Inside Strategic Coach: Forget About Your Difficulties and Focus on Progress

Dan Sullivan on Scary Times Success Manual: Strategy #5

• Current Context: Recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic, discussing difficulties and strategies for focusing on progress.
• Choice Between Reacting and Responding:
  • Reacting: Emotional and automatic
  • Responding: Mix of emotions, reason, experience, and problem-solving
• Importance of Transforming Emotional Impact:
  • Initial emotional reactions are natural
  • Key question: Can you transform emotions into positive actions?
  • Comparison to muscle training: Emotional, psychological, and strategic resilience
• Preparing for Challenges: Training the mind, spirit, and character for resilience
  • Importance of accountability among people
  • Three Aspects of Accountability:
    • Mental capability (working brain)
    • Attitude (optimistic vs. pessimistic)
    • Skills (usefulness in current situation)
• Self-Assessment: Evaluating one's own reliability and responsibility

Key Points and Strategies

1. Shift from Self-Focus to Others-Focus:

   • Reacting to change in market demand
   • Understanding that usefulness is not tied to a specific product or service

2. Identify Your Most Important Commitment:

   • Commitment leads to acquiring new capabilities and confidence
   • Commitment example: Improving virtual communication skills

3. Courage and Capability:

   • Acknowledge that new efforts will often feel uncomfortable
   • Act effectively despite lack of initial confidence

4. Building New Capabilities:

   • Measure progress through feedback and skills improvement
   • Importance of positive feedback in affirming capabilities

5. Gaining New Confidence:

   • Capability is the means; confidence is the reward
   • Increased confidence allows for higher commitments and further improvement

Self-Reflective Questions to Drive Progress

1. What's Your Single Biggest Commitment?
   • Drives acquisition of new capabilities and confidence
2. What's Going to Require a Period of Courage?
   • Recognize the necessity of courage during transitions
3. What's Your Most Important New Capability?
   • Define and measure the new skills needed
4. Where Do You Want a New Higher Confidence?
   • Pinpoint areas for increased confidence as a result of new capabilities
5. Who's the Better You as a Result of Your Scary Times Growth?
   • Envision the improved self post-crisis; recognition of long-term benefits

Conclusion

• Continuous Improvement: Using the experience of 'scary times' to build lasting capabilities

• Future-Ready: Leveraging current learnings for improved performance in 'new normal'

• Series Reflection: 20-year-old strategies applied to current global crisis and expanded into deeper learning modules and forthcoming book.