If you don’t yet coach people significantly smarter, wealthier and more successful than yourself, it’s time to up your game.
You see, highly successful people need your support more than you think and more than they know.
There are several reasons for this that you need to pay attention to, so you don’t get swayed by cognitive biases such as the Halo effect, a tendency to think positively about a person based on just one aspect of their character.
And, more importantly, because even the most successful people get trapped by their own thinking…
Money doesn’t make you smart. Wealthy people can easily confuse luck with skill.
Prior success doesn’t guarantee future success. Intelligence is often situation specific.
And highly successful people rarely have anyone to challenge their thinking. They are often surrounded by yes people.
Think I’m exaggerating?
In the documentary WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn, there’s an insightful story about the founder, Adam Neumann.
In the WeWork cafe, the baristas served lattes when people ordered cappuccinos. And they served cappuccinos when people ordered lattes.
Why? Because when Neumann ordered a latte but mistakenly expected a cappuccino, nobody wanted to correct him.
As NYU business professor Scott Galloway succinctly puts it, “If you tell a 30-something male that he’s Jesus Christ, he’s inclined to believe you.”
An ancient proverb says that there are 3 mysteries in the universe…
Birds to the air.
Fish to water.
And humans to themselves.
And that’s precisely why you can coach people smarter, wealthier and more successful than you.
You don’t need to be better at what they do than they are.
You need to help them increase their self-awareness and to see what’s invisible to most people—their own thinking.
You need to help them understand that their brains default to a range of cognitive biases—that are designed to keep them safe in the short term but often work against them in the long term.
A cognitive bias is an error in your thinking that occurs when you process and interpret information in the world around you.
There are 4 types of cognitive bias that affect your decisions and judgments:
- Too much information – so our brains simplify the complex world we live in.
- Too little information – so our brains fill in the gaps.
- Not enough memory – so our brains save space by generalizing.
- Not enough time – so our brains create shortcuts.
A couple of weeks ago, twelve of Europe’s most successful and financially powerful football (soccer) clubs announced their plan to break away from the European football competition to create a Super League.
It seemed like an incredible plan. It had been worked on for 3 years by a group of billionaire business owners and their smartest strategic thinkers.
These owners included the owners of Arsenal – Stan Kroenke ($9.4bn net worth), Chelsea – Roman Abramovich ($11.8bn), Inter Milan – Zhang Jindong ($7.2bn), Juventus – Agnelli family ($14.3bn), Manchester City – Sheikh Mansour ($32.3bn).
It was designed to make them a huge amount of money. And JP Morgan, one of the world’s biggest banks, intended to back the plan to the tune of $6.4 billion.
But the plan fell apart in less than 48 hours.
The plan had ensured that the winning club in the Super League would take home $470 million, far more than the $141 million that the current Champions League winner gets, each year. And even if a Super League club lost every game they would still earn £130 million.
The club owners saw a way to make more money and went for it.
However, that’s not always the best business move.
Those billionaire owners are successful businessmen who have no roots or emotion invested in the clubs they purchased. The clubs don’t mean the same to them as they do to the fans.
The public outcry was immediate, particularly in Britain, where football was born. Some of these teams are over 100 years old and family fans are now in their fourth generation.
Fans hung banners outside their teams’ stadiums, and lawmakers took to the airwaves to denounce the rebels for what they saw as their greed and disrespect toward soccer’s traditions. Hundreds of angry supporters even surrounded Liverpool’s team bus as it made its way to a game.
Politicians condemned the plan, from Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister, to Emmanuel Macron, the President of France. Even Prince William posted a tweet expressing his concerns about the Super League.
And just like that, a billion-dollar European football superleague was born, and then collapsed, in less than a week.
Money often trumps mindset when it comes to business. The desire for money is strong.
But it’s worth repeating:
Money doesn’t make you smart. Wealthy people can easily confuse luck with skill.
Prior success doesn’t guarantee future success. Intelligence is often situation specific.
And highly successful people rarely have anyone to challenge their thinking. They are often surrounded by yes people.
My friends and clients include rocket scientists, world-renowned entrepreneurs, special forces operatives and gold-medal winning Olympic athletes — and I can promise you two things…
(1) They all put their pants on one leg at a time
(2) They each struggle with at least one area of their life.
Highly successful people need your support more than you think and more than they know.
Love. Rich