What is the job of a leader? What is the job of a coach? What is the job of an educator? We employ these people to help those they lead, coach, and educate perform at their best; to deliver their best work. An effective leader helps their team transform all of their talent into skill and peak performance. So does an effective coach. And an effective educator does the same for their students.
Is that what your boss does for you? Is that what your high school coaches did for your teams? Is that your teachers did for you? Is that what your kids’ teachers do for them?
How many conversations have you had with your boss that are focused on creating an effective strategy for transforming all of your talent into skill and peak performance? How many parent/teacher conferences have been focused on doing that for your kids?
How many conversations with your boss have been focused on compliance? “We give you money, so you do what we say. You’ve been doing it wrong. Just do what we say, because we know what we’re talking about.” How many conversations with teachers have been about compliance? “We need to get your son to behave so he can get good grades. Ill behaved (translation—noncompliant) children don’t get good grades, therefore they have no future.” The point is not that your kids should be feral and rebellious. The point is that managers, coaches, and teachers prioritize compliance, not peak performance and wellbeing, and the results are disastrous.
Think about it from a purely rational and capitalist mindset. Do you want to hire the most talented people you can find? How much of their talent do you want going to waste? How much more successful would your business be if everyone transformed all of their talent into skill and peak performance? So, why do your managers prioritize compliance over peak performance?
As a parent, how much of your child’s talent do you want to see go to waste? If you own or coach a professional sports team, how much of the athletes’ talent do you want to see translated into on-field performance? How much do you want to see go to waste? So, why does your organization prioritize compliance over peak performance?
The practical answer is that managers, coaches, and teachers don’t know how to create the conditions for peak performance, they only know how to create the conditions for compliance. That’s all they’ve ever learned.
The conditions for peak performance are: unshakable faith in oneself, audacity in the face of uncertainty, and integrity in the face of temptation and distraction. With that simple shift in priority, from compliance to peak performance, we can change the world. We can revolutionize leadership, coaching, and education, and the outcomes they produce. We can replace compliant drones with high-performing masters of their craft. We can transform workplaces and schools from environments of resentment to environments of integrity, flow, and belonging.
How can we create a new generation of leaders, coaches, and educators? By learning the 12 Skills for Life.