When I was straight out of college, I had a boss who had zero tolerance for playing the comparison game. I would complain about one person or another, and he consistently had the same reply: “Play your own game.”
I would think, Sounds reasonable—but what is my game?!
It takes a while to find your footing and know your game. No one tells you there’s a danger zone between understanding you need a game and figuring out what it is. It’s that in-between time when you can find yourself drifting into the land of comparison, nit-picking, and envy. And you don’t want to set up house there. Those are games you don’t want to be known for!
But you can address that problem with the lessons we’ve learned from Mike Krzyzewski in the April series, Cultivate a Success Mindset with Soft Skills. Coach K has talked about the five fundamental qualities that make every team great: Communication, trust, collective responsibility, caring, and pride. However, there’s a bonus quality that brings everything together: ethics. Krzyzewski says, “Winning is making the best out of a situation that you are in, in an ethical way.”
Ethics is like a master key when you’re talking about soft skills because you can apply it to everything from problem-solving to collaborating. If the idea of ethics seems too fuzzy, what word would make sense to you? How about personalizing ethics to ideas like:
* Humility
* Authenticity
* Fairness
* Integrity
* Being principled
* Knowing your values or “code”
Think of Coach K’s top five attributes and combine them with ethics. Next, become your own coach—where do you excel and where do you need to develop a game plan to strengthen that quality? The goal is to boss up and be capable on all fronts, not just have one stand-out shot. For instance:
* Communication: Can others rely on what you say because you speak confidently and clearly?
* Trust: Do you trust your gut, knowing it’s trying to tell you if a situation matches your integrity level?
* Collective responsibility: Does a situation lack fairness? Have you over-indexed, shouldering all the responsibility instead of just your share?
* Caring: Do you need to put an expiration date on half-hearted commitments that don’t align with your values and go all in?
* Pride: Have you refined enjoying your accomplishments with staying humble? Is it challenging to stay balanced?
In just a few sentences, you see how ethics are the key to making each of Coach K’s five fundamental qualities run.
Soft skills aren’t tricky or complicated—they’re as easy as 1, 2, 3! So, use these three ways to cultivate your success mindset:
The wins you achieve won’t be quite as sweet unless they’re backed up by actions which may seem like a “nice to have,” like knowing your principles, having integrity, and making the right choice instead of the easy choice. But you won’t have the success you desire without those actions.
So, whether you’re just starting out or in the middle of reinvention, act like the creative, wise CEO of your life—a Soul Boss—and turn to soft skills to play your own game.