“Can I share something I see with you?” I asked.
“Josh, you don’t have to keep asking,” he said.
“I always will,” I responded. Then I continued, “You’re living your life and running your business at 70%. You have all the projections in the world on exactly how to create the income you want. When are you going to start creating that income?”
“Right now,” he responded. I smiled. There it was. I always knew it was in there—aliveness rising from its slumber.
It was one of the most powerful moments of my coaching practice to date. The conviction and resolve in his voice could be felt from 40 miles away. It was as if I was sitting right next to him as he said it. I then went and grabbed a book entitled The Ultimate Coach and asked if I could read him a short story.
In the book, Tom McGovern, who is one of Steve Hardison’s (The Ultimate Coach) clients, recalls a story that Steve shared with him before they started working together and again throughout their coaching partnership. You can find the story in the book on pages 284-285. It’s a fictional story—albeit very familiar to those of us in leadership—of an individual who was responsible for organizing an event. There were 50 people in this organization and the request went out for help to set up tables and chairs on Saturday morning at 8am. Ten people agreed they could lend a hand. Saturday morning came and one showed up. The nine who didn’t had seemingly reasonable responses to why they weren’t there. Steve suggested someone forgot, another overslept, another got a flat tire. He then asked rhetorically, “How many reasons could there be for someone not showing up at 8am?” The obvious answer is there is no limit to the number of excuses. He instructs Tom to imagine all of those reasons being on the left hand side of a piece of ledger paper. Then he asks Tom how many reasons there would be on the right side of the ledger paper to know that the person honored their commitment. Of course, there is only one. The person showed up at 8am. Then, in an incredibly powerful moment, Steve pointed to the right side of the ledger paper and said, “That’s me. That’s my life. I am commitment.”
There is no question that this is an inspiring story about intentionality, integrity, and the power of the spoken word. In many ways it stops us in our tracks because of how clearly it illustrates the point. We either showed up or we didn’t. So often, however, we give ourselves passes based upon the fact that we are a good person or had good intentions, as opposed to the fact that we are a good person who did not do what they said they were going to do. The latter doesn’t change the former and both can be true at one time. When we don’t accept the truth of that statement, we continue to create excuses, diminish our word, and diminish our self-confidence.
I went on to explain to my client that one of the most important byproducts of integrity is self-trust. Why? Well, I think Stephen M.R. Covey’s book, The Speed of Trust, is helpful here. In his book he highlights two main points that are germane to our concept of self confidence. The first is that in order for us to trust other people, we have to be able to trust ourselves. That seems simple and obvious enough.
The second point, however, is more subtle. We often think of trust in terms of whether someone is a nice person or not. We put a premium on their character, and I do not want to be misunderstood here: that is critical. Yet, we all have met the nice person who cancels dinner plans, reschedules meetings, doesn’t meet deadlines, misses sales quotes, etc. That does just as much to erode trust as if they have poor character, because they told us something that they would do and didn’t. This is the second element of trust, according to Covey: competence. We have to trust that someone actually produces results. And, if we don’t trust ourselves to produce results, our confidence begins to wane. If our word is not powerful enough to deliver what it says, our trust in our abilities and the quality of our work diminishes. We start to doubt ourselves. We make more excuses. We say we will show up at 8am on Saturday morning and we go to the coffee shop instead, pump our bodies full of donuts and sugary drinks and number ourselves into less integrity. We begin to grade ourselves on the curve and justify our lack of integrity by saying, “At least I’m not like Josh. I’m a nice person.”
I want to be so clear on this: this isn’t about being perfect. This is about character and competence. It’s about being a good person and delivering what we say we will. Integrity isn’t interested in what we mean. It’s all about intentionality and our actions mirroring our deeds. Asking someone to live in integrity with who God created them to be is one of the highest acts of love that exists. I talk more about that in my blog, “There’s a Booger in Your Nose.”
At the end of every coaching session, I ask my clients what their takeaways were. These are not action items. Those are separate. These are changes in their mindset or thinking that they are taking with them. The client responded, “Stop being reasonable.” He rightly identified that there was plenty of reasonableness in his ongoing self-justification. He accepted—in a beautiful moment of self-awareness—that he was living at 70%, and acknowledged that creating the life and business that he wants requires him to be “I am commitment.” I can’t wait to see what this type of resolve will create for him!