Look at Your Approach and not Just Your Result

I spent last Friday and Saturday in a certification class so that I can be an assistant coach on my son’s clay shooting team for the upcoming season. The class consisted of a classroom component and a hands-on component at a local gun club. There, we alternated between shooting at targets and coaching our partner in his effort to do so. And one of the program’s teachers coached our coaching. We were being evaluated for our coaching and not our shooting. But I felt  nervous about shooting in front of a bunch of coaches. I’ve never fooled with guns before my son became interested in this sport. And while most dads lead their children to this sport, my son had led me. But this activity was all about the coaching even if it didn’t feel like it.

My student came up to the line and shot. He was a very experienced shooter. And he obliterated the first target he saw. I know because I watched the little orange flying saucer blow up. I watched it intensely. And in so doing, I made my first mistake of the afternoon. The coaching coach asked me to tell my student how had just executed the shot — to walk him through a narrative of the process from what I had just observed. Of course, I hadn’t watched how he executed the shot, and the coordinator knew that I hadn’t (this is a very common mistake, by the way). I couldn’t say anything about his stance, how he mounted the gun, or how he viewed and tracked the shot. I took my eyes completely off him and focused 100% on the result (in my defense, it’s hard not to focus on an explosion). So, I was in no position to tell my student what he had done right so he could repeat it. And if he had merely gotten lucky with very bad form, I was in no position to correct his form to create more consistent results. All I could say was “good job,” judging from the fact that I watched a target explode but with no knowledge of what happened to create that result. If I were to coach a student over the course of a day or a season, he would walk away from the experience judging himself by a standard that he did not fully understand. Engagement with the student trumps judging solely by a result.

When it was my turn to shoot, my “coach” was able to correct things about my technique and to point out to me the things I was doing right. At a couple of points along the way he had to ask, “did you hit the target?” I knew. The student always know the answer to this question. So, the coach is free to evaluate the student and not worry about finding it for himself.

I took some valuable life lessons and management lessons from the day (I also enjoyed the experience). If we always focus on results, we are not engaged enough with what we are doing. We’re grading ourselves on what happens “out there.” We are not learning what to do to be consistent and to build habits out of our correct actions. Practice doesn’t always make perfect. Sometimes is makes permanent.

When the students reach a competition, results will matter. When we go to court, results matter. But going into a competition, what we are doing on our next shot, how we stand, what we do with our eyes, what we do when the target comes out, and how we deal with it all is what prepares us for success. And, after the competition, what we take from it is what will matter. And some results are beyond our control. We don’t create the facts in our case. We do not create the precedent that controls how the case will be decided. And a student in a competition cannot control how talented a component might be. We can only control what we do and how well we prepare.

Just as it was a mistake to focus exclusively on the result when I should have been focused on how the shot was made, we should think about how we construct our briefs, how we prepare for court, how well we listen to the client in the consultation, and how powerfully we told our client’s story to a judge, jury, or panel of judges. When we focus on that progress, the targets tend to take care of themselves. We should all take a closer look at ourselves and honestly evaluate and not ride the wave of hearbreak and exaltation that comes from focusing only on results.