Think Greatness, Vistage Fundamental #6

This is Steve Van Valin of Culturology, and I’d like to share this month’s fundamental for the Vistage Brandywine Valley Groups led by our master chair, Jim Lucas.

And we have the Vistage Way, which is composed of 14 fundamentals. In each month, we take a focused look at one of them. And this month, it’s number six, to think greatness.

And I wanted to call out the last line of this fundamental, where it says, “Always challenge yourself to find a better way.” I guess in some ways, that almost sounds cliché or something that a motivational speaker lays on you and you go, “Yes, I agree with that, but I’m not really sure how to do it consistently.” So I wanted to share with you an actual tool or a technique we can be more aware of that’ll help us challenge ourselves consistently to find a better way. And it has to do with the psychology of progress.

I’d like to ask you if you’ve ever accomplished something, a task or a goal, and then, after the fact, you wrote it down on your to-do list and then checked the box. Why would we do that since it’s already done? It has to do with the psychology of progress, and especially something that was revealed by the Harvard Business School and an amazing study that they did on motivation and creativity.

And they discovered what’s called The Progress Principle, which explains why we write down things and then check the box after the fact. Because they discovered that breakthroughs, goal completion, forward movement, and even small wins had tremendous power in keeping people engaged in the game. And they found through the study that if people feel capable, then they see difficult problems as positive challenges and the opportunities to succeed.

Let’s face it, the idea of getting to greatness or finding a better way is always a difficult problem for any of us. So let’s see how we can leverage this and what can we learn from the things in our life that we probably see all the time, but maybe didn’t realize how the psychology of progress was playing out.

For example, if you were in Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, you know that you probably worked very hard to accomplish those badges. And each time you did, you had something visible to show for it. They give kids in even kindergarten or sixth grade diplomas now to graduate, to build a flywheel of momentum. We know martial arts is famous for the idea of progressing through the belts and sometimes leading to that elusive black belt that’s an incredible goal for anybody to achieve.

Do you remember your first kiss? That was important progress in the relationship, certainly. And as athletes, we have goals and records that we try to achieve. And weight loss is always reinforced by the idea of seeing that scale and knowing that all that hard work paid off. The psychology of progress in action.

Now, we see this in other ways too, with high technology. So the Apple iPhone, all the apps and things like Fitbit that measure your progress on a daily basis or sometimes hour to hour. And then in gaming, we know that many people will stay engaged with this for hours, maybe to their own detriment because they’re trying to clear those levels. They’re trying to level up. Breaking through a level keeps you going to achieve even more to get to greatness.

So it really has to do with self-efficacy. To be more conscious of this because progress motivates people, that means you and me, to accept difficult challenges more readily, and to persist longer because we have to fight through the challenge.

Now, here’s one way we can do this as a leader within our organization. Modeling what Andy Grove, the famous founder and CEO of Intel, used to do with his engineers in the office. He would often come up to them and say, “Hey, what are your 1-2-3’s?”

And what he was asking them essentially was, “What are you trying to accomplish today? What are your goals and tasks?” And he was setting them up for The Progress Principle because once they achieved them, they had that feeling of self-efficacy that drove them to greatness and to achieve the next milestone.

This is something all of us can do as leaders in our organization and for ourselves. So when we think about this question, what might you do to make progress on being great and make that stand out for you? I think the fundamental about thinking greatness and challenging ourselves continually to build that flywheel of momentum is the way that we find a better way.

This is Steve Van Valin with Culturology.