The executive is a dreamer but knows how to turn dreams into reality. They see it and believe it, then they lead their teams to the desired result. The Bill Gates and Elon Musk’s of the world don’t just get the buy-in of their team but of their entire network. Can you create the same result?

When faced with your biggest challenge are you prepared to display an unwavering public commitment to the goal?

Sometimes it’s not enough to just tell people what to do. If you want to create the massive change you have to commit in ways that are raw and uncomfortable. You have to make it public.

Gates and Musk have made public declarations to reduce inequality and build cities on Mars. This level of public commitment opens themselves up to criticism and potential failure, but as with any risk there is an associated benefit — people will buy-in.

When I coach male executives to lose 20kg what they need is support from those around them, not pity. Getting your closet circle to buy into your dream will give them support and encouragement. Pity will only create endless offers of things they can’t have.

What determines if you get support or pity is how willing you are to display an unwavering public commitment to the goal. Some of the strategies my clients have adopted are:

HANDICAPPED RUNNING RACE: the overweight executive set of first and then developed a handicap system for the fitter people in the office to chase him down and finish together.

TEAM EFFORT: another overweight executive got the whole team to train together twice per week with a trainer and put them in charge of stocking the work fridge with healthy alternatives. He lost 20kg in 90 days and several others in the team lost over 10kg.

RECRUIT OUTSIDE THE OFFICE: internal office lunches were made more exciting by the special chilli sauce made by another executive’s employees. Lunches that could have been labelled ‘boring’ were an opportunity for the whole team to enjoy the special sauce.

Getting the buy-in of your team is a strategy commonly adopted in business but I believe it can be applied to any of life’s great challenges — especially weight loss.

When faced with a difficult problem don’t make the mistake of doing it alone. Everyone needs help. Spend time with people who reinforce your self-belief with encouragement. You will know them as soon as you meet them; they make you feel good about yourself.

The executives that I have coached, the stubborn ones, who want to do it the hard way prefer to lose weight by keeping it a secret. They view the process only as hard and necessary work. It’s a game. It has rules and you can win or lose, but like any game, you are only truly winning if you are having fun.

The question I want to leave you with is — What would you like to be known for?

When striving for the answer to the question above see if you pass the Gates & Musk test — are you displaying an unwavering public commitment to the goal?

What if your ability to learn a skill was 1% better? Over your lifetime the level of improvement this would make on your life would compound as you applied it to the acquisition of many different skills. This is what can be achieved through deliberate practice.

Similar to how simplified nutritional strategies are the ones that reach viral status, Malcolm Gladwell simplified the research into deliberate practice and popularised the 10,000-hour benchmark for elite performance.

Sure, that level of experience is going to be beneficial for any type of elite performance, but it is not just how much you practice, but how you do it. Deliberate practice is the pursuit of improvement via well-defined, specific goals and targeted areas of expertise.

The executive, when trying to establish a high-performance environment must consider are they teaching their team to learn a skill 1% better? Take a look at the comparison below of how to practice or deliberate practice can be applied to a skill like presenting:

PRACTICE

• Start with a general idea of the presentation style that is needed
• Do an online course, role-play with team members
• Practice until skills are at an acceptable level
• Get feedback from team leader, practice more and continue improving

DELIBERATE PRACTICE

• Start with a general idea of the presentation style that is needed
• Do an online course, role-play with team members
• Practice until skills are at an acceptable level
• Get a coach who can set specific targets and tailor practice to improve specific areas (e.g. body language, pace, and timing)
• Develop a way to measure improvement, by creating the different domains of a successful presentation, progressively make each domain. Track progress constantly.
• Create positive channels for feedback so that modifications are continuous (like learning how to assess the needs of an audience and adjust your presentation to match their need)
• Develop a definition of excellent performance: what to do in various situations, how to respond to objections, when to take risks and try new things.
• The coach designs training sessions to achieve maximum effort and concentration (constantly setting the challenge just beyond their skill level).
• Learn how to self-assess and create a mental visualisation, so they feel in charge and able to exploit opportunities to interact with the audience.
• Learn how to develop their own training sessions to elicit maximum effort and concentration, acknowledging physical and mental limits and learn to use self-assessment to address weaknesses.

Tiger Woods never considered himself especially talented at golf. What is father Earl, knowingly or unknowingly, instilled in him from an early age where the principles of deliberate practice? Tiger would routinely practice all of his shots on the driving range, constantly measuring his performance, but what he enjoyed the most was placing his ball in the most difficult of positions, amongst the trees, always with the aim to make par.

The magic occurs somewhere in this process once the wins pile upon wins, the hard work that it takes to acquire the skill then becomes particularly fulfilling. A passion develops when learning becomes self-directed.

The skills that interest your team members you must let the individual decide. But what executives can do is set them up for success by creating the right environment so that they can master the art of practice.