2011-01 – January 2011 Coaching Hour – Building Trust

The Speed of Trust

 I’m reading a new book. It was recommended by one of our customers. It’s a best seller called The Speed of Trust, The One Thing That Changes Everything by Stephen Covey. I recommend the read since trust plays such a big role in performance and really a big role in shotgun shooting because eventually you got to get down to that number one scale on the recovering perfectionist disorder scale that we talked about last month. You got to get on down to that one. And if you can ever achieve a zero, you are totally and completely 100 percent in the zone, and that’s where we want you to be.

But it talks about how trust increases productivity in business.   In a business where there is no trust, in a relationship where there’s no trust, everything slows down and cost increases. In a business or a relationship where there is great trust, everything speeds up and costs much much less.

And it goes through a lot of different scenarios. There are a lot of great quotes in it. I want to share a few of them with you.

Be value and principle based. Know what you stand for and live by those standards. Courage is the first of human qualities because it is a quality which guarantees all the others. Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important ones. There are no moral shortcuts in the game of business or life. There are basically three kinds of people, the unsuccessful, the temporarily successful, and those who become and remain successful. The difference is character. Self-trust in the first secret of success, and it is the essence of heroism. As you go to work, your top responsibility should be to build trust.

The myths and realities of  trust:

Trust is soft. Myth. Trust is hard, real, and quantifiable. It measurably affects both speed and cost.

Trust is slow. Myth. Nothing is as fast as the speed of trust.

Trust is built solely on integrity. The reality is trust is a function of both character which includes integrity and—this is a big one— competence.

You either have trust or you don’t. The reality is trust could be created and destroyed.

 Once lost trust cannot be restored. The reality is, though difficult in most cases lost trust can be restored.

You can’t teach trust. The reality is that trust can be effectively taught and learned, and it can become a leverageable, strategic advantage.

Trusting people is too risky. The reality is that not trusting people is a greater risk. How true is that?

Trust is established one person at a time. The reality is that establishing trust with one establishes trust with the many.

The world is changing very fast. Big will not be beat small anymore.  It will be the fast beating the slow. Distrust is very expensive. Whether you’re on a sports team, in an office or a member of a family, if you can’t trust one another, there’s going to be trouble. Speed happens  when people truly trust each other.

Greed destroys wealth. Trust and integrity, by contrast foster prosperity. You can’t talk yourself out a problem you’ve behaved yourself into; however, you can behave yourself out of a problem you’ve behaved yourself into and often faster than you can think. And finally trust is established through your actions.

Those are just a few of the quotes from this book. Those were not quotes by the author. Those were quotes from CEOs and world leaders, and the book is full of them. It’s absolutely a great read. It’s an easy read. I think the author overemphasizes the point too much for me. But I have to tell you, I’ve gotten about halfway through it in no time and I find myself, whenever I have spare time, picking it up because there are so many reemphasizing phrases about trust and character, integrity and honesty; and those are the kinds of things that you-guys are learning about yourselves and about people not only in the game of life and business but in the game of sporting clays. And you see it all the time. You see people with no integrity. You see people that are dishonest. You see people that take advantage of other people, but you also see people of great integrity, people of great character and honesty.

And the game of sporting clays really opens up to those who are willing to look at it, pretty much a cross section of life, and you’re all learning life lessons. You’ve all told me that you’re learning life lessons on this journey with us, and we’re excited to share some of the life lessons that we’ve learned and we continue to learn.

Brian talks about the trinity: Focus, tempo, and trust. Is that right, Brian? Are you out  there?

 Brian: Yeah. Yeah. It’s focus, feel, and trust.

Gil: Yeah, focus, feel, and trust. And we’ve talked about trust and we’ve redefined trust, and it’s amazing how when I read the sections in this book that talk about trust and the value of trust and how trust speeds things up and keeps the cost very low, I interpret that as when you’re trusting your move is perfect and everything is easier to break. And ultimately it’s a game of doing it enough.

And he draws on competence and he draws on honesty and he draws on action, and it goes back to competence and confidence; and we’ve talked about that, too, and how important it is that you work on your fundamentals and bring your game to a competent level so that your fundamentals are at a certain level so that when it’s time for you to go out and trust it you can have the courage to trust it.

Anyway, I recommend the read. If you’re looking for something that will be interesting that you can see yourself in, I think that would be a good thing to look at.

Trust in Action

 Gil: I got a phone call the other day from SuperDave, and he was riding down the road with Wyatt Earp, and I said: What? Have you been drinking?

He said: No. We’ve been shooting. And he said he was riding down the road with Wyatt Earp, and evidently he and Murph had gone to a tournament in Austin and I think Tom had one of those days where the targets were bigger than trash can lids and flying in slow motion, and David couldn’t say enough about it, and Tom was just over there listening. I finally got David to give Tom the phone, and Tom Murphy is kind of like the Tom Bodett of the sporting clays. He didn’t have a lot to say, but he leaves the light on for you.

I think he’s been practicing. How long have you been practicing after your break? A  month?

 Tom: Yeah. Probably a good month, maybe a little bit more off. And, of course, SuperDave didn’t tell you. He’s the reason why I started back because he was about to hound me to death to shoot with him; and it’s like an alcoholic with a drink. I’m pretty weak on shooting anyway so it doesn’t take a whole lot of prodding.

But we started back. And actually we shot the Austin tournament on Sunday, and my good weekend actually started Saturday when I shot at a shoot at Rio and it carried over until Sunday.

And so it’s by far been the best weekend of two shoots that I’ve had since I started.

 Gil: And you’ve been facing some things that were completely out of your control. You started really going like a house fire, and then last week, the Wednesday before the advanced class, you had to go in to the hospital and you suffered, what, a three-month setback?

 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, a little over three months.

 Gil: And you didn’t have very long to even get ready for Nationals. But you remember when you went to Nationals we talked about that, and I told you regardless of your result at Nationals, going to Nationals, even though you’re not in peak form will do a great deal. It will be a good thing for you because you will have gotten over that first-time fear and you will get over a lot of things, and I think that helps you a lot. What do you think?

 Tom: I think it did, too. I wasn’t disappointed in my performance at Nationals; but I wasn’t real happy with it, either. It is what it is, but I had a few shoots before Nationals where I felt like things were kind of coming together.

And I had one real good shoot there that I really felt like things were coming around and then kind of went back down; and I didn’t feel like I was going into Nationals with a whole lot of confidence that my shooting was my A game.

 Gil: No. You’re not always going to bring your A game to the show. As hard as you try, you’re not always going to do that. I went to the Beretta World Championships in 1987 and was fortunate enough to spend probably 45 minutes under a tent while it was raining.

I talked to the move/mount/shoot guy, Barry Simpson. I talked to him about that. I said: You know, how often when you go to a big shoot do you have your A game? He said: I’m lucky if I have my A game four or five times a year.

 Tom: Wow.

 Gil: And if you’ll remember, we have talked about the thing that you should look at for a signal of improvement is not the height of your best scores. It’s the height of your lower scores coming up because that means your low scores are much closer to your top scores which yields consistency.

Do you remember that? We talked about that.

Tom: Yeah.

 Gil: And I mean, it’s easy for people because we’re also results oriented, to only look at and remember and give emotion to the great perfor- mances and the top scores; and the top scores are there, but it’s not the top scores that bring the bottom scores up. If the bottom score is getting better and better and better, it gives you a better foundation that pushes those top scores higher and higher, and eventually what ends up happening is you’ll have more top scores and they’ll all be con- sistently higher because your bottom scores are so much better.

All right. So Tom, you had a good day on Saturday at Rio?

 Tom: Yeah, at Rio.

 Gil: What happened at Rio?

 Tom: We shot a hundred bird Main and a 50-bird prelim and I shot 90 on the Main which ended up being third. Bobby Fowler shot 97, and some guy from Dallas shot 92 and I shot 90 on it. And I shot 49 out of 50 on the prelim and tied Byron. He shot 49 out of 50, but he got the High Over All, probably off a score card play-off on it.

 Gil: And when you were going through that, any different emotions? Was there a commonality on your corrections. Tell me a little bit about what it felt like.

 Tom: I think you really kind of stole exactly my thoughts on my Saturday and Sunday shoots when you were talking earlier about trust. I feel like my move is very, very solid. I think my routine is solid, and I feel like I’ve got a different level of competence and trust when I come up to shoot a station; whereas in the past I think that I probably have over-thought stations a lot. Thinking a lot of different kind of things about, more conscious thoughts than probably I needed to have when I shot a station.

It seems like this weekend that I could see the view pair. I could step away and I automatically knew what my plan was going to be. And when I stepped up into the cage, I just felt like at that point in time the only thing I had to do was really focus because my move was going to be right. I was going to have the right routine, and I was going to break it. And if I didn’t break it, it was a shock because I felt like before I ever even got the call for the pair that I was going to break the pair.

 And I feel like that was just a whole lot different level of trust in my routine and everything, which I think really kind of allowed me then to really just kind of focus on the bird and really get my feel down, and I think that really was the big step. Now, I can’t tell you, you know, if that will happen this weekend or not. I hope it does, but I hope I’m not thinking too much about, you know, trying to make myself trust and just let it happen because I really felt like it just happened this last shoot.

 Gil: Okay. We’ll talk about that in a minute. Tell me what happened on Sunday.

 Tom: Same kind of deal. We shot a hundred bird Main first, and it was a little softer course than what we shot out at Rio the day before. Byron Justice shot 97 on it. I shot 96 and came in second on it, and it was by far the best score that I’ve ever scored on a competitive tournament and everything felt easy that day.

We went and shot a pretty difficult five stand after that, and I think I ended up third, and it was surprising to me when I’d miss on the five stand. There were some tough birds on the five stand, too.

But it was real similar to the same thing that I had on Saturday but probably just a little bit better focus on Sunday.

 Gil: Any special feeling about the way you felt when you were in    this zone? Did you feel heavy in your chest, light in your chest? Any particular kind of feeling? Did you try to stay away from people? Did you move slow? Did you move fast? Anything you can tell us about what went on that day?

 Tom: No. I can’t peg anything that physically felt different besides that. I just felt like I probably had a lot higher level of competence and probably calmness than I’ve had in the past at shoots. And in thinking back on a lot of the shoots that I’ve shot in the past two years I remember almost anguishing over certain stations that I would come up to and say, okay, now, where’s the best place to shoot this and really kind of try to think through it way too much. And in this instance it was more, okay, I’m going to break that right there and I’m going to break that right there; and that’s all I really needed to think about and then I could kind of calm down, not really worry about that until I stepped up into the stand, and then I went ahead and acted out the plan that I had.

Craig: Hey, Tom, this is Craig. I was just curious on what your expectations were before you went to that tournament versus maybe in other tournaments because I know if I look over my past, my best performances were when I didn’t have an expectation to win, but I went in and I did everything I needed to do. I’m just curious if that was part of why you performed so well because I think everybody on the call wants to have the same performance as you did on their first tournament this year.

Gil: I think I’m going to go have a beer and let Craig take this over. He took the words right out of my mouth.

Tom: I think that I had no expectations that I was going to go shoot as well as I shot in that tournament or both of those tournaments. But I will say that in my practice I felt like I have been pretty much hitting in a pretty good group. So I felt like going into the tournament that    I should perform pretty decently in it; but probably was surprised and really didn’t think too much about it until I got to the end of the deal, and I knew I was on a pretty decent score both days.

Well, the second day, of course I knew I hadn’t dropped very many. I didn’t know how many until I got finished and kind of counted it all up. But Saturday I knew I was on a pretty decent score and definitely was surprised because I really didn’t have the expectation that, okay, I’m going to go out there and run a bunch of stations like I did.

 Craig: Okay. So you really basically just did everything right. You showed up to the tournament. You weren’t worried about how you’re going to finish. You did all the right steps. You had your routine. You didn’t care what your score was. You were having fun obviously, and the next thing you know you’re winning all of it; and I think that’s the key for any of us or at least I know for myself, is I tend not to put all these pieces together. Right? I either do the first part well or the middle part or the end part, and that’s where I think I struggle the most, is getting that whole tournament weekend or that whole game plan to work out.

So I was just curious if that was what you felt like you did, and it sounds like it because, you know, for all of us that have shot with you we all know you can perform like that. Right? So I don’t think it’s a surprise to any of us how well you did, at least it’s not for me. So I was just trying to learn some of the steps you did and why you seem to do so well. So that’s good.

 Tom: Yeah.

 Gil: I’m going to turn it over to you, Craig.

 Craig: I’m all done, you know.

 Gil: Are you done?

 Craig: Well, for this time. For this time.

 Gil: Now, you have hit on the high points because you and I, and you and Vicki, have talked about this very thing, haven’t we, that you were talking about it’s no expectation?

 Craig: Right.

 Gil: It’s the expectation that carries you into the future and makes you become judgmental, and when you’re judgmental something is either right or wrong. It never just is.

 Craig: Right.

 Gil: And when there’s no expectation regardless of what happens, it is and you can accept it and learn from it and move on; but when there’s an expectation, it’s either good or bad and you’re one shot away from self-destruction because they ain’t going to all be good.

 Craig: That’s right.

 Tom: Yeah. And I can tell you that’s what I am really trying to keep from. I’m going through a struggle, but I’m really trying to keep out of my head right now going into these next shoots this weekend. I’d like to stay away from some kind of expectation level that, hey, okay, man, you need to be shooting at a 90 every time you go to a tournament.

 Gil: No, no, no, you’re not there. You could put being there out of the ballpark. You’re not ever going to get there.

 Craig: And plus we all know you might shoot an 85 and still win the tournament, you know.

 Gil: That’s right.

Craig: So I’ve heard several people say, man, I should be shooting in the upper 80s or 90s and I’m like how do you know what score is going to win the tournament?

 Tom: Yeah. Exactly.

 Gil: I’ve won high overall with a hundred straight and I’ve won high overall with a 66.

 Tom: Yep.

 Gil: And you’ve got to forget that expectation-of-score thing because it’s going to sneak in on you.

 Tom: Yeah. No doubt.

 Gil: I feel like that it has to me, as a coach looking at the performance, it’s a combination of practicing the right way and no expectation.   So when you’ve been practicing, you said you had some pretty good practice.

And I’m going to come to you. Back when you were shooting a lot more tournaments than you are now, I’m going to talk to you about your punch-through on your practice.

But right now, Tom, what were you doing in your practice leading up to this?

 Tom: I would say the key thing which you’ve told me, and you’ve said this several times before, and I don’t think that I’ve ever really went out and done it before a shoot, which is to shoot fairly easy targets before going to a shoot.

Now, I would say that a lot of my practice prior to that had been a variety of targets, some softer targets; but I would say probably for the majority some pretty tough targets. But before I went to this shoot, immediately before it I went and found some cream puffs to shoot; and I think that had a whole lot to do with it because when I got through shooting those, just hammering those targets. One after another like that, I think that really built my confidence going into the tournament. So I think that helped out a lot, that piece right there.

 Gil: It’s all timing. It’s all timing, and I’m not changing my mind on shooting soft targets before you go to a shoot. Because you’re  working on shooting pairs going to a shoot, and shooting pairs is not about the difficulty of the bird. It’s about how specific you are in the breakpoint on the first shot, and it’s about the visual transition to the second target. If your visual transition is perfect every time, you’re going to hit it.