Blog Of Good Cheer

I’m looking forward to tonight’s World Cup Final between The Netherlands and Spain. It promises to be a great contest.

Based on the football I’ve seen so far I would like Spain to win. To my eyes they have played the most exciting and most consistently attractive football of all of the teams competing.

But I’m really an interested neutral. If the Dutch play well and win I won’t be disappointed. The fact that they have lost two World Cup finals before in 1974 and 1978 must drive them to go one better then the teams of Johan Cruyff (1974), Arie Hann, Ruud Krol, Johan Neeskens and Johnny Rep.

I got my prediction very, very wrong when I thought that North Korea would give Portugal a stiff test. But I do think this final could go either way. Spain may be playing the better football but Holland are a team that seem unpleasantly difficult to beat.

Usually for a sporting event as significant as a World Cup Final I would place a bet with a friend on the outcome. This time I’ve deliberately stayed firmly on the fence.

Back in 1995 South Africa hosted a very different World Cup – the Rugby World Cup. I was so convinced that the All Blacks were going to win I had a bet with a good friend who foolishly thought South Africa had a chance. I felt nothing but confidence as I could see no possibility that New Zealand, and the towering Jonah Lomu, could be stopped. South Africa would need a miracle.

After the match, and after the miracle, I handed over the grand prize of IR£2. Not a lot to lose on a bet, but G has had bragging rights ever since!

I was reminded of all of this when I read Invictus: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation by John Carlin. It’s a book set around the build-up to that World Cup final.

Rugby does play a part, and the relationship between Nelson Mandela and the Springbok’s captain Francois Pienaar is explored, but the book is more about Nelson Mandela’s vision and ability to win over opponents to his way of thinking.

The book covers a very difficult time for South Africa. It seemed permanently on the brink of civil war. Mandela had been elected President on the foot of the ANC winning a majority of the vote in the first multi-racial elections. But although he and the ANC held office, the country was split. The old ruling white party did not want to give up power and those whites who may have had sympathy for the plight of those oppressed during apartheid feared retribution from the new government.

The book, goes into the various factions that existed and probably still exist in South Africa. But what it does best is give an insight into Nelson Mandela, a man who realised that in order to stabilise a volatile country, he needed to reach out to the hearts of those who feared him most.

The film starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon is entertaining, but it gives far more time to the rugby element than Carlin does in his book. Carlin paints a portrait of Mandela and how from as early as 1985 he set out to gain the trust of the white government. He started this process of reconciliation by talking to those that imprisoned him when he was 21 years into a life sentence for conspiracy to overthrow the existing regime. The book takes us on a journey that introduces us to various characters, some sympathetic, but many fervently opposed to sharing power with the ANC.

Mandela used rugby as a focal point to bring whites who loved the sport with passion, and blacks who despised it as a symbol of their hated oppressor, to a point where they all desired a much coveted symbolic goal – victory in the 1995 Rugby World Cup Final.

As I said earlier I lost a bet on that match, but in 1999 I had an opportunity to win my money back and regain bragging rights when Manchester United played Bayern Munich in the Champions League Final. Although I was less convinced than I was with the All Blacks in 1995, I placed my money on Bayern, and G, being a Man U fan was quite happy to pick the Red Devils.

It all went well for 90 minutes and then disaster in the form of Sheringham and Solskjær struck. Two goals in extra time and once again I was on the losing side.

There are some people you should never bet against!

I’m reading What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How successful people become even more successful by Marshal Goldsmith.

Why am I reading it? It was recommended by a source I respect and it’s part of a process of self-discovery and self-improvement I started a few months ago. During this process I’ve read several books and as usual they ranged from the useless (in my opinion) to the excellent (again in my opinion).

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How successful people become even more successful is one of the excellent ones.

I’m not going to give a full book review; you can easily find one online. What I will do is give you an excerpt from one of the early sections entitled Shifting into Neutral. It was while reading this relatively short but most impactful section that I realised this book was for me.

Much of the book is targeted at helping executives and senior managers recognise that the habits that brought them success may in fact be holding them back from achieving greatness.

But this book is not only for executives. I think the fundamental principles of the book are so sound that they would benefit people in all walks of life, and would assist relationships in many forms, with loved-ones, with friends and with colleagues.

The chapters on Apologising, Listening and Thanking were my personal favourites.

The following except is reproduced with the kind permission of Marshall Goldsmith.

We have to stop couching all our behavior in terms of positive or negative. Not all behavior is good or bad. Some of it is simply neutral. Neither good nor bad.

For example, let’s say you’re not regarded as a nice person. You wan’t to change that perception. You decide, “I need to be nicer.”

What do you do?

For many people, that’s a daunting assignment, requiring a long list of positive actions. You have to start complimenting people, saying “please” and “thank you,” listening to people more patiently, treating them with a verbal respect, etc., etc., etc. In effect, you have to convert all of the negative things you do at work into positive actions. That’s asking a lot of most people, requiring a complete personality makeover that is closer to religious conversion than on-the-job improvement. In my experience very few if any people can institute that many positive changes in their interpersonal actions all at once. They can handle one at a time. But a half dozen or more changes? I don’t think so.

Fortunately, there’s a simpler way to achieve the goal of “being nicer.” All you have to do is “stop being a jerk.” It doesn’t require much. You don’t have to think of new ways to be nicer to people. You don’t have to design daily tasks to make over your personality. You don’t have to remember to say nice things and hand out compliments and tell the little white lies that lubricate the gears of the workplace. All you have to do is . . . nothing.

When someone offers a less-than-brilliant idea in a meeting, don’t criticize it. Say nothing.

When someone challenges one of your decisions, don’t argue with them or make excuses. Quietly consider it and say nothing.

When someone makes a helpful suggestion, don’t remind them that you already knew that. Thank them and say nothing.

This is not a semantic game. The beauty of knowing what to stop – of achieving this state of inspired neutrality – is that it is so easy to do.

Given the choice between becoming a nicer person and ceasing to be a jerk, which do you think is easier to do? The former requires a concerted series of positive acts of commission. The latter is nothing more than an act of omission.

Think of it in terms of a box. Being a nicer person requires you to fill up the box with all the small positive acts you perform every day to establish the new you. It takes a long time to fill up the box, and even longer for people to pay attention and notice that your box is full.

On the other hand, ceasing to be a jerk does not require learning new behavior. You don’t have to fill up the box with all your positive achievements; you simply have to leave it empty of any negatives.

Keep that in mind as you go through the list of interpersonal issues in this section and determine if any apply to you. Correcting the behavior, you’ll discover, does not require polished skills, elaborate training, arduous practice, or supernatural creativity. All that’s required is the faint imagination to stop doing what you’ve done in the past – in effect, to do nothing at all.