Guest Blog - Paul Tucker

The Nutmeg that Gave Me Tunnel Vision for Motivation & Success.

To some it’s a tasty spice you add to porridge or béchamel sauce; to a footballer (soccer) player, a ‘nutmeg’ is the embarrassing situation midgame where your opponent flicks the ball straight through your legs and then collects the ball on the other side. Rhyming slang for legs, it’s usually accompanied by loud cries of ‘nutmeg’ or ‘megs’ from opposition players so it’s celebrated publically in ways you don’t want! Per the cover photo to this article, it’s the ultimate on-field humiliation.

I’ve been on the receiving end of megs (former teammates may say a lot!) but I recall the rare time I called it out on someone else. I had been travelling all over the United Kingdom and this was my 8th trial in professional football, attempting to secure a full-time contract at an English Premier League club.

A lone Australian, trying to make the pinnacle in a sport I loved, in a country that dismissed my countrymen typically as talentless hacks. Okay, so at this stage, I was a bit over the arrogance of the locals when I had a small victory of pushing the ball through a player’s legs and I called out “NUTMEG”, strangely no one else chimed in to enjoy my making a mockery of the victim as usually happens. The player in question wasn’t happy but we played on until I next received a pass when suddenly I found myself facedown in the mud having been kicked up in the air in a nasty tackle. My assailant was staring down at me sneering saying ‘here’s your megs son’ with a few expletives added onto the end that I won’t type here!  

Sadly the story gets worse, another player walked past, not offering out a hand to help me up but just saying ‘I don’t like your chances of making this team lad’, I was unsure what I’d done wrong, and thought I’d been playing well, but he followed up with ‘ Not sure it’s that clever to call nutmeg on the first team coach’, a chuckle forming on his breath in the freezing Yorkshire winter. Note to self – always do your research!

Can Being Singularly Focused in Elite Sport Transfer to Business Success?

By the age of 10, I had become singularly focus, or call it obsessed, with becoming a soccer professional in Europe. I had a drive, a determination and a belief that was to be my future. It was blind faith in my dream. At age 15 as a family, my parents gave my brothers and I the option of a pool for the backyard, or a holiday to Europe – for three boys that had dreamed of seeing Europe it was a no brainer. So with this trip happening I wrote to every professional club in the UK – all 95 of them, including my beloved Manchester United, sharing my travel dates, my footballing achievements to date and a request for a trial. Everton and Sheffield United gave me that opportunity I desired. I wasn’t successful but asked to return post finishing my schooling, which gave me enough hope and purpose so that the next three years of my life became focused on returning to the UK to fulfil that dream.

After finishing my senior schooling I returned and committed 15 months to do everything I could to get the contract that would start my professional career. Throughout school I worked in pizza delivery, lawn mowing, worked for my uncle in his warehouse in the holidays and did whatever odd jobs I could to fund the trip before leaving Australia and spent weeks, sometimes months all over the UK in trials and camps. My last game before leaving Sydney for my new life was a National Youth League game in 38-degree searing heat and humidity – my first trial, 10 days later was in the snow of the North East of England. My focus was unwavering as was my belief in hard work achieving results, but was it enough?

I now like to observe and learn from the careers of the former professional athletes who have transitioned from sport into business. Champion Australian Olympian Kieran Perkins is the Executive Director of Personal Banking at National Australia Bank, having been there since 2009. His transfer into business was partly due to his reputation, but mostly about his ability to be singularly goal-focused. He recently had this to say:

“Being your best is not so much about overcoming the barriers other people place in front of you as it is about overcoming the barriers we place in front of ourselves. It has nothing to do with how many times you win or lose. It has everything to do with having the vision to dream, the courage to recover from adversity and the determination to never to be shifted from your goals”.

Elite athletes have to be selfish, have to put themselves first to the detriment of relationships, colleagues and friends. Is that what I was destined to learn from my experiences with football as I moved into business? 

In the pursuit of what I thought was my one-thing, I immediately felt compelled to explore and execute each and every business model, secret, hack, process, strategy, tactic and activity that I discovered, in a bid to bring about the rewards. I convinced myself that this was the best way of taking massive action, in essence by doing anything and everything possible as the means of bringing about my goal.

What emerged is that my one-thing, my main-thing was the wrong-thing.

In those early days of trying to secure a professional soccer contract I was pushing myself to do everything I could, and questioning and doubting myself repeatedly when it wasn’t yielding results. I was offered contracts to play in the USA but turned them away believing it was not a serious football nation.

I hadn’t taken the time to get clear on my purpose, my why, my main-thing. Even more damaging, by focusing on the voids, the scarcity and the gaps that I perceived, I was cheating myself of the joy from acknowledging how much I already had.

Business Culture as the Focus

These days I spend most of my weekends coaching a junior girls soccer team and watching my three daughters that all play the beautiful game. Being an effective parent and raising happy, loving and fulfilled kids takes time, a wide range of skills and the ability to juggle tasks, roles and a relentless stream of demands.

This only comes about by dividing and conquering at a task-based level. It’s about focusing on one thing at the micro-level. The overall goal of raising kids who are supported, loved but also raised to be independent and take initiative, remains the over-arching purpose that shapes their upbringing as these micro-level tasks are completed.

Working in sales leadership, I know the importance of teamwork and growing a positive culture that hands ownership of the decision making process to the team. Andy Fell, a leadership coach I work with uses the holding of a dove as a metaphor. He believes that if you hold it too tight you constrain it, if you hold it too loosely it will fly away!

Creating a strong sales culture is a combination of structure, process, reward, recognition, compensation, training, leading, motivating, coaching, teaching, providing feedback and more.

Great sales cultures view the sales team as a learning organisation that can always improve. Exceptional sales managers convey this attitude by looking for opportunities to encourage salespeople to own the company’s values.

Developing strong coaching skills is essential to world-class organisations. The winning formula is to question better, confirm more and respond less. To build a strong sales culture, sales managers must lead their team to find the answer themselves. Nurturing a culture that finds the secret to motivating people is the key here.

You are Motivating People not Processes

The interesting thing about motivation is that it is largely internal.

If someone wants us to be motivated to take some action, the most that they can do is influence us — appeal to us. They have to key into our needs, emotions, and goals. Marketers, sales professionals, and politicians understand this well.

A dangerous mistake many employers make is that they centre their feedback solely on what employees are doing wrong. Critical feedback is an important part of learning, yes, but it needs to be balanced with positive feedback. Yes, this is still happening in 2020.

If your employees are handling their work well, further reinforce their sense of competence by granting them more independence and responsibility, allowing them to dictate the ways they meet set goals. Giving your team a choice in the way they work, signals that you trust in them and their abilities. Why? Because they have proven themselves capable. Now that they know you believe in their skill, they will feel motivated to prove you right.

The next job is to look internally at yourself.

The Management Mindset

As a leader, whatever industry you are in, you, too, are in the energy business. Remember that whatever energy you bring to your work will be noticed and amplified. Your personal attitude is a huge part of the energy you inject into your team and organisation. If you aren’t injecting positive, supportive and encouraging thoughts and actions into the workplace, it is far less likely that others will either.

I firmly believe leaders need to have an optimistic and affirming outlook to be a motivating force within the organisation. Being positive means having a strong commitment to vision and goals. It also about persevering in the face of any obstacles encountered.

I understand that it’s not always easy to be positive. In the middle of Covid -19 we face some extraordinary circumstances. However Positive leadership builds on negativity to create new positive outcomes. This is done by seeing negativity as an opportunity and a fuel for change.

I know pivoting is a buzzword at the moment but some reassessment and change is needed at this time. This could be seen as a golden opportunity for organisations to take on new tasks and to stretch peoples skills and capabilities.

Embrace negativity instead of being defeated by it, and you’ll find circumstances can turn in your favour.

When a team is functioning with agreed goals and purpose, the magic happens.

Working Together leads to Innovation

Years of experience in an industry, profession or job can also be a deterrent. “It’s always been done that way” or “we already tried that” is often a sign that you and your team could use a technique to move beyond habitual thinking blocks in order to imagine alternate possibilities.

Innovation begins where assumptions end. In today’s pandemic reality, we can either assault our assumptions, or somebody else will do it for us and reap the benefits.

Even if you’re proficient in your area of expertise, you’ll never achieve even a fraction of your potential if your collaboration skills aren’t great. Today’s workplace requires the interplay of diverse personalities, values, backgrounds and levels of trust. To collaborate is to work together well, especially in a joint intellectual and entrepreneurial effort. Another way of looking at great collaborators is they bring out the best in other people, and motivate others to rise to their best selves in the pursuit of a worthy goal as a team.

The Way Out

So much of my late teens and early twenties were spent with laser focus pursuing a dream that ultimately didn’t happen. However in assessing where I am now and what I have drawn from that experience, I do believe that a bigger and broader purpose was at play.

The practical side of having so much soccer in my life has made me a good coach and student of the game, whilst maintaining my passion of supporting my teams Manchester United, Melbourne Victory, and of course the Australian national teams the Matilda’s and Socceroos. The single-mindedness has allowed me to set goals and remain focused. However having a better understanding of how much a team leaders mindset can impact the culture of the group and untimely the organisation, shines a light on the importance of being an active motivator both on the field and in the office.

Many of my life lessons were found on a football ground and aiming high meant having to become accustomed to regular rejection, and as a result, I grew up quickly. I don’t apologise for setting high standards but I do now recognise considering all options can reveal unexpected paths that lead ultimately to longer-term and more fulfilling success.  And I wouldn’t change where I am now, with where my 18-year-old self wanted to to be.

So as I finish this piece, I am off to have a kick in glorious Melbourne winter sun at the park with my daughters (which is still COVID lockdown allowed!), playing the game I love with the people I love, and really that is the best of both worlds.