Whether you are leading a business, a team, a family, or just leading yourself, you are in the business of helping people improve. How do you help those around you maximize their potential? There is some great advice from a legend in his industry which you can apply to yours. The technique is called the 20 minute rule and I first began utilizing this technique when I coached at Manhattan College in 1997. I was discussing coaching strategy with our basketball coach one day and he told me about what Hall of Fame basketball coach Bob Hurley does daily to build rapport with his players at St. Anthony’s High School in New Jersey. He calls it the 20 minute rule. Coach Hurley makes a daily commitment to complement each player individually within the first 20 minutes of practice. Simple as it may seem the beauty of this strategy is that it creates a sense of urgency for the leader to find something praise worthy early in the session. Again it seems simple but simple does not always mean easy. Here is the key — it can’t just be a platitude or bogus compliment.
The compliment or positive feedback needs to be rich in substance and ideally should be directly attached to a positive, specific behavior the person performed either at that moment or earlier.
I found this to be easier said than done. It is difficult to execute because there are a lot of areas to be addressed early in a practice. The same can be said for the corporate world there are a lot of things pulling you in a ton of different directions in the first 20 minutes of your work day; if you let them I should add.
In his seminal book, Now Discover Your Strengths, Marcus Buckingham found that identifying and building strengths produces better results than focusing on faults. Simply put the 20 minute rule is about catching someone doing something right. Initially you may find it to be a difficult strategy to execute but I found that by investing the time and energy in doing so on the front end ended up paying off handsomely on the back end. What I mean by that is when you help someone you’re mentoring build their strengths in addition to enhancing their confidence you are opening up the lines of communication. Leading with a compliment or strength-centered comment helps make the individual more receptive later to coaching or critique. That later might be later in the meeting or even later in the day. We tend to have a long memory for compliments. Compliments help prime the pump so to speak for active listening.
This is easier when you are leading a smaller department. I had between 30-40 athletes on my team. Given that fact 20 minutes isn’t much time (34.2 seconds per player to be precise). As a result I found I had to be very emotionally tuned in to how my guys would show up each day. Keenly aware of body language what they were saying and also what they weren’t and should’ve been as well. I found the best time was during stretch I would walk up and down the lines and check in with each player. I’d give them each some positive feedback whether it was on their grades their effort the day prior or other relevant information. You can do the same.
It’s not easy, nothing worthwhile ever is, but I promise if you invest the 20 minutes a day your return on investment will be tremendous.