The Gold Mine Effect

Rasmus Ankerson’s book is a must read for anyone that coaches sport and/or anyone that is looking to develop themselves as an individual.

You can read the books reviews and find out where to buy this from HERE.

The chapters are broken own to some very interesting “Key Learning Points” and I’ve shared these with you here:

TALENT IDENTIFICATION

1. The world is full of overlooked talent. Driving it to the surface requires that you rethink how and where you look. If you look in the same way in the same places as everybody else, you’ll get what everybody else gets.
2. Current performance can certainly be a strong indicator for potential, but that’s far from always the case. Great potential does not necessarily manifest itself in current top performance.
3. Having a crystal clear understanding of the core competencies that drive success in a particular role will give you the freedom to look for and correctly identify relevant talent in many different places.
4. We typically hire for skills and fire for attitude. Start doing as Stephen Francis. Hire for attitude!
5. Shut up and start to listen! Talent identification is not about talking. It’s about listening .listen for the story, the theme and the reasons driving performance. Listen for what people say without saying it out loud. Listen for what you can’t read in a resume.

PRACTICE

1. Practice is the mother of all world-class performance. When you think you see a god-given talent in a business leader, a musician or athlete, what you really see is likely to be somebody who consciously or unconsciously got 10,000 hours of practice in at an early age.
2. Just because you love something, doesn’t necessarily mean you will ever be great at doing it. The greatest payback often comes when you least want to carry on.
3. World-class performance requires that people start practising at an early age; just how early depends on the discipline. The more complex the skill set you need to master, the earlier you must start. However, improvement is available for everyone.

What you should never forget about BELIEF

1. Imagination is more important than knowledge. If you can’t visualize it happening, it will not happen. Anyone wanting to break records and push boundaries must build a clear picture in their mind of what they want to achieve.
2. Too much information and knowledge can limit potential, paralyze action and kill belief. A top performer must distinguish between what they really need to know and what is just nice to know.
3. Belief is not about being right. It’s about winning. What often separates the best from the rest is a capability to believe things that are logically not true, but which are powerfully motivating.
4. Be realistic, but be unrealistic at the same time. Any organisation wishing to deliver high performance must nurture it’s ability to think on an unrealistically large scale and stimulate its naivety about what’s possible.

MINDSET

1. Experience is often a weak predictor for performance. In fact, a lot of people tend to perform worse the more experience they get. They develop fixed ideas and only work inside their comfort zone. Sustainable high performance is built on curiosity and the willingness to challenge oneself. The key to improvement is not found inside your comfort zone.
2. Labeling people as super talents often fosters the wrong mindset. They become driven by looking good rather than getting better. They validate themselves from outside-in and not from inside-out. success often comes down to one choice: will i choose the path of social approbation, or will choose the path to true mastery?
3. A performance environment should never be too comfortable. You must nurture a constant feeling of positive discomfort, on particularly the discomfort that comes from being stretched to the limit. If you don’t create discomfort from the inside, i’ll guarantee you that you’ll soon be forced to experience discomfort from the outside – and it’s going to feel much worse.
4. Perceived success makes people feel entitled. As a result they become complacent and lose urgency. Anyone with the ambition to deliver high performance again and again must understand that change and renewal shouldn’t happen when it’s necessary. It should happen whenever possible.

GODFATHER LEADERSHIP

1. Leadership is paradoxical – a great leader must be able to build close relationships but be able to keep at a suitable distance. They must lead from the front and yet hold themselves in the background. They must be in control at all times but trust their people and be willing to relinquish some of that control to them. They must create consensus but be willing to make decisions against the majority if necessary. To truly become a great leader, you must recognize and reconcile these opposing behaviors. Godfathers master these paradoxes and understand that it’s never a question of either/or it’s both/and.
2. Leadership is situational. No leadership style is universal. No leadership style works in all situations. Contexts shift and relationships change over time, and therefore great leaders are flexible. Bad leaders are static. The only tool they have is a hammer and therefore they tend to see every problem as a nail. The Godfathers use different leadership styles depending on the situation and the people they are leading. They don’t please through their methods and philosophies. they please through their results.
3. Leadership is relational. It’s the business of human nature. A hydroelectric engineer must have an understanding of the nature of water in order to build a damn. A physiotherapist must understand anatomy to treat their patients. In the same way, a leader must understand human nature in order to lead effectively. Godfathers have a deep insight into the psychology of people and understand what it takes to maximise their unique potential.

PARENTING

1. Parents are often a better predictor for how their children might grow their potential than the children are themselves. Behind most top performers you’ll find encouraging, stimulating and demanding parents.
2. There are different kinds of pressure. You can certainly push kids in bad ways, but you can also push them in good ways. I admit the balance is hard to find, but we often confuse egoistic and bullying parents with dedicated and engaged parents who are taking responsibility for establishing dreams and ambitions in their children.
3. The parents who criticize the idea of pushing children hard and who say they simply want their children to follow their hearts are often the same parents who go to wine-tasting on Tuesdays and yoga classes on Thursdays while their children are engaged in other activities.

MOTIVATION

1. Nothing really beats a really burning desire. It’s without doubt the single most important predictor for world-class performance.
2. “Why” is the most powerful psychological question to boost motivation. Much more important than what any individual or organization must ask themselves why they do what they do, and what would happen if they didn’t.
3. Don’t wait for the thunderbolt of passion to hit you. It’s not going to happen on its own. Instead, start to act – engage and invest yourself in what you do and the passion will start to flow. Often it’s perseverance that fosters passion, not the other way around.
4. Motivation is not just about doing more and pushing harder. It’s also about building routines for how to manage our energy more efficiently and intelligently. It’s a commitment to a lifestyle where you not only train as a champion, but also recover as a champion.
5. The form motivation that brings a person or an organization to one goal will not necessarily bring them to their next. Often motivation has to be re-ignited, visions must be renewed and meaning deepened in order to maintain momentum.

The book finishes with one very big question, “How do you create hunger in paradise?” It’s a question that was answered in his follow book of the same name, but one that is ultimately still “the big question”.