HtS Chapter 2: The Source of All Your Problems Is You

Now that we have some idea of what success should feel like, we dive into the current state… and explore specifically why you haven’t achieved your goals yet.

My approach to this subject is a bit different than most others. I agree with many other authors that the simple answer to the question, “What’s my problem?” is, “Your attitude.” But here I take the question one step further and try to uncover why your attitude is where it is. True, we all have our good days and bad days, but it’s not terribly difficult to pick up on someone’s overall attitude level, and often, from the outside looking in, it can be quite obvious where a person needs to improve in order to take his/her game to the next level. I want to make that analysis easier from the inside looking out.

After years of doing assessment and development work, I’ve discovered that regardless of the assessment used, and whether we use a 19, 20, 52, 60, 70, or 120+ competency model, the same few developmental needs nearly always percolate to the top of peoples’ lists of desired developmental areas. The process reminds me of when I would watch Wheel of Fortune as a kid, how in the final round, contestents would nearly always pick the same 5 letters: R, S, T, L, N, E. Twenty-six letters, same five choices. Once in a while, someone would pick a “P” or even an “X” to be different or cute, leaving the viewing audience to shake its collective head and mutter, “Idiot.” Watching people choose competencies to develop is very similar.

So I’ve taken a close look at that short list of competencies, and from it I’ve created a list of four competencies that I think hold the key to growth and development. They hold the key because these are the “undevelopables;” the “stakes in the ground” you need to build your life around because you probably won’t be able to develop in these areas—at least, not in the short term. (A non-key competency might be something like time management, or active listening, both of which can be practiced and improved fairly quickly.) If you can accurately assess your ability level in these areas, and come to accept the results, you can quickly design a development plan that will bring the rest of your skills into alignment so you’re not fighting against yourself. Stop tripping yourself up, and it becomes easier to hold onto that positive attitude. Capture a positive attitude, and success quickly follows.

Here they are, the four keys to a more successful attitude:

Self-Motivation. The trick is to find a situation that makes it easy to apply yourself, right? “Do what you love,” “Live to work,” “Find what you’re passionate about.” Right? Right?!

Wrong. It’s all hogwash.

I don’t know a single kid who grows up wanting to be a bean counter, but I know quite a few happy accountants. The reality is, while some of us are made for a specific life, most of us are generalists. For generalists, our passion finds us, often in drips and drops, sourced across many different activities. It doesn’t really matter what a generalist does… because as long as s/he puts his/her heart and soul into the work, s/he can cultivate a passion for it. True, once you begin to apply yourself, your passions will begin speaking to you and making suggestions about how to change your surroundings to become even more passionate, but that is in the future. That all happens once the fire in your belly is burning bright enough. Right now, you’re not ablaze. You’re a small pile of kindling at the camp site, and there’s a strong breeze blowing. Do you know what happens when you try to run from one spot to another with lit kindling in your hands? The fire dies. So before we start exploring this option or that one, we need to stoke the flames first. And that means staying focused on one thing. One fire. It may not be the eternal flame, it may not even last a year, but right now, we have got to invest everything we have in getting ourselves fired up about it before we can move to someplace else, because just like a campfire, if we move before the fire’s burning, it’ll go out and we’ll have to start all over.

Problem Solving Ability. Specifically, conceptual ability, and within that, the ability to handle ambiguity. You can’t grow IQ points, but you can get comfortable with a problem solving methodology and build a set of tools and a network to help you work through issues. If your only mental tool is a hammer, then let’s make sure you’re working with nails, and get some people around you who can handle the other stuff.

Courage. Everyone wants it, no one wants to prove it… and with reason: if you need courage, you’re facing a problem. A BIG problem. Day to day, a lack of courage manifests as a lack of balance. If you lack balance, it’s because you’re not fully invested in your passions; and if you’re not fully invested in your passions, it’s likely because you lack the courage to remove from your world all those things—and people—who are keeping you from them.

Empathy. Technically, this one’s unlike the others because you can develop your interpersonal ability. However, human nature still makes it more tempting to point the finger at others rather than ourselves, and our limited understanding of how things like charisma, will power, moods, and emotions work means that the programs we design to help people grow in this area fail as often as they succeed. So for these reasons, and because developing true empathy requires a deep, long-term commitment, I include it in this list.

In this chapter, I introduce these concepts and walk through how each of them impacts us, for better or worse. Later, I return to this list of comptencies and discuss how to actually make the most of each.

With all the study and research that’s gone into this, I ultimately got validation from a most unexpected place: The Wizard of Oz (video):

Jason Seiden is Co-founder and CEO of Ajax Social Media, a training company that shows professionals how use social media to work more effectively.