Leaders Light The Path

PODCAST EPISODE

A silent saboteur

How we might be spending too much of our time tinkering with the mediocre instead of making a decisive shift towards excellence … 

Read more thoughts on the art of communicating week-daily at https://michaelgerharz.com/blog

Transcript
Speaker:

Welcome back to

“Irresistible Communication”.

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Two minutes, twice a week.

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No nonsense advice on

leadership communication.

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Mediocrity is a silent saboteur.

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While great things quickly get

promoted and bad things are fixed

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fast, average often just stays around.

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We grapple with it, reluctant to let go of

it, just as we would with the plain bad.

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But we also often hesitate to make a

decisive push towards excellence and

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make the edits that just have to be made.

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Essentially, we struggle

to say, that's just okay.

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And okay really is not enough.

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Also, after all, a lot of work has

already gone into that piece, right?

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So, we keep on tinkering with it.

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And then some more.

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So really, mediocrity’s trap is making

us believe we're moving forward when in

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fact we're just circling the same spot.

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We think we're acting, but

often we're just rearranging

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deck chairs on the Titanic.

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Breaking free would require bold

steps, a grounded transformation, or

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the courage to scrap it and pivot.

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Instead, mediocrity captures our

focus precisely because it teeters

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on the edge of holding potential

for both: failure and greatness.

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In a way, it exploits our internal

battles, our fears of failure,

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our aspirations for success,

and the comfort of the familiar.

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In our reluctance to see the mediocre

decline in our hesitance to take the

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risks required for excellence, we find

ourselves tethered to this just okay zone,

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expanding energy without clear direction.

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This middle area, not great, but also not

exactly terrible, is a sneaky problem.

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It takes our energy and

overshadows our dreams.

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It's kind of like a tricky call

leading us away from doing our best

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by suggesting the idea that this will

be good enough and worth our time.

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So, the battle here is in recognizing and

resisting this subtle pole of the mediocre

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that threatens to dilute our potential.

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Have you experienced

the pull of mediocrity?

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Keep lighting the path and

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