As a coach, I coach a lot of high-driving, type-A, want to win, decisive individuals who want the best for themselves, their teams, and their organization. They have and want to accomplish big goals. They’re not afraid to take risks. However, in business and life, we must sometimes be conscious of the risks of the decisions we’re making to weigh it all out.
Some of you may be aware that I’m an avid scuba diver and spear fisherman. I love the ocean. Just recently I was finishing my second of two dives. Now, you always want to scale up slowly on the ascent. So, at about 20 feet, I’m scaling up nice and slowly, and suddenly I’m surrounded by a half dozen cobia. For those of you who are not familiar with what a cobia is, it is a prized game fish of the ocean. The meat is delicious. They grow anywhere from 20 up to a hundred pounds. It is a prize for any spear fisherman.
Now, my spear gun is always loaded and attached to my flag on the ascent. However, when I aim at one of the cobias to take my shot, there was resistance because it was attached to the flag. When I went to unhook it, I realized why I was surrounded by a half dozen cobia. Cobia frequently travel with tiger sharks, and those cobias momentarily left the tiger shark to investigate me. As I aimed for a second shot, a 10-foot tiger shark leisurely swam by from my right and the cobia leisurely left me, went back on the tiger, and swam away. Hello! That got my adrenaline going. Obviously, no second shot was taken.
I was discussing this experience with one of my coaches. I believe that all life events can relate to business. Understand that this whole experience happened in less than 15 seconds. Me seeing the cobias, being immediately excited, realizing what they were, aiming my gun, understanding I could not take a good shot, readjusting, tiger shark shows up; all bets are off.
I first asked myself, “What if that gun wasn’t attached where I had free rein and I shot the biggest cobia of the group, not knowing the tiger shark was to my right?” That could’ve been an interesting experience. What if I did not hit the cobia right and it started excitedly swimming all over the place? Would that have gotten that tiger shark excited and lit up to engage. However, that didn’t happen. Also, at the time I had about 500 pounds left. Not a lot of air, not quite the risk you want to take low on air. I still had another 20 feet to ascend slowly. If something happened, maybe I wouldn’t be able to control the ascent. The boat was a distance away. So, there was some time between me surfacing and getting picked up by the boat. There were a lot of different circumstances in play that were not in my favor. There were risks.
Now, there are a lot of spear fishermen, mostly freedivers that jump in the water looking for tiger sharks to shoot the cobia off of. If you’re one of them, you’ll say, “Oh yeah, I would’ve done it.” However, not me. No, thank you. I could always go to the seafood market and pick up some cobia on ice.
In business, high-driving executives and leaders, decisive individuals like me; the people I coach who aren’t afraid to take risks, keep on striving forward. However, occasionally, we must slow down just a bit to weigh everything out, to make the right decisions as there’s always a risk reward in every scenario.
Now, what did I take from this experience, what was the reward? First, how many people have the experience of being surrounded by a group of cobias? How many people have had the experience of a 10-foot tiger shark leisurely swimming by them? How many people have had that type of adrenaline rush experience?
I take the fact that I am blessed with the ability to enjoy and experience these types of situations. Most importantly, I’m here to tell you the story, because who knows, if I was able to take that first shot and hit the cobia, and it excitedly took off as that tiger showed up, it could have been an entirely different story.
So, to you high-driving, decisive, want to win individuals who are striving to an even higher level. I’m your guy. And remember, occasionally, take a deep breath, weigh the risks, weigh the rewards, and decide accordingly.
COACH MICHAEL DILL is an Award-Winning Certified Business Coach, global speaker, and published author. He is a proud ActionCOACH Franchise Partner as well as the President of Power & Ice Wealth Creation—a strategic leadership company that works with business owners, leaders, teams, and entrepreneurs to both develop a systematized and structured organization while accelerating their mindset, efficiencies, and effectiveness to grow both personally and professionally to achieve extraordinary results. He brings more than 40 years of business and entrepreneurial experience in his leadership, team training, and mentoring practice.
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