Excellent people are almost the same, and mediocre people are mediocre.

Recall that a year ago, at a company meeting attended by representatives from various countries around the world, everyone discussed a problem. Participants were divided into many groups, first discussed in groups, and then the results were publicly displayed to everyone. Generally speaking, in China, few people can take the initiative to speak publicly in front of all the staff as a group representative when discussing in English. Zhu Xiao is an exception. I still remember him. His English is not fluent and his expression logic is not clear. He was nervous and stammered during the whole process, but I still remembered him very deeply, because I saw his courage as a volunteer, his deliberate exercise efforts, and the burning enthusiasm and firmness in his eyes.

Some people, once they have set a goal, will go forward like a bow, and try their best to make every effort that ordinary people can't invest, even the world can't stop them.

In fact, such people are not uncommon around, and there are many similarities.

A few years ago, I once gave a speech training to my new colleagues in the company. People who come into the classroom have similar foundation, and they are willing and interested to learn some speech skills. They want to express themselves confidently and speak fluently in front of customers or colleagues. At the same time, they all face such problems, some are nervous, some are unclear in speech logic, some are blunt in body language, and some are afraid to face questions. After the training, some people's self-confidence in the workplace has improved a lot. Everyone has made some action plans and is proud of themselves.

Two years later, a student in this class has become a senior consultant, has a good reputation among customers, participated in numerous projects, entered the company's high-potential talent development plan, and received an invitation from the company's foreign universities to be a lecturer. I'm not surprised to know the result. In fact, I remember him in that training class. I have been paying attention to his growth for two years, and I have seen his growth footprint at every step.

He is a boy who blushes as soon as he speaks, and he stutters a little. Every time he tied a knot, his face became redder, reaching his neck. I even wonder if his original skin color is like this or if he is really nervous. He is the most active student with no basic advantage in that training class. Whenever there is an opportunity, he will always give a speech on the stage and exercise different skills on different topics, blushing and stuttering, but it is nothing to him. He carefully recorded the feedback from the lecturer and other students, and he could improve on the basis of the previous feedback every time he practiced. In two days, he kept repeating and even reading "cheat sheets" to express complete sentences, from staring at the ceiling back to being able to contact the audience's eyes, grasping the rhythm and momentum. I believe everyone present witnessed his awe-inspiring clumsiness and his progress. What impressed me most was that the night after the training, he sent out his notes recording all the main points and shared them with all the participants, which showed his intention.

Everything was fine afterwards. He often shares his skills, gains and losses, and leisurely pace in the group of the company. He is like the tortoise in the story of the tortoise-rabbit race, crawling slowly, getting closer and closer to the goal with every step. I know it's only a matter of time before he succeeds, otherwise there will be no justice. When I see him, I will think of a sentence: if you work so hard, the worst thing is to succeed late.

A few years later, most of the other students who participated in the training with him were submerged in the crowd.

What he reminds me of is that if you practice so deliberately, one day you will be able to do it with ease!

A few years ago, I took a team of *** 10 people to work at the customer site to develop a project with a cycle of 1 year. There are two main members of the team, both of whom are engineers with more than 8 years of work experience, and the rest are graduates or have a little work experience.

As a team leader, for the purpose of cultivating people, I often authorize two senior engineers to participate in management.

I admire the most senior one, from the Fortune 500 companies, who has very shining work experience and management experience and has worked in the company for quite a long time. His work efficiency is the highest. He can finish what others have done in a day in half a day. He has clear thinking, strong expressive ability and meticulous logical thinking ability. With him here, I feel that the project has been anchored. So everyone gave him a nickname "God of War".

The second senior engineer, with a less glamorous background, is called "teacher". He does things in an orderly way and follows the rules. He can't say how clever he is, but he doesn't drag his feet. He belongs to the kind of person who is not quick enough to respond but is very popular. He is willing to help others and inspire others. Working in a high-pressure environment, his role is particularly important.

Small projects, guarded by such two complementary "elders", should theoretically be a green light all the way, overcome difficulties and win one after another, at least to ensure smooth operation. However, the reality is not as expected. During the project, the customer's organizational structure was adjusted, and the customer's responsible person changed several times, with different styles and conflicting needs. The contradiction between customers will often shift to the problems that need to be solved in the project. Everyone stayed up all night, endured severe criticism and complaints and made changes. After a few months, they were exhausted and the team morale was very low.

"God of War" is still a rare death squad member in a high-pressure environment. He can get things done while swearing. Although he doesn't pursue perfection, he won't let you find fault. He believes in the principle of "I have finished my work, and your shit has nothing to do with me", so he will not shirk his responsibility, but he will not take on more responsibilities. For the work directly assigned by the customer, the work related to him was completed, and he refused directly without using any skills. In extreme cases, he quarreled several times and refused, or came to me directly and let me solve it.

At the weekly team meeting, the "God of War" pieced together the work report and began to pour bitter water for a long time. The customer is SB, and we are bitter B. We should go against them, otherwise the project can't go on, and the company is inhuman, which is too much for us to bear. His complaints came out like machine guns, and the scene was usually silent, and no one dared to speak. I asked him what the solution was. He shook his head and could do nothing, because the problem was not with us.

At this time, the teacher is always the only one who speaks. "Let me talk about my thoughts." He usually starts with this. It doesn't matter what he thought at that time, but his speech was to express an attitude to everyone. The problem is real, and it is impossible to expect others to solve it for us. Problems usually don't disappear by themselves. We need to find a way to solve them ourselves, one by one.

Many years later, I can't even remember the content of his speech, but I remember the feeling he gave me, the feeling he gave to everyone on the scene: the sky will not fall, let's start doing it!

I often need to revise his plan. Most of those plans were completed by him working overtime at night. He never complains or says "I'll give you something" in advance. Usually when things are done, he comes to me. what do you think? "His plan is sometimes adopted and sometimes ignored, but this is not the most important thing. The most important thing is that when I see another person in the team who is so enthusiastic about the project and has been ignited again and again, I can regain my confidence in an instant, launch the charge order again and push the project to a new milestone.

At work, there are many overall operations. To ensure the success of the whole campaign, it is not necessary for everyone to cut through the thorns and attack the city. The team needs some people, to be stable, to be able to stand up, and to persist until dawn in the middle of the night. Just "teacher"!

After the first phase of the project is completed, I need to lead another team. Who will take over my job has become the decision of me, my clients and team members. Although I know that both "God of War" and "Teacher" are willing to accept new challenges and try to manage their posts, the final result is that "Teacher" has become my successor with overwhelming advantages. I still remember what the customer said to me when I left: "He has a good attitude and works so hard, which is the reassurance of the team. We feel at ease with him. " The team's evaluation of him is "Zhengneng Jun, I can't do it without you!"

Yes, his mentality always reminds people of sunflowers. You don't even know when it germinated, but when you look at him, he always stretches out in the sun.

What he reminds me of is that you develop naturally, because what you see through you is hope!

Let's go back to the story of Zhu Xiao. A few years ago, he joined a project, which belongs to the public welfare category, and the application of a mobile phone helped the deaf realize barrier-free communication. Public welfare projects have no income and no stable financial support. Later, people who participated in the project gradually withdrew. Except Zhu Xiao, he still insisted on investing with his own time and energy. He has his own job during the day, developing applications at night or on weekends, looking for users to test and publicize.

A few years later, there will be the result we said at the beginning. This app won many awards, and Zhu Xiao was reported by the media. Because of this, he also got the opportunity to share his study in a famous foreign school.

Everyone is talking about his success, his luck, his clever mind and his enthusiasm for public welfare. But I have never heard Zhu Xiao mention the word "success".

Harry Truman once said: "As long as you don't care about utility, you can achieve anything." It suits Zhu Xiao very well.

In From Excellence to Excellence, I told such a story: Imagine an egg. No one noticed it until one day the eggshell broke and a chicken jumped out of it! Suddenly, all the well-known magazines and newspapers came out, scrambling to report the incident: "The eggs hatched into chickens!" " ""the great revolution of eggs! The "shocking transformation" is like an egg changed overnight and suddenly turned into a chicken.

In fact, people's leap and the company's leap are the same road. Although others think that your success is overnight or in an instant, you may have hatched for a long time, accumulated for many days and even brewed for many years before that.

What he reminds me of is that you have extraordinary persistence, so even God will help you!

These stories sometimes make me believe that they are one person, and sometimes make me feel that they are two places at once. Often think of one, and you will think of others. They influence us with their own existence, and when you think of them, you can't help but label them. This is a group of excellent people.

The little girl recruited in the morning came to give me a message that the interview scheduled for today was cancelled because the candidates failed in previous rounds. I said I already knew. Everyone was shocked. I haven't met that man yet. Why is there such a conclusion?

I smiled. If you really analyze the resumes of those who fail, you will find that the reasons for their failure are different, and those reasons buried in long or short resumes or ordinary or gorgeous resumes are precisely the * * * nature that those who become excellent people must have.

There is a classic saying in Tolstoy's novel anna karenine: All happy families are similar, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. What he means is that to be happy, marriage must be successful in many different aspects, such as sexual attraction, knowledge of money, children's discipline, religious belief, three relatives and six relatives, and so on. If all these problems exist at all, the marriage may be ruined.

By extension, this principle can be used to understand other aspects besides marriage. For example, to be an excellent person, you must have * * * talents in some fundamentals needed to achieve Excellence, otherwise you may become mediocre.

Therefore, excellent people are all similar, and mediocre people have their own mediocrity.

What would you choose?