You Get What You Tolerate

“You Get What You Tolerate”- How to Increase Performance

 

“You get what you tolerate” Methodology- Over a few decades in the business world, I am unsure if I heard the quote ‘You get what you tolerate’ or if by some semblance of wisdom or grace (or a combination of both) came to find myself coaching to this quote for a long time. When going to the internet to find out whom I might have picked this up from or pirated as my quote, I came up with many possibilities but most unlikely.

 

Origin of “You get what you tolerate”-

 

The internet ranges credit for this quote from Christian author Henry Cloud, maybe college basketball coach John Brady, apparently ‘DaCoach’ Mike Ditka was credited with one minor adjustment, there is, of course, Tony Robbins and then my favorite ‘Unknown.’ Unknown is hilarious because the person either could not make up their mind on who said it or does not like what the other stands for in life. Being a Bears fan, I will guess ‘unknown’ is a Packers fan who did not want to give Ditka credit.

Each person except for ‘Unknown’ has similar but slightly different meanings to the quote. I would also throw out a quote like saying, “Be careful what you tolerate. You are teaching people how to treat you.” Another is, “You get what you expect, and you deserve what you tolerate.” Most of the message except for Tony Robbins’s explanation has the individual getting what they deserved, or the other message is to not tolerate poor behavior toward you by walking away from the situation.

 

Tony Robbin’s Take-

 

As an avid listener and reader of Tony Robbin’s coaching and material, I love how he uses the phrase. His coaching and call to massive action at the end of it is awe-inspiring. He typically says it as ‘We all get what we tolerate.’ The coaching is part of snapping yourself out of excuses and stopping tolerating past beliefs of yourself and fear-based reasons. He further encourages to face these challenges in his analogy. The delivery is incredible with such an impactful message that I could not agree more with him.

 

Adaptation of Quote into Cadence-

 

Now, I am not going to contend with any of the esteemed people mentioned above. However, I take a different direction in coaching this methodology. My process is more about improving a person’s emotional intelligence while helping them to be successful in real-time through coaching. So, let me explain and cover how I have utilized this quote.

Before I explain how I used this message, I want to be precise. My messaging is NEVER to be a punitive term. For example, the usage is NOT I do not like what you are doing, so I will not tolerate YOU. It is not a personal attack. It is how I will help you identify what you are willing to tolerate that is causing you to miss your objectives.

I think about this as helping individuals through a disappointing result they or their team did not achieve. We as humans gravitate to the result as the path of least resistance. Our version is something like, “We just could not get there” or excuses, “well, this month had fewer days in it with a holiday, so we missed our sales results.” Often, leaders, coaches, or employees throw their hands in the air as if they did not have the opportunity to execute a strategy when they had plenty of time to reverse engineer a plan to hit the targets despite upcoming hurdles.

Here is a four-step method to reduce poor outcomes due to tolerating roadblocks to success. Improving these skills can be done while executing business as usual or outlined in a breakout session as you seek to build lean operations.

 

 

Here are the four steps:

 
Establish or Use Established Measurements-

In the book 4 D’s of Execution by Covey, you need to identify the lead measures to attaining your ‘Wildly important Goals’ (WIG). The method I take is there are lead measures to even those key lead measures to help improve performance. No matter whom you are trying to coach or improve performance for, it would be best to start with the measurement of success. Whether it is productivity, deviations missed commitments, or lead KPIs, the measures and the lead measures to obtain success need to be clear to everyone. Just remember, if you are not measuring, you are just practicing!

 

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Cadenced Review and Coach to the Measures-

If you are genuinely concerned and care about the person or team’s success, you are in the trenches with them coaching. So, a regular cadence to look at the measures is required. The review is a prime opportunity to start adding the vocabulary into the discussion. When things come up like a team missing their weekly sales funnel targets, as the Sales Manager or Rep, “What are we tolerating that is getting in the way of us missing our funnel targets?” Clear communication helps you flesh out excuses in advance of missing the overall objectives.

Gain Commitment to Course Change-

During the cadence coaching session, whether that is a 1:1 meeting or team metrics review, there will be either positive moments to call out people performing or excuses in the making of why they had a disappointing result. The latter is the opportunity to resolve the habit, activity, motion, or lack of action that caused the issue. Work with the employee collectively to develop commitments on how the problem will get fixed.

Inspect What You Expect-

In the next cadence session, follow up on the course change and level of success. Have the expectation be on the agenda, ensure it was the right action, and the person/team executed it. Through ongoing coaching, these review sessions should become more manageable and have a more common vocabulary. I have had teams come into a session with, “We missed the target because we had tolerated XYZ, and we will make that up this week by doing ABC.”

 

In Conclusion-

Do not take these steps just to be thrown on the ‘rinse and repeat the cycle.’ Cadence and communication are a regular part of an accountable culture of success. Keep in mind; that this process also keeps you accountable not to tolerate your potential missed results. Constantly be thinking ahead when you get a downward trending result or a missed target, evaluate ‘What did I tolerate to get that result?’

At Home Use-

Lastly, I will leave you with this. It works exceptionally well in other aspects of your life. It even worked well with my children. By the time my son was in high school when he would get the test result he did not like, I would ask him, what did you tolerate? He would humbly say something like, “You are right; I tolerated not studying for video games.” Then commit to doing it differently next time, which he did with flying colors. Addressing what you are tolerating works in life, business, parenting, leading, and many aspects of your life.

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