AVERAGE PERFORMERS – CATEGORY “C” PEOPLE

AVERAGE PERFORMERS – CATEGORY “C” PEOPLE

There are two types of people in this world, performers and non performers.  Performers focus on results while non performers focus on obstacles.  There are three categories of people in any organization, in terms of performance:  Top 20%, Middle 70% and Bottom 10%.


Top 20 percent are usually top performers, and they are treated as such.  The Middle 70% are usually average performers but the organization needs their skill, energy and commitment, but the major challenge is to keep them engaged and motivated.  They would need a lot of training, coaching, personal self development and mentoring to try and move some of them to the Top 20%, while those that don’t fit in will slip to the bottom 10%, to be eventually exited.

So as leaders, we should never settle for average and never ever reward average performers.  We should try to inspire and motivate them to Top performers level.  Why?

 

*        Because average is what the failures claim to be when their family and friends ask them why they are not successful.

 

*        Average performers are the Top of the Bottom, the best of the worst, the Bottom of the Top, the worst of the Best, which of these are you?

*       Average means being the minimum of the mill, mediocre, insignificant, a nonentity.

*        Average players settle for efforts, rather than results.  If you do not want the responsibility, don’t sit on the big chair.

*        Average is the lazy person’s way out; it’s lacking the guts to take a stand in life, its living by default.

*        Average people become an average of the five (5) people they hang out with most times

*        Being average is to take up space for no purpose, to take the trip through life, but never to pay the fare; to return no interest for God’s investment in you.  There are two great days in a person’s life, the day he was born and the day you discover why.  I encourage you to seek what you were put on earth to do and pursue it with all vigour.

*        Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about themselves and others.

*        Being average is to pass one’s life away with time, rather than to pass one’s time away with life.  It is to kill time, rather than work it to death.

*        It is to be forgotten once you pass from life.  The successful are remembered for their contributions, the failures are remembered because they tried, but the “average”, the silent majority is just forgotten.

*        To be average is to commit the greatest crime one can against oneself, humanity and one’s God.  The saddest epitaph on this is:  “Here lies Mr. & Mrs. Average – here lies the remains of what might have been, except for their belief that they are only ‘average’ people”.

 We should not stand the idea of average, nobody admires average people.  The best         organization don’t pay average performers, any organization that does that will never stand the test of time.

 

As novelist, Arnold Bennett said “The real tragedy is the tragedy of the man who never in his life braces himself for his own supreme effort, who never stretches to his full capacity.  Such individual provides the greatest injury to himself and others.  It’s among such individuals that all human failures arise. 

As Abraham Maslow said “ If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will be probably the unhappy all the days of your life.

Our situation in life is mainly due to choices we make and actions we did not take. 

To grow, you must be willing to let your present and future be totally unlike your past.  Your history and your past is not your destiny.  Yesterday is gone, Tomorrow has not yet come, we have only Today.  Let us begin now – “Mother Theresa”.

“Monotony” is the awful reward of the careful.  If you want to experience change in life, you must continue to learn and grow, and adapt to changes in the dynamic world.  As long as you keep growing, you will change, but you cannot experience change without growing, but you can change without growing.  Growth means change, but change does not mean growth.  It’s just like the “Law of Teacher” - if you stop growing today, you stop teaching tomorrow.  (You cannot give what you don’t have).

When you grow, you change, you take risk.  People who take risks learn faster than those that don’t, their depth and range of evaluated experience is greater.  In times of change, the learners will inherit the earth and the learned will find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with the world that no longer exist.

To get ahead in life, you have to over deliver; do more than is asked of you.  “The secret of success in life, is to be too good to be ignored”.

The law of compensation states that the amount of money we earn will always be in exact ratio to the:

(i)       need for what we do

(ii)      ability and capability to do it

(iii)     difficulty in replacing us

 Average people are easily replaced, if not exited in an organization.       

 When you stop stretching, you stop living. If you can achieve your goal without stretching, it’s no longer a goal.

 It’s not the number of breaths you take during your life time on earth that matter, it’s how often your breath gets taken away by doing challenging things, that stretches you,  that brings out the best in you – live an amazing life.

Culled from:  “Invaluable Laws of Growth”, by John C. Maxwell