The 2010-11 professional soccer and basketball campaigns are coming to an end. As one might expect, in soccer the favourites are bringing home the hardware: Manchester United in England, FC Barcelona in Spain, and AC Milan in Italy. In basketball we are seeing a couple of upsets (Spurs and Lakers) that I attribute to passing the torch to a younger assembly of athletes. Beyond that, the teams with the best overall records are moving ahead in the playoffs.
How do people become good at what they do? First, most successful people love what they do. Every good professional, regardless what profession, tirelessly toils toward mastery by nailing down the basics and fundamentals via dedicated diligence, practice, and intelligence. According to Malcolm Gladwell in his book titled Outliers: The Story of Success it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become truly competent in a field of endeavor.1
To be good in soccer, it’s a combination of several things, as it would be for any other engagement of action toward performance. For starters, one must learn proper technical techniques in dribbling, passing, receiving, tackling, and shooting fundamentals. Secondly, soccer intelligence is needed to learn tactics, e.g., movement without the ball, formations, overlaps, jersey tugs, faking a foul J, etc. And finally, you have to put the ball in play enough times to be good so that you can effectively perform and anticipate your next move before you move.
My daughter competed against carefully selected students in high school choirs. She has my competitive gene and ended up 1st chair alto in West Tennessee and #3 in the entire state. Wow! As I listened to many of those in the competition it was hard for the novice ear to discern how or why one sounded better than another. We can see that illustration clearly when the American public votes for the next American Idol. In a world of competition the margin of difference between good and great can be very thin.
What separates LeBron, Dirk, Kobe, Derrick, Kevin and Dwayne from the others in the NBA? I believe it is their consistency of performance. More often than not, they will deliver extraordinary performances compared to that of their teammates. That is not to say that any of the others in NBA are not capable of giving extraordinary performances, but they just don’t do it as often as the aforementioned do. The great ones that play for winning teams perform by leveraging their strengths to complement the skill sets of their teammates.
The best example of multiple great players on one team that I have witnessed is FC Barcelona which currently bears many players from the 2008 World Cup champions (Spain) and contains the 3 finalists nominated for the 2010 FIFA World Player of the Year: Lionel Messi (winner), Xavi Hernandez and Andres Iniesta. To watch this team play is to see why soccer is called the “beautiful game.” I just bought tickets to see them play in Dallas on August 6, 2011!!!!!
As I bring this thought to paper or the workplace, who is the person you work with who brings their A-game day after day? I bet that person is smart, engaged, driven, and recognizes it takes a competent team to win. I can probably also bet that person is you or will be you, give or take 10,000 hours J.
Sources:
1. Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The Story of Success. New York, NY: Little Brown & Co.
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