Leading From The Middle: See The ‘Who’ You Want To Be

“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” — Napoleon Hill

When I was just out of high school, my good friend Pete gave me the book “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill. Let me start by saying that for me personally, the pursuit of monetary wealth alone is a shallow one. But I do think a rich life is a noble pursuit — pursuing a wealth of relationships, experiences, success, and contentment can be a source of joy. I’ll also add that Napoleon Hill was a painfully human person — full of the same flaws and frailties that we all possess. So he’s not an oracle, but there is wisdom in his words.

Okay, caveats out of the way, now back to the story. Pete gave me Hill’s book at a time when I was drifting. I was out of high school, not really excelling in college, and more interested in having a good time than anything else. So I read Hill’s book, and tucked away the information until such a time as I had matured enough to pull out some of the wisdom therein. There is a fair amount there, but I’d like to focus on the statement above, because it is something that Hill and I fervently agree on. I believe that a person can do anything they put their mind to — provided they’re willing to do the follow-up work necessary to make their vision into reality. The first step to that is visualizing the “you” you wish to become.

Visualization. The secret superpower of every successful person. Ask any top-performing athlete, they will tell you about the power of visualization, and how it important it is to their game. The key point of this practice is to visualize the correct execution of the skill — a completed pass, a successful shot, a winning play.

A study published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (Part of the National Institute for Health) found that mental practice had a similar impact to physical practice, and that both together were almost doubly effective! Another study by Erin M. Shackell and Lionel G. Standing at Bishop’s University found similar results.

This is also the science behind hypnosis and guided meditation. You’re told to visualize the change you want to make — losing weight, quitting smoking, being more assertive — and often given verbal cues to employ to reinforce the visualization.

But visualization alone is not enough. Visualization by itself is daydreaming. You have to believe — the second part of Napoleon Hill’s quote above.

And when we say believe, the biggest attribute to that belief is certainty. It’s not enough to have a small belief: I believe it will be sunny tomorrow. I believe the Packers will win the Super Bowl next year. Those are merely hopes. Instead, we’re talking a certainty of belief: I believe that if I quit breathing I will die. I believe that water is wet. I believe that I will get that job I’m going for. The first two statements are true for everyone. The third statement needs to be true for you.

Certainty is why we will hear entrepreneurs tell us to burn our bridges. Certainty is easier (or at least, more critical) when you don’t have a fall-back plan. To paraphrase the rapper Eminem in his highly motivational track Lose Yourself (warning, lyrics in link are NSFW):

“ Too much for me to wanna stay in one spot
Another day of monotony’s gotten me to the point
I’m like a snail, I’ve got to formulate a plot
Or end up in jail or shot
Success is my only <expletive> option — failure’s not!”

The point being, that when faced with extreme options, success or failure makes success more attractive, and we’ll do whatever it takes to be successful. This is the power of certainty, and while not every goal needs to be success or jail time, if you can manufacture that level of urgency it can help develop your certainty. For some, telling yourself over and over again in no uncertain terms, “I am going to be…” can carry you to certainty. The key there is to avoid “if” statements. “When” is a more powerful word, “am” even more so.

Visualization and certain belief together is what I like to call Success Modeling. Success Modeling is powerful stuff, and can unlock insight and inspiration.

I’ll add that Success Modeling is powerless without action. There is action you need to take before you lock in your belief, the action of research. What are the functions of that new job? What are the attributes of a successful product launch? What are the steps to becoming President of the United States? What does becoming a better spouse look like?

Then, of course, there is the action you need to take once you have cemented your certain belief. The power of the Success Modeling dynamic is that once you are certain, your visualization will push you into action. This can even happen at the unconscious level, as your brain is working in the background to identify the steps you need to take, and to find opportunities to get you from A to B and so on. In another post I’ll discuss the value of harnessing the experience of others, and how that can supercharge your pre- and post-belief action/progress.

Which brings us to your career. You can also improve your work abilities and leadership skills through Success Modeling. Here are some examples of how this works —

A new project: as you are planning your new project, visualize what successful execution will look like. I mean, really take the time to think through the steps, see in your mind what steps you and your teammates will take, visualize the successful outcome. When visualizing, be certain of the outcome. Don’t bother with worrying about risk — that’s for your risk analysis. The focus here is success.

A new job: research what the job looks like, not just the tasks, but also roles & responsibilities. Research the requirements. Visualize a successful interview, see yourself answering the questions, making a connection with the interviewers, smiling, good body language — the works. Then visualize yourself doing the role. Be certain — train your mind that you are that new leader, engineer, director.

Problem solving: visualization is useful for solving problems as well. Imagine that code running properly, step by step. Imagine the customer saying yes, or being happy when you’ve turned a difficult situation around. Success visualization can often tune your mind toward finding solutions or making connections that you hadn’t previously considered.

I’ll close with an example of how I used Success Modeling in my own career. Several years ago, I began work as a consultant, primarily performing business analysis. I was hungry to get ahead, and while I enjoyed the work, I recognized that (for me) being an analyst was a limiting career track. I took a role at Microsoft as a BA, and within the first week the program manager who hired me quit. “Oh crap,” I thought to myself, “what am I going to do?” I had recently left a long-term situation because I wanted to work at Microsoft, and all of a sudden that was in jeopardy.

So I started being a program manager. I’d never really done that before — I had managed construction projects, gone through a PMI boot camp, and had managed some small-scale IT projects in a 2-man IT shop. But managed an entire program, one developing a global data warehouse? Using an established software development life cycle (SDLC-waterfall) methodology? Never! But I was familiar with the SDLC in theory, knew databases, and was able to read and study. So I started doing the job, and when I wasn’t working I would visualize myself as the PM. I knew I could do the job.

During that first month our group got a new manager. After a couple of weeks I went to him and said, “Boss, I’m doing the PM’s job, so I’d like you to make me the PM of this program.” I went to my consulting company, had the same conversation, and got a handsome (12.5%) raise to go with the new role, and almost immediately I pivoted into a new career.

Now, to be fair, I had studied software development, I had a certificate in VB programming and had studied database analysis & design. But I had never led a program, I had never done data warehousing before, and had never managed development of a project where I didn’t also do the work. But I did have confidence, both in my abilities to lead others and my abilities to figure it out as I went along. I did the work of learning the job, and took advantage of a fair amount of opportunity. But my Success Modeling prepared me to recognize opportunity and answer it’s call. And you know what? You have a brain, so it can work for you as well. I believe in you, time for you to believe too!

Chris Huennekens is a Program Lead at Microsoft, deploying SharePoint. You can view his LinkedIn profile at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrishuennekens/

Find more of Chris’ articles at https://medium.com/@chrishuennekens.