How Winners Think Differently to Create a Competitive Edge and Maximize Success.
If you want an out-of-the-box PLC book study topic, I think this would be a great option. That title gets my attention. I listen to a pretty wide variety of podcasts. Magnus and Marcus On Coaching is a great podcast. They talk about doing hard things. They talks about distance running on a detailed level that is useful. If you are a cross country coach or runner, you would really enjoy their podcast. If you are a teacher who loves to run, you still need to listen. Either way, they recommended a book that I found which would be readily adaptable to what we do in education.
I read a lot about athletic performance, specifically running. It is fairly amazing how well books about running and athletic performance can fold into classroom philosophies. The mental aspect of any sport very much impacts the performance of an athlete. Self belief is incredibly important, but how do we teach our students to have it? That isn’t easy. Well, Magnus and Marcus mentioned a book on the exact topic. I brought it with me on vacation and planned to read it that week. It was so good that I read all of it just on the plane ride out there! I underlined massive sections of the book.
This dovetails into the school improvement plan post from yesterday. Beecham shared an experience about writing goals for sports. In my mind it was running, but it could easily be transposed for our students. At first, they said to set a goal that you could 100% meet. That wasn’t overly inspiring. Then, they said to set a goal that you had a 70% chance of meeting. Well, that gets more interesting. Then, they said to write a goal that you only have a 40% chance of meeting. Now that is a proper goal, one which would motivate and something you could work towards.
That’s how you do it. When you set goals, you have to go big. Setting a goal that has no chance of failure is a waste of time. It’s nothing more than a pep rally.1
And another lesson is that we need to be thankful for our competition. We need to learn to run with our competition and not against our competition. In running, who you train with makes all the difference. A great running group will make a team faster where an individual run is less likely to.
The purpose of competition is to perform at our very best. Great competitors use the competition to help them perform at their best, like a jockey putting his horse in perfect position to win. On the other hand, poor competitors are only inhibited by the competition.2
And this next little bit is what really gets me deep in my soul. This is the secret to building a great school, a great athletic program, or just achieving personal goals.
***First do what is necessary. … Then do the possible. … And then you will find yourself doing the impossible.3***
If you have done this job of education long enough, you totally get that. As educators we must build one set of student experiences upon another. If we do that enough times, we are going to find our students being successful on a level that we never dreamed possible. If we can stack one solid lesson on top of another, our students are going to grow(in depth and width) well past what any normed assessment can measure.
In closing, I know a number of principals who do books studies with their faculties. I would strongly suggest this book. Maybe of all books that I have read during the past five years, this would be the one I would recommend to coaches and educators.
1Beecham, Stan; Beecham, Stan. Elite Minds: How Winners Think Differently to Create a Competitive Edge and Maximize Success (p. 61). McGraw Hill LLC. Kindle Edition.
2Beecham, Stan; Beecham, Stan. Elite Minds: How Winners Think Differently to Create a Competitive Edge and Maximize Success (p. 151). McGraw Hill LLC. Kindle Edition.
3Beecham, Stan; Beecham, Stan. Elite Minds: How Winners Think Differently to Create a Competitive Edge and Maximize Success (p. 171). McGraw Hill LLC. Kindle Edition.
