What is a personal statement and why is it so important?

Grant Leboff: One of the things that you talk about is the importance of personal statements. I’m not sure people understand exactly what that is, so can you explain what, for you, a personal statement looks like?

David Hyner: I’m sure we’ve all been into an office where, upon the wall, the sales team have got these inspiring pictures of a woman climber standing on a mountaintop, punching the air with a sunset vista and a motivational quote underneath. We often go umm, OK, a glib semantic statement. Sometimes we go ooohh it’s an inspiring statement. But what we don’t realise is that that’s what we think.

Really successful people tend to have quotes that they don’t just have on a plaque on the office wall, they actually use them to live their life by. So they will have a statement, a personal statement, that for them is a benchmark of behaviour and thinking. Can I give you an example? There’s a guy I know called Carl George, a highly effective individual at what he does. He has a 10 percent rule. He says whatever I do, I try to get into the top 10 percent. He has a quote and it’s also the title of his book that he tries to live his life by.

Now Grant, imagine living your life, the pressure you would put yourself under to perform on a minute by minute basis if you lived your life by this quote. Other people try, I make sure… Now personally and professionally, the guy is off the scale effective, but the pressure he puts himself under…. Because that is my measurement for myself, that is more acceptable boundary. So, what if we had a personal statement that any time we needed to refer – should I be doing this, should I not be doing this, how we should behave today – we had a statement that defines who we are and what we do and how we do it. It kind of links into purpose as well.

Grant Leboff: So what’s interesting is, if that’s what a person’s statement is, how does one even start to think about creating it for themselves?

David Hyner: OK… here’s a six hour coaching session condensed into 30 seconds! According to Professor Adrian Furnham, who by any measurement is a man so clever that if we sat next to him we’d get clever through osmosis. He says; when we make any decision or create a purpose or statement for ourselves, people are guilty of just considering their core values. He said, but that’s only half of who we are. We also need to consider our insecurities because whether we like it or not, that’s also who we are. So we can go to get therapy to deal with our insecurities and our weaknesses, but most of us won’t. So if we’re not going to, we need to deal with them and use them as a strength in decision making.

Most of us are familiar with SWAT, your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats and we pay great, great, credence to our strengths and our opportunities. We don’t like looking at our weaknesses and threats very much, so we tend to just gloss over them. And that’s why, frequently, we’ll go on a mission, on a massive goal, only to realise – halfway down the road – that it’s not right or the people we’re working with aren’t that authentic and credible or something happens where our values are being trodden on or our insecurities are having a pointed stick poked in an open wound. And we have to stop back off or walk away or leave it.

If we make decisions and have a statement that sums up who we are as a person or, as a business have a statement that highlights; these are our strengths, these are our weaknesses and we are going to do things – here’s the key phrase; where our values are met and their insecurities are satisfied, you will only ever do things that are right for who you are, as a business or as an individual. If we do things deliberately, where our values are going to be compromised or our insecurities are going to crop up, isn’t it any wonder why life gets hard?

Grant Leboff: So if that’s the case – that makes perfect sense… in theory. So I would say in that case, how do you ensure you create a personal statement and make sure that you achieve and doesn’t end up… with you never quite getting what you should have done, because you’ve taken so much account of your insecurities that actually, you’re now not setting the bar high enough, or whatever else. How do you wrestle with that juxtaposition?

David Hyner: Could you imagine only doing things that were right for you to be doing?

Grant Leboff: Can I imagine? No.

David Hyner: What if he could only do things that were right for you as a person to be doing? What if all the things that we do that are a real struggle, a real effort, a real grind – the kind of thing that might pull a face. Oh really? What if we just don’t do those anymore? Life gets easier, decision making effortless. Sometimes doing the right thing is still hard, because we live in a fast food society where you want instant gratification, so doing the easy thing looks nice, but what if we only do the things that are right for us to be doing as human beings. Can I humbly suggest not only are we happier but we’re much, much, more effective. Far from diluting our effectiveness a purpose driven goal…Wow. Wow. Watch people fly Grant.

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