You, your team, and the rear view mirror

Most days, the world is whizzing by your ears so fast that you barely have time to peek over the horizon much less get a chance to glance in the rear view mirror.  Leaders on the ground, waist-deep in the fight can easily get overwhelmed in the work of successfully navigating the team through the day.  Are we running too fast to get better?

Peyton Manning isn’t.  I love watching Peyton on the field but I am most intrigued by his work during the game while the Colts’ defense is in play.  Peyton intensely flips through fresh-off-the-printer pictures of the last 4 downs.  He is taking a quick glance in his rear view mirror to study his team’s performance against the opponent’s defense.  In 20 seconds he looks at what happened, what worked, what didn’t.  He learns.  He applies that learning next time he runs out onto the field.  Simple?  Yes.  Huge?  I think so.

The habit of reflection, either self-reflection or reviews with teams, groups, or units, is a habit of champions.   We all want to win but how many of us really take frequent, quality time to reflect and recognize what is bringing us closer to our goal or our dreams and what is getting in our way?  Sure you can sit quietly and contemplate for hours.  You can also use a solid 60 seconds to hit pause and zero in on what is working, what isn’t and what learning you can take forward to improve your performance.   In fact, I know you are busy so I crafted a 60 second tool to-go that you can use for yourself and your team to crank it up.  Check it out: 6 simple steps to better performance  .  

How did the tool work for you?  Do you have another cool process you use to learn from past performance?  Better yet, send in those success stories about how using what you learned from past performance made all the difference for your team.  

Its almost football season.   I bet Peyton is studying those films as we speak.