Today’s Dadly Daily Declaration comes from Chapter 8 (titled #1. When You’re a Cleaner…You don’t compete with anyone, you find your opponent’s weakness and you attack.) of Tim Grover’s book, Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable. In this chapter, Grover discusses that Cleaners do not view tasks or games as meaningless. A Cleaner always show up to play.
There are a few gems from this chapter, including the following:
- “When you’re the guy at the top, it’s on you to pull everyone else up there with you, or everything you’ve built comes crashing down. Not so easy for a Cleaner who demands excellence of himself and has no tolerance for those who can’t or won’t rise to that level. Does he dumb himself down so he can fit in, slap people on the back, tell them they’re great, and hope everyone can rise together? Or does he stand up there alone, set the example, and make everyone else work harder? The answer seems obvious, but you’d bee surprised by how many people don’t want to stand alone under the glare of the spotlight, because as soon as you reveal what you’re capable of, that’s what everyone will expect of you. But when no one realizes how good you are, you don’t have to be the guy making miracles and running the show, no one will expect much, and everything you do will seem heroic. Easier that way.”
- “When put in a position to execute, you’d better be prepared. At some point, whether you’re in the boardroom or the locker room or anywhere else you want to excel, someone is going to point in your direction and say, “You.” It may be an opportunity that lasts a minute, maybe ten minutes, maybe a week or a month. But what you do in that time is going to determine what you’re going to do for a long time after. Will you be ready? Will you have done the work that allows you to step in, fully prepared, and show you should have had that job all along? Are you sharp and focused? Do well and impress someone, you’re in the system. Don’t do well, you’re done. You got your chance, you won’t get another.”
- “Everyone is given some ability at birth. Not everyone finds out what that ability is. Sometimes you find it on your own, sometimes it has to be shown to you. Either way, it’s there. At the same time, there are abilities you are not given. Our challenge in life is to use the abilities we have, and to compensate for the abilities we don’t have. It’s completely instinctive; we compensate in order to survive. Successful people compensate for what they don’t have; unsuccessful people make excuses, blame everyone else, and never get past the deficiencies. A true leader can see past those deficiencies, identify the abilities, and get the most out of that individual.”
So, here is what I discovered today from this chapter:
The only way you can light other people on fire is to be lit yourself, from the inside. Professional, cool, focused. If you had a bad night and you can’t show up the next day ready to go, or you can’t show up at all, that doesn’t affect just you, it affects everyone around you. A professional doesn’t let other people down just because of personal issues. If you need to show up, you show up. You might detest every individual in the room, but if your presence makes them all feel better, if it pulls the team together, if it results in better performances, then you’ve helped yourself to get one step closer to your own goal. That’s how you get others to come up to your level: show them where it is, and set the example that allows them to get there.
