Richard Tyler once practised singing a single note for twenty minutes. Why? Because crap to good is easy, but good to extraordinary is much harder. At the time he was playing the part of the Phantom during a West End performance of Phantom of the Opera, so nothing less than extraordinary would do.
Richard now runs his own agency BTFI (Beyond the F*** It), working with various multi-national companies looking at the art of performance and behavioural psychology in the working environment. The Phantom was kind enough to donate his time to the Marketing Academy and deliver one of the most thought provoking talks I have ever witnessed: Purpose, Passion and Porn. How turned on are you? I’ll attempt to try and do some justice to the main points which Richard took the time to explain.
Why Porn?
Who wouldn’t want their product receiving 68 million online searches every day, having $3k a minute spent on it, and a global industry revenue of $49 billion? Extraordinary (even if morally wrong). For the Phantom, leadership is Do or D.I.E. Leaders need to disrupt or jolt (coincidently the title of his book) the norm and be prepared to ask those provocative questions. They need to have impact; carefully crafting their story for both their peers and customers to make sure it resonates. Finally, they need to engage their audience by making sure that people come on that journey with them. There is also a huge difference between trying and doing. Trying allows the idea of failure to creep in and the outcome of trying and doing are completely different.
Get Up and Sing…
Imagine being in a room of thirty people and the words to the song Row, Row, Row your Boat come up on the screen. Everyone is made to sing and, guess what? It’s pretty average. But then you’re challenged to make a couple of small changes in order to significantly improve your overall performance. We gather together so we’re not spread out, everyone starts on the same note and we all improve our posture. The end result was markedly different to our first attempt. It’s such a simple analogy for the world of business, but in reality how often are these small improvements, which may have a huge effect on the end result, overlooked?
“So who’s going to come to the front and sing it to everybody else?” This task may seem utterly ridiculous, but for me the leadership metaphor really resonated. It’s simple, all you’re being asked to do is stand in front of your peers, do exactly what you were doing before, take one for the team and lead. Yet, in a room full of people who have been selected because they have the skills to be future leaders, there was still that awkward moment of stunned silence (well done to Zoe for standing up and doing it!). Again, this is a fantastic metaphor for the working environment: no matter what level you’re at, how often are you prepared to stand up when something needs doing, do something that pushes you out of your comfort zone and lead your team? In Richard’s words, sometimes you have to “dare to f*** it up”, because the greatest risk is not changing something and doing the same thing over and over again.
What would you write in your ‘What’s New’ Section?
Richard also explained his Performance Map, which comprises five key areas:
Out of these, the bottom three are ones that you can easily change: where you work (Space); what you do (Action); and how you do it (Skills). The other two are by far the hardest and, unless all the blocks are perfectly aligned, the overall performance may wobble or collapse.
Think represents your values and beliefs: they’re your do’s and don’ts, your can’s and cant’s. They’re the thoughts you have that become things, because once you think something enough the perception becomes reality. What we have to do is learn when to un-think some of the things that are holding us back. For example, returning to the singing metaphor, we had one person in the group who didn’t want to stand up and sing because they’d “heard themselves singing and weren’t very good”. In reality, this could be what they have told themselves time and time again, to the point where they believed it to be the truth (we never found out!). Sometimes, at work we avoid doing things because we believe we can or can’t do something. What is actually critical to understand is whether this is in fact the truth, or whether it has become reality merely because you’ve thought it enough. Once you’re in a position of leadership some of this thinking may hold you back unless you can begin to un-think it.
Richard also cited Robert Dilts who said that “the higher up the performance map you are prepared the make the changes, the more sustainable the change will be”. Understanding Identity therefore is the key to unlocking performance. Identity summarises the input of space, action, skills and think; it’s who you believe you are. Richard used the following example. He identified himself as a singer (clearly, as he was the Phantom), but even though he was a keen cook and possessed the space, action, skills and think he didn’t identify himself as a chef. His point was that if he didn’t identify himself as a chef then how could he ever convince anyone else that he was? You can’t. Just the same as if you don’t identify as a leader then how can you ever convince anybody else you are? Is there something missing from space, action, skills and think or have you, quite simply, just not upgraded yourself?
At this point you’re thinking… what the hell is the Phantom talking about, ‘upgrading himself’? We all have an image of ourselves in our head, who we think we are, what we think we can do and who we identify as. However, we normally take this self-perception from a particular point in time and you could easily be identifying with an older version of yourself. So what have you changed since then, what can be added to your new release and what would be written in your ‘What’s New’ section? At the end of the day it all comes down to self-belief and if you can’t convince yourself then you won’t be able to convince those around you.
Key lessons from Richard
- Dare to begin before you are ready. You’ll never be 100% ready and, if you wait, by the time you get there you’ll always need something else to become extraordinary.
- Take care of the small stuff. Further down the line it will have a huge effect.
- Stay plugged in. When you’re in the room you have to be in the room.
So going back to the opening paragraph, was it worth Richard practising that single note for twenty minutes? Of course it was, he received a standing ovation that night on the West End stage. Did he stop practising though? No, because once he reached that point of extraordinary it became just his ‘good’. He came back time after time with a new release and a new ‘What’s New’ section to help him reach a new extraordinary again and again.
