The road to our goals and the people along the way

A few years ago I have heard "The story of the tiny frog" and I always think of it when it comes to achieving goals. Here is the story:

The Story Of The Tiny Frog

There once was a bunch of tiny frogs who got together to arrange a competition to reach to the top of the highest tower in town.
As the date for the competition was announced, the news spread everywhere and crowd in large numbers gathered around the tower to see this interesting competition and cheer on the contestants. The crowd did not really believe any of these little frogs were going to make it to the top of the tower. Yet they were curious…The competition began, the frogs quickly started to ascend and the crowd cheered!
As a few moments passed, someone from the crowd shouted, "Not a chance that they will succeed! The tower is too high!"
Another spectator said, "Yes, they will never make it to the top. It's way too difficult!"

As the competition continued, some of the tiny frogs began collapsing. One by one… tired… exhausted… But the race continued… as those who still had the fight left, passionately continued to climb higher and higher…
In the excitement and anxiety  the crowd continued to yell, "It is too difficult. No one will make it!"

More tiny frogs got tired and gave up. They all continued to give up one by one, until there was only ONE little frog left in the competition who continued to climb higher and higher and higher…
This one wouldn’t give up!
This one tiny frog who, after a big effort was the only one who reached the top! This little soul was the winner! He made it! He got the glory!

Naturally, everyone wanted to know how this one tiny frog managed to pull it off when every other contestant gave up. Everybody wanted to know how this tiny frog had found the strength to reach this goal that everyone else thought it was impossible. So, they asked questions.

It turned out that the winner was deaf.

The Moral Of The Story: Be deaf when people tell you that you can not fulfill your dreams and goals.  

I would say it´s better to stay away from these people or at least donˋt share your plans or goals with them.

Even if they actually have good  intentions and they donˋt want us to get hurt or demotivated if we donˋt reach our goals, their negative attitude might make us start doubting our own abilities and eventually give up our goals or lower our target.

On the other hand, those people who have a positive attitude, even if they are thinking our goals are too high they will not discourage us. Instead they will share their relevant experience, try and help us make a plan, give us ideas on where to get more information or how to reach our target and even boost our self confidence. These people know that reaching the goal is not the most important thing, but what you learn on the way. They are the ones who will help us grow and who we will always remember with gratitude.

What kind of people do you have around?

How many of them encourage you achieve what you want and are supportive?

How do you handle the ones who under the excuse of being realistic, are telling you how hard it will be for you to get what you want and that it would be better to have lower expectations and goals?  

And how about you? Are you telling others: "You will never make it to the top. It's way too difficult!"?

“You can do it!” - why encouragements can fail

Managers have more than other people the power and tools to influence people’s lives. Employees look up to their managers for examples and for feedback. They try to learn and find those qualities who could also make them successful.

Self confidence is a quality that can be trained and that needs to be feed with constant reassurement so that it will stay at a high level. Even the people who have generally a high level of self confidence go through moments of uncertainty when they need someone to tell them “You can do it!”

It happens quite a lot to hear encouragements from our managers but somehow only a few of these incentives have an impact on us. Why? Maybe because we don’t appreciate those persons, because we think they are just saying it to make us feel good or because they don’t know us good enough to be able to estimate if we can do what we want or not.

I was asked many times who is the person who influenced my professional life and whom I appreciate as a professional. My thoughts go always to one of my first managers because he encouraged me to pursue my dream. He said I have all it takes to achieve what I want and he is convinced I can do it. For me it meant so much, specially because I was at the beginning of my career and I was not sure if I had chosen the right area to work in. His words had such an impact on me and motivated me to work very hard for what I wanted professionally.

Thinking back, I realize that this specific encouragement had such a positive impact on me because I had a great respect for that person, I was impressed by his career and we worked together for enough time so that he could see my performance and potential. And there was something else. There was something in the way he talk to me. I had the feeling he is honest.

The risk of encouraging someone is to be perceived as fake and therefore cause more damage than good.

We shouldn't say “You can do it!” to someone if:

• we don’t know the other person good enough to tell what are his\her skills and abilities
• we think the person can’t do what she\he wants but we say it anyway because we find nothing better to say and we think it can’t hurt
• we don’t have enough information about what the other person wants to do
• we don’t have any examples and arguments to support our encouragement.

For some people it is natural to make positive and effective encouragements, however most of us need to learn this ability and to refine it in time. I find this to be an essential ability for every manager because this will help to build up and maintain an increased employee motivation. Employee who have a high level of self confidence can also have a great performance and do whatever it takes to reach the goals of the company.