teams.

He is father to 3 precocious children, has the best ex-wife in the world, is a former professional football player that has since donated his brain. He has run 3x marathons (Honolulu 2x + Barcelona), done stand up comedy and believes the old school coach was wrong…there is indeed an “i” in Team! 

Check Ken out on the following social media pages…

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-evraire-leadership/

Twitter https://twitter.com/Tectonic_tlc

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/tectonictlc

   

 

Run Naked

 

When everything seems chaotic and confusing in my life I love to run naked!

I admit it get’s tougher thanks to the 5 knee surgeries and other football related injuries that have slowed me down but when I get a chance to run naked…I do so without hesitation. 

When I say run naked, I mean it figuratively! 

I didn’t realize I actually loved running naked until I began training for my first marathon back in 2004! 

As sports director for the local TV station, I was afforded many great opportunities including running a marathon as a member of the Team Diabetes project.  My mom was diagnosed with diabetes and I thought it would be a great opportunity to honor her.

Mid-week training sessions were fairly predictable and social thanks to running with groups of like minded people.

However, the Sunday long run training session was often done solo! They are called 10 and 1’s.  You jog for 10 minutes then walk/stretch for 1.  I loved this approach because it gave me a chance to take advantage of the new found pliability I enjoyed once my body was warmed up. The run would cover a distance between 15-20 km.

Listening to music made the run manageable.  I could tune out listening to The Doobie Brothers, the Downchild Blues Band, a New Jack Swing mix, Earth Wind and Fire and others. 

I intentionally stayed away from Enya and Celine Dion for fear of breaking down into an emotional mess 2km in! After each run I would limp away, sore and hating the experience.

Truth is, I was not getting anything out of it. 

I hated the military precision like preparation that went into each run. 

Along with my ipod, I would wear a hydration belt with 4 containers for Gatorade and a pocket for my Advil.  I lathered on the sunscreen, always wore a hat and sunglasses and kept time thanks to my Timex Ironman watch. 

Looking back I have to admit I am surprised that I didn’t bring road flares! I did everything I could to survive the run rather than embrace and enjoy it. 

The funny thing with 10 and 1 long run training sessions is something always seemed to go wrong and it always caught me off guard. 

I would run out of Gatorade. I would forget to check the weather forecast. I would manage to wear the wrong running shoes and just go ahead anyway.  I would forget to take my Advil an hour in advance of the run. The worst would be my ipod dying!

Of course, it usually occurred early in the run and I would be pissed off and have to mentally wrestle my way through the workout. 

You would think I would know better what with my being a former professional athlete. That truth really pissed me off! Throw in the jealousy when I saw every runner out there seemingly finding their zone and being locked into their experience and I was not a happy camper.  

After mentally kicking my own ass and blaming the world,  I had to reframe the entire mission.  

Truth is I had far too many things to do before I even left the house for the run.

I had to go naked! Good bye ipod. Good bye last minute preparations. It reminded me of the first 2 years of my professional football career. I was so worried about what could go wrong. I was driven by imminent failure rather than the confidence that comes with problem solving on the go and minimizing the burden we bare. 

Running naked meant the world surrounded me.

The world embraced me and better yet, I was able to really listen to what my body and mind was trying to tell me. It was connecting to what the purpose of my run would be that morning. It wasn’t always the same purpose but it was of always of value. 

The first thing I noticed when I ran naked was just how energizing the external noise was.  I was distracted in a great way. I had left my Maxwell Smart Cone of Silence realm and now had to listen to everything.  It’s amazing how much noise surrounds you when you think about it.  By sorting out the noise I could slow things down.

I spent so much time trying to minimize the experience and getting it over with that I missed out on the real beauty of the experience.

All of the fears that I carried with me…fears that seemed so unpredictable were no longer part of the equation. I was able to create a controlled environment or at least minimize the number of factors and juggle them.

 By doing so I learned that I would release happy hormones which made the run an even better experience. Serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins are famously happy hormones that promote positive feelings like pleasure, happiness, and even love.

A wonderful sense of clarity came to be. That is what running naked did for me. 

I discovered a symbiotic relationship between my mind, heart, surgically reconstructed knee, old tendon and muscle injuries that created imbalance and tightness!

I would listen to my breathing pattern than take steps to control the pattern. 

Once I was in my lane physically, I could then turn my attention to sorting out all of life’s luggage that I brought with me on the run. 

I am coming up with new presentation ideas.  I am plotting new solutions that were nowhere near my thought process 35 minutes earlier.  I am becoming a better parent, entrepreneur, a better everything all because I chose to run naked. 

So how does this apply to my work as a coaching + leadership consultant and team culture expert? 

I learned not to be afraid to face the noise.  By attacking the noise and the traffic, you can work your way to a clear express lane that offers new opportunities. 

Your problems are never bigger than your purpose but you can never fulfill your purpose if you do not stare down your problems. 

Now, this doesn’t mean you need to take up running. There are a number of different ways for you to “go naked”.  Once you figure out how to go naked, the real work can begin!

————

Ken Evraire is the owner | principal of TECTONIC TLC Team Lead Coach.

He is a quintessential team player who loves coaching, team building and talking leadership!  He is grateful for the opportunity to work with a roster of fantastic clients ranging from the government sector, not for profit agencies, start ups, Fortune 500 companies and elite sports teams.

He is father to 3 precocious children, has the best ex-wife in the world, is a former professional football player that has since donated his brain. He has run 3x marathons (Honolulu 2x + Barcelona), done stand up comedy and believes the old school coach was wrong…there is indeed an “i” in Team! 

Check Ken out on the following social media pages…

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-evraire-leadership/

Twitter https://twitter.com/Tectonic_tlc

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/tectonictlc