How To Fail An Assessment Test
Am I an entrepreneur?
What are my strengths?
Am I compatible?
What are my likes?
Somewhere, there’s an online survey or assessment that will tell you.
For just about any identity we wish to become.
If the results only confirm what we want to hear — that we are meant to be this identity — it is as if we already can feel the identity resonating inside of us.
Yet, it’s here where we overconsume who we want to be and underperform in what we need to do. Chasing an identity becomes an obsession that paralyzes a willingness to try something different or learn something new. Trapped in the world of perception — how others perceives us as well as how we perceive ourselves — we tune out the small details and less pleasant steps that are a critical part of the process:
I’m a visual learner → an excuse not to learn in other ways
I’m an introvert → an excuse not to put myself out there
I’m a builder → an excuse not to maintain
Twenty five years ago this week, my canoe partner, Scott Strausbaugh, and I were in Spain on the cusp of an Olympic performance in whitewater canoe slalom that has yet to be replicated by an athlete, or athletes, in this sport from the United States. Six years earlier when we started to paddle the doubles canoe, any type of assessment would have suggested our respective character attributes were better suited for other teammates. Our backgrounds, perspectives, experiences, and temperaments were all so different.
Fortunately, we grew up in a culture that valued the act of experimentation and we gave the canoe a try.
Imperfect people figuring it out with other imperfect people — no assessment needed.
What works will only be revealed if it is tried. Experimentation beats perception. Action beats identity.
With gratitude,
Joe
Facebook Live Experiment
This past week, I tried Facebook Live on my public page. This 22-minute video takes you behind the scenes at the Oklahoma City Boathouse Foundation (where my next leadership program happens this week). I reflect on my 40th year in paddlesports and answer the question, “What do I do?”
Please let me know what you think as I’m considering some Sunday evening Facebook Live events in the future to discuss that day’s Sunday Morning Joe post and answer questions from readers.
Click HERE to watch the video.
Hi, I’m Joe. I teach my clients the advanced techniques necessary to reveal talents which have been set to idle due to external and internal distractions.
I, then, transfer my Olympic Gold Medal performance strategies that streamline decision making and actions when engaged in complicated life currents with an aim towards the freedom of playing your own.
