The Campbell Academy Blog | Colin Campbell (63)

Feet to the fire

Everybody needs this, but not everybody has it.

Things we do when people are not looking when we're on our own when we think we're unaccountable, can be some of the most destructive but also some of the most extraordinary things in the world.

Either way, we need to create accountability.

We need to create some responsibility and accountability to finish the things that we start, and we all have mechanisms and ways of doing this, but some of us find it easier than others.

One of the easiest examples to understand is in the world of coaching.

If you decide to be coached to do a marathon or a 10k or triathlon or anything else and sign up with a coach, you have created a degree of responsibility in your training where someone else will look and ask you, "Why did you not do what you said you would do".

Whatever the mechanism is for that, it's an essential fire for motivation to push you forward to areas and heights that you would never have been able to achieve.

A week on Friday, I will be speaking at the Straumann Road to Platinum event with my friend and colleague, Amit Jilka.

We're going to be discussing how The Campbell Academy Business Course helped propel Amit's practice to this huge behemoth that continues to grow and expand and be more and more successful due to the principles that he learned in 2017.

On the main bill for that day, though, is Helen Richardson-Walsh.

Helen was the captain of the GB women's hockey team that won the Olympics in 2016 in Rio.

That story is extraordinary and for another blog.

One of the most staggering things about that team, though, was that after they won the bronze in 2012, they redesigned their coaching structure and entered into coaching contracts.

But the coaching team would come and say, "To win the gold, you will have to do this, this and this", and the players agreed and signed a contract so that over the next four years when they didn't do the things they said they would do the coaches were able to show them the contract and ask them why.

It created a degree of self-accountability, which took the GB women's hockey team to the top of the world in their sport.
The same, though, applies to us in our work, in our family life, in our relationships and our hobbies.

Trying to do it on your own without anyone looking, without someone you trust asking you if you're okay and heading in the right direction, makes it almost impossible to achieve.

But it's the same as everything.

It's the right degree of accountability, the right degree of responsibility, the right amount of someone holding your feet to the fire before they melt.