I was at my son’s tennis tournament and it was a hot 38 degrees day. Perfect pressure for exposing weaknesses. One of the fathers was playing in the draw. As I walked past his court, he looked up at me and said “How do I find the 5% Jayne”? “Come on keep going” I cheered.
It got me thinking. What is the 5%? It’s the reliability factor.
Think about it. Reliability can be described as someone who can keep their promises and produce a consistent result. Who is the most reliable person you know? Think about their ability to produce consistent results time and time again.
Reliability works by having standards and measures to strive and grow towards.
Leaders dilutes reliability when they pull back from holding people to account for these.
Other dilutions are procrastination and poorly developed systems both technological and people systems.

Take the tennis Dad. His procrastination resulted in less training and his inadequate people systems like coaches and a support team didn’t help his overall result. He lost. Bad luck good try measures down.

Both procrastination and poor systems decrease a consistency of performance and no-one wants to do business with someone who is not reliable. People who are not reliable procrastinate on the hard stuff and have poor personal and professional systems.Developing the behaviours associated for reliability is essential for leadership. Consistent results equals fairly reliable behaviours. Give or take a bit when life gets really rocky.

There is direct link to reliability in how much a person prepares. People who are prepared can reliably deliver on a job and you pretty much know what to expect. There standards of performance will be within a short range of 100% most of the time. People will use words to describe you as excellent, consistent, will not fall short and reliable. In my experience this is true.
The best experience I have of preparation leading to a reliable performance is from drama school. Rehearse. Rehearse. Rehearse. There is no better motivation that the fear of not being good enough in front of a live audience.
The second best experience is from sport training. On the tennis court. Hit, hit, hit. With the idea that if you can hit the ball whilst your eyes are closed then you will be reliable on the day. Both involve a good deal of repetition. I can hear some of you sighing. Who wants to be a robot?

“I have no idols. I admire work, dedication and competence”  Aryton Senna

The behaviours around being a reliable person can be developed. Consider, some people prepare all day and don’t act. Aim and no fire! A deadline is obviously missing. Or try being disciplined with a big long cane, bang, bang, by putting routine systems in place to accomplish spinach eating tasks.

Don’t like spinach? Try focusing on reward and how it is going to feel once completed can pull you through.

It’s no joke. We are all at risk of developing attention deficient dis-order due to social media infiltration and multi-screen hyper activity. A behavioural focus around vigilance comes in handy with social media interruptions. Turn off your phone, screens, and Facebook distractions and do the work.

What is the value on the quality of work? Consider the horror of a good artist in releasing work that is ordinary and he knows it. If as a society we are in constant disruption by outside forces what happens to our ability to focus and the quality of the work? How does that impact on the results that are expected of us?

The fairly sober 5% problem affects us all. Let’s take the tennis Dad as an example. He may been able to find it by digging deep if had been active with reliable behaviours off court. What was needed was a set of behaviours to produce a more consistent result. Then he would be more reliable in the moment. God bless him for entering the draw anyway!

Lastly I would like to share what an amazing personal trainer once said “it’s either train or no train”. Black and white thinking, yes, and to drive a result weather you are in an office or on the court there an element of this style of dedication and commitment to the job no matter what you do.

Any sober thoughts?