Discipline Outweighs Talent Every Time

Even at fifteen years old and riding a bicycle to the job sites each day, showing up on time consistently and giving it everything I was capable of - even when I wasn’t capable of all that much - helped me earn moderate respect from the men I was trying to keep up with. Carrying that same work ethic into manufacturing yielded opportunities I wouldn’t have had otherwise. And yet again, consistency led to wins that earned the respect of my peers. We’ll look at how much that respect was needed just a couple years later soon enough. For now, don’t lose sight of my comment about never feeling overly talented; that’s not fodder.

Quite honestly, I can say with confidence that the only reason I maintained employment in construction and in manufacturing - at least early on in each role - was the effort I was willing to put in consistently even when my skills were lacking. At some point in my late 30s, I remember hearing John Maxwell say that “You’re never good the first time.” While I had indeed been willing to display a tremendous work ethic in every job I had held, the feeling that so many of my coworkers had more natural talent than me often weighed on me; would I ever be able to work hard enough to compete, let alone get ahead? John’s comment, albeit decades later, helped me understand that each of them had been just as inexperienced as me at some point. No one starts off as an expert.

Looking back, I can think of so many examples of kids from high school or former coworkers who had more natural ability than me. In many of those cases, though, they weren’t willing to put in anything resembling the effort that I was. Make no mistake, my willingness to consistently control the one thing I knew how to control at that time (my effort) was what got me through each of the adversities I faced - as minor as they were in the grand scheme of things. Talent without discipline produces mediocrity, at best. But nurturing seeds through effort builds enduring leadership muscle. 

Consistently developing that muscle is why discipline outweighs talent every time. All in all, that’s likely the most powerful lesson I learned through my teens and early twenties. By making the best of our setbacks through this lens, we can transform potential into prepared influence. Bad situations expose talent’s limits; discipline, nurtured from the seeds we pull from those bad situations, is the true driver of leadership growth. We’ll take a focused look at what we need to do to mine our foundational seeds next, and then we’ll move the calendar forward a bit to see how some of my earliest seeds were starting to sprout. Right now, though, I want you to commit to one discipline-building habit this week; link that to a past bad situation and observe how it strengthens your leadership readiness.