Challenging the Status Quo
Drive and Persistance
“Success is almost totally dependent upon drive and persistence. The extra energy required to make another effort or try another approach is the secret of winning”
– Dennis Waitley -
Although a bit dramatically stated – we believe success is dependent upon a combination of factors – there is truth in this quote. When properly prepared, drive and persistence will take you to completion. Think about running a marathon. You will be well prepared to run the full 26 miles but completing the last 4 miles comes down to drive and persistence. This is as much true for recreational runners as for top athletes.
Drive and persistence is all about being resilient, having the resolve to see things through, and dealing with resistance or pushback on the way. It is the mindset of upholding the goal you want to achieve, even when all the odds seem to be working against you. Central to drive and persistence is the maintenance of a positive attitude and sense of optimism, even in the face of significant resistance.
Some important notions to keep in mind when developing drive and persistence:
- If you believe in what you are doing and your ability to do it, others will believe in you too.
- Tackle pushback and resistance head on as they arise and do not avoid conflict.
- Be prepared to face the consequences of your choices and actions.
- Pick a motto to keep you going. Fight your corner!
More than in any other skill, it is crucial to find the right balance in your drive and persistence.
Some caveats to be aware of:
- By overusing this skill, you might be trying to force things through and not hear opinions.
- Do not force people to agree with you, help them to understand your perspective and vice versa.
- Avoid being narrow-minded and consider the opinion of others. Learn to see things from multiple perspectives.
HOW TO DEVELOP
You might find it hard when it comes to drive and persistence. Your vision of a better future, big or small, gets cloudy by being challenged with the rising number of pushbacks and resistance.
Designing a resilience strategy is a way to keep you on tract toward your vision of a better future. A crucial part of the resilience strategy is your objective or your goal. What is the key thing (idea, issue, challenge) you want to bring across? That is the piece you strongly believe in. There is little or no room for concessions on the What. The room for flexibility is with the How. How are you going to get to your objective? That is where you can engage others for support and there might be better ways to achieve your objective than you initially considered. In the conversations on the How, you can show your flexibility and hence avoid narrow-mindedness.
Let us give an example. You have faced a certain work issue for years now and you are determined to have that issues solved. You have considered all ins and outs of the issue and you have even created a solution for the issue. Your work life will become much easier by solving the issue this way. You start sharing your solution with other people and you receive pushback from the one and resistance from the other. You start to see and feel that your solution was either not thought through completely and that it is unlikely that your solution is going to be embraced. You are about to give up.
In your desire to develop drive and persistence, you realize that giving up is not an option. You are going to fight your corner and design your resilience strategy. The first thing you do is thinking about your objective. What is the key thing that you want to bring across? It is then when you realize you have been discussing the how and not the what. It was not your proposed solution perse you wanted to see implemented. Your real objective was that the work issue had to be resolved. So, you start to show your drive and persistence on finding a solution for the issue and you will not rest until the issue is solved. You can be flexible with the type of solution and start to engage others in finding an optimal solution. Your focus will be to assure that whatever the solution is going to be, it will have to solve the initial issue.
Making a conscious distinction between the What and the How is never easy. It is the key step though for drive and persistence to work. Your emotional attachment to the What will be so strong, that your belief in the What will make other people believe in it as well.