32 . Glasgow Business September/October 2012
THE MENTOR
Dr David Fraser is the author of Relationship Mastery: A Business Professional’s Guide and is Executive Director for Change for Leaders
›› THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT HIGH PERFORMANCE AND HUMANITY THAT INSPIRES TRUST, SAYS DR DAVID FRASER
We can learn a great deal from an Olympic year that seemed to sweep the nation off its feet, almost despite itself. Here’s one piece of advice, and it starts with a question: Would you buy from Sir Chris Hoy? Supposing he sold a product or service you
needed, would you buy from him? What about Jessica Ennis? Or Mo Farah? Chances are, you would, and confidently too. Why is that? Te most obvious answer is because they’re the best at what they do, but there’s something more: we can see their openness, their integrity and their genuineness. Most likely that’s what would give us the confidence. We want to believe in both high
performance and a real person we trust. We want them to be open. In fact, whether we would buy from someone or not, or be
Would you buy from Mo Farah?
Photograph by Maxisport
influenced by them, might have more to do with who they are as a person than what they actually do. Tink about it for a moment: would you
buy from every medal winner? Probably you wouldn’t, for one reason or another, and you might also have different preferences among the three I mentioned. Tere are no right or wrong answers, of course, and it’s interesting to notice what makes the difference for you. Tat might tell you something about your own business. Watching interviews with gold medal winners
and other high performers, it’s striking how most of them seem thoroughly pleasant and even ordinary people – very far from the sometime stereotype of winner as warrior. In short, they are profoundly human. Sure, in the background, there may well be a coach demanding ever higher effort. And it seems that bringing a litle more aggression into his game has made a difference for Andy Murray, for example. Older hands talk about experience bringing
the presence of mind to deliver the absolute performance that breaks records, as well as winning medals; younger heads instead sometimes stopping at “merely” beating their rivals. So there’s something about learning composure and keeping in mind the bigger picture, even in the heat of the moment and the intensity of face-to-face competition. But still, to captivate our interest and our emotional commitment, we need to see a human side. What about the bigger picture? Why did we
Why did we find the Games so compelling? It seems we’re drawn to the spectacle of honest endeavour and the attempt to succeed
find the Games so compelling? It seems we’re drawn to the spectacle of honest endeavour and the atempt to succeed writ large, and the human sagas that lie behind; the overcoming of adversity to reach the top. We follow the heroes and heroines of these stories; we are influenced by them whether we notice we are or not. Te most inspirational gold medal winners
combine both power and humanity. Neither is enough on its own, for them or for us. And so it is in business. A deeper human connection with our customers, our staff and our trading partners may liſt our performance, and make us more influential, and it might be the stories we tell that make the difference.
FIND OUT MORE...
For more on this subject, email
david@changeforleaders.com
Photograph by Liz Handy
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