by Justin Collinge
Robin and I used to play squash every Thursday in a strange converted barn nestled into the Sussex Downs. It became quite a competition as we started counting up who was on top overall. We were well matched except for one fascinating area. Robin and I would both give everything we had to win. The difference was that he was gracious and good humoured about losing and I …well, wasn’t. Over the months I learned from Robin that it is possible to give your all to something without it needing to cost your all. It’s only recently that Michael Neill, in his excellent book ‘Supercoach’, has given me the language and structure to understand what I learned at a gut level.
Michael talks about involvement and investment. ‘Involvement’ is the amount of time and energy you give to something. This is the practical cost. ‘Investment’ is the amount of yourself that you give to something. This is the emotional cost. Looking through this model at how we spend our resources gives us four options:
High investment, high involvement – very laudable but leading to burnout (so often my experience) High investment, low involvement – you care deeply about everything but don’t actually get around to doing anything about it. A very frustrating place to live.
Low investment, low involvement – you don’t care much or do much.
Low investment, high involvement – you throw yourself in and give it your all without minding too much about the outcome.
It’s this last option that Michael suggests gives the greatest reward. Give all you have into making something succeed but don’t carry emotional baggage about the things you can’t change. So work as hard as you can to make that new workshop you’re going to deliver as amazing as possible (Or make that new project as cost effective as possible, or try to cut the ‘due date’ by a considerable amount, or…) But remain slightly removed emotionally. Then when the bosses cancel it for reasons which have nothing to do with you, you can still go home happy that you did your best. I used to have an old saying on my wall, “Whatever you find in your hand to do, do it with all your might”. I’d now like to add to that, “And then relax!”
Something interesting happened to my squash in that draughty Sussex barn. As I tried my hardest to win but didn’t mind whether I did or not I got noticeably better AND I enjoyed the game much more (And I suspect people enjoyed playing me a whole lot more too!)
So how about you? What’s your normal style out of those four options? Where could you learn to give more while caring less?
Call to action:
- Read Supercoach by Michael Neill.
- Contact me (Justin@Kaizen-Training.com) for a free 15 minute telephone coaching session around how to achieve high involvement and low investment in your situation.
