16,573 people gathered in Reunion Arena to watch the contest, and the excitement was palpable. Everyone wanted to see a show, and they were about to see the greatest show ten feet off the ground.

The lineup for the 1986 Slam Dunk Contest was an assortment of some of the best athletes in the NBA at that time. Dominique Wilkins of the Atlanta Hawks was the clear favourite to win that year. He had won the 1985 Contest and was a star of the NBA. Nicknamed “the Human Highlight Reel”, Wilkins was six feet, eight inches of sheer athleticism.

The rest of the lineup for that night included Roy Hinson, Jerome Kersey, Paul Pressey, Terence Stansbury, Terry Tyler, Spud Webb, Gerald Wilkins, and Orlando Woolridge (who was injured and could not actually participate in the contest). Here is a list of each athlete and their height:

• Roy Hinson: 6’9″
• Jerome Kersey: 6’7″
• Paul Pressey: 6’5″
• Terence Stansbury: 6’5″
• Terry Tyler: 6’7″
• Spud Webb: 5’7″
• Dominique Wilkins: 6’8″
• Gerald Wilkins: 6’6″
• Orlando Woolridge: 6’9″

When you read that list, you probably think that there is a typo. There isn’t. Spud Webb was five feet, seven inches, a full ten inches shorter than the next shortest competitor, and 13 inches shorter than his teammate, Dominique Wilkins. What in the world was he doing there?

It turns out that Spud Webb, while short (especially by NBA standards where the average player height in 1986 was 6’7″), had a huge jump. By huge, I mean his vertical leap was measured at 46 inches. To put that in perspective, the average vertical leap for a male today is 16-20 inches; anything over 28 inches is considered excellent. In NBA history, the best vertical leap recorded belongs to Wilt Chamberlain and Darrell Griffith at 48 inches. Right behind them, in a five-way tie, are Michael Jordan, Zach LaVine, Jason Richardson, James White, and Spud Webb.

So Spud Webb may be short, but he had one of the best vertical leaps in NBA history (or, if you believe the rumours that he could actually jump as high as 50 inches, he had the highest vertical leap in the NBA). This comparably short man was competing with literal giants.

The NBA Slam Dunk Contest of 1986 was comprised of three rounds: a first round, a semifinal, and a final. Since Dominique Wilkins was the clear favourite and defending champion, he was given a bye for the first round and moved directly into the semifinal. The rest of the contestants had three dunks to perform. Each dunk was worth up to 50 points, and the points were combined to give a final score. The top three scores would move up to the semifinal to join Dominique Wilkins. The semifinal would be the same: three dunks worth up to 50 points each, and the two highest totals would move on to the finals.

Before the first round, all eight competitors warmed up on the court as 16,573 spectators looked on. The spectators knew they were about to watch the proverbial David take on seven Goliaths, and they loved it. What made it even better was that their David (Spud Webb) was a local boy. That’s right: Spud Webb was born and raised in Dallas, Texas, and it was here that he would make his Slam Dunk Contest debut.

At the end of the first round, Spud Webb (who, let’s remember, is about an average of a foot shorter than his opponents), finishes with the top score and easily moves to the semifinals. Also advancing are Gerald Wilkins and Terence Stansbury. Webb’s teammate, Dominique Wilkins, who didn’t dunk in the first round, is waiting for them.

The second round gets interesting. On his first dunk of the round, Webb scores a perfect 50, the first perfect score of the night. His next two dunks are still spectacular, but not perfect, and Webb ends up tying his teammate, Dominique Wilkins, for the top spot with 138 points apiece. Both Atlanta Hawks players advance to the final round.

By now the crowd is going crazy. Their unlikely hometown hero just made it to the final round of the NBA Slam Dunk Contest, and not only is he the shortest player in the NBA at the time (Muggsy Bogues at 5’3″ would be drafted in 1987 to become the shortest NBA player of all-time), but he is also a rookie. The crowd loves him. America loves him.

The final round of the Slam Dunk Contest allows contestants two dunks instead of three, and the points are combined for a total score out of 100. Spud Webb goes first. The crowd chants his name over and over. And he gets his second 50 point dunk of the night.

Dominique Wilkins goes next. The reigning champ shows why he is the best and scores a perfect 50 of his own, tying the two up with one dunk left to go. Then Webb turns into a monster and scores his second straight 50. The crowd can barely contain themselves, and the announcers are shocked. Finally, Wilkins comes up for his final dunk. If he scores a 50, he sends the contest into a sudden death “dunk-off”. He performs his dunk and the crowd waits with bated breath. The score comes up on the screen: 48. Spud Webb has won.

Spud Webb remains the shortest person to have won the dunk contest (and the shortest person to compete in the contest), and he did it in his rookie year. Three years later (after two wins by Michael Jordan in a row), in 1989, Webb returned to the Slam Dunk Contest for the first time, where he finished third. That was the last time he competed in the Slam Dunk Contest. But that doesn’t really matter. Because for one day, Spud Webb didn’t just live like a giant, he became a giant.

Dynamic Lessons

While Spud Webb may have literally lived like a giant, the lessons we can learn from him are far more important than basketball.

1. The only person who has to believe in you is you. Nobody who was watching the 1986 NBA Slam Dunk Contest actually expected Spud Webb to beat Dominique Wilkins. Even Wilkins, who was Webb’s teammate, had never seen Webb dunk. But that didn’t matter, because Webb knew what he could do.
2. You don’t have to be a giant to live like one. In this world, you will be faced with plenty of reasons why you can’t be a giant. You might not have the connections, the resources, the capital, the opportunity, or the time to become a giant in your industry. So don’t try to be a giant. You can’t change who you are. But you can change who you become. Take that leap and live like a giant. Fake it. By the time anyone notices you don’t belong, you’ll already be making a name for yourself.

Has there been a time when you lived like a giant and it paid off for you? What about when it didn’t? Take some time and tell us a story in the comments!

Books that influenced this article:

The Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

The post Case Study: Spud Webb and Living Like a Giant appeared first on Great North Dynamics.

1. Comparing yourself to lose: this is when you look at someone else and wish that you were them. You see how perfect their lives are, how much success they have, and you wish that you had that. This is comparing yourself to lose, because no matter how hard you try, you will never be that person.
2. Comparing others to lose: this is when you take pleasure in someone else’s failure in order to make yourself feel better. Such behaviour is unhealthy. Your self-worth should come from yourself, not from someone else. If you enjoy watching your peers fail, you are building your confidence and your worth on something you can’t control: someone else’s success. You can only control your own success, so build your confidence on yourself.
3. Comparing yourself to win: this is when you study other people and their successes (or failures) in order to make yourself better. When you see someone succeed where you have failed, evaluate their success and find out what they did that made them successful. If you succeed where someone else failed, find out what you did differently that made you successful and try to replicate that in the future. Learn from others’ mistakes (and your own), but don’t take joy in them.

Dynamic lessons

You often hear that you shouldn’t compare yourself to others, and that is completely true — most of the time. But you should also learn how to compare yourself with others to help yourself win. You can compare yourself to lose, you can compare others to lose, or you can compare yourself to win.

Who is someone successful that you admire? How can you compare yourself to that person and their accomplishments in such a way as to help you be a winner?

The post Comparing Yourself to Win appeared first on Great North Dynamics.

Peyton Manning is regarded as one of the best quarterbacks of his generation, possibly even in history, and for good reason. By the time that he retired, he held the following records:

1. Total career passing yards (71,940)
2. Total single season passing yards (5,477)
3. Seasons with 4,000+ yards (14)
4. Games with 400+ yards (14)
5. Total career touchdown passes (539)
6. Total touchdown passes in a single season (55)
7. Number of seasons with 25+ touchdowns (16)
8. Number of games with at least 4 touchdowns (35)
9. Number of four-touchdown games in one season (9)
10. Number of total wins (200)

These are just the records that Manning holds on his own (not to mention the more obscure records that he holds, such as the oldest quarterback to win a Superbowl (39) or the most playoff appearances by a quarterback (15), to name a few). In addition, Manning is tied for the top spot for these records:

1. Average yards per game over a career (342.3)
2. Number of 400+ yard games in a single season (4)
3. Number of touchdowns thrown in one game (7)

In case you aren’t a football fan, let me shed some light on these statistics: Peyton Manning is an impressive individual. Some of the records he holds are quite close to the competition, but many of them have a huge gap between him and second place. In other words, Manning is an elite among elite players, and a very successful man.

When Manning and the Denver Broncos took the field on February 7, 2016, this was their second Superbowl appearance in two years. On February 2, 2014, Manning led the Broncos onto the field at Metlife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ, to do battle with Russell Wilson and the Seattle Seahawks in Superbowl 48. In 2014, however, the end result was very different from 2016.

On the very first offensive drive of Superbowl 48, Peyton Manning, one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, fumbled a snap that Seattle returned for a touchdown. Seattle never looked back, and for the rest of the game, the Broncos were steamrolled. The final score: Seattle: 43, Denver: 8.

This was a huge surprise to the football world. It’s not that the Seahawks were the underdogs — the Seahawks had the highest-rated defence in the league — but nobody expected such a blow-out. The Broncos had the best offence in the league by far. Peyton Manning had just had one of the best seasons of his storied career. The question on everyone’s lips was: “Can the Seahawks keep up with Peyton?” Nobody thought to ask if Peyton could keep up with the Seahawks.

The defeat was humiliating and the wounds were fresh. Peyton Manning had just played a record-setting season (he had set three single-season records for that season: most season passing yards, most touchdown passes in a season, and most four-touchdown games in one season) and had capped it off by losing the most important game of the season. How do you come back from that?

The answer, according to Peyton Manning himself, was self-evaluation. The first day back at the the Broncos training facility in Denver, Manning and the rest of his team watched the entire Superbowl game on tape. Multiple times. No, they weren’t reliving the defeat, they were watching themselves. Manning watched every single snap, every pivot, every throw, every play that he did. And he learned.

That’s not all that Manning reviewed. Over the course of the 2013-2014 season, Manning threw 787 passes (regular season and playoffs combined). He rewatched every single pass. He wasn’t just looking at his throwing technique either; he was watching to see where his receivers lined up, where their defenders matched them, the routes his receivers ran, where his eyes went, which receiver he threw the ball at, and how the defence responded. After each throw he would ask himself if he threw to the right receiver or if there was a better option. What did he do right? What did he do wrong?

Manning was so dedicated to watching game film that he went high-tech, even mobile. He had a top-of-the-line home theatre installed in his home for the sole purpose of watching game film at home. If that wasn’t enough, he also had a tablet that he carried everywhere with him, so that he could watch game film whenever he had a spare moment. For Peyton Manning, the time he spent actually playing the game paled in comparison with the amount of time he spent evaluating his own performance.

In the 2013-2014 season, Manning threw 55 touchdown passes (the most ever thrown in a single season). Was he happy with that? No. There were missed opportunities that he identified on film where he could have made more touchdown passes. More game film to study, to learn from.

So what is the point of all this work? Two years later returning to the Superbowl and winning that all-important final game was the point. Armed with the knowledge, Manning was prepared for the work it would take to get back to the top. Now, he did not do it alone. If there is one sport that epitomizes the concept of team, it is football. There are eleven players on the field, and each one is vital to the success of the team. As a leader, Manning had to first evaluate himself and improve himself before he could ask his team to do the same.

Demaryius Thomas is a wide receiver and was one of Manning’s teammates in both the 2014 and 2016 Superbowls. He was once interviewed by ESPN about Manning’s film review habits and he said, “[Peyton] will always say if he thought he could have done something differently. He’s not afraid to just say it. … When guys see somebody like Peyton so accountable, you have to be accountable. You can’t help it. He’s Peyton doing that — how are you going to just duck your head and not admit what you did?”

As team captain and a leader, Manning focused on improving himself before improving his team. The rest of his team saw their leader, the 2013 Most Valuable Player and arguably the best regular-season quarterback of all-time, evaluating every single second of his own performance in order to improve. Such action inspired them to evaluate their own performance, to get better, to match their leader. And they did. And two years later they won the Superbowl and became the best football team in the world.

Dynamic Lessons

Leadership is not just about inspiring others; it is equally about inspiring yourself.

1. You are first and foremost responsible for yourself. If you want to succeed, you must take ownership of your actions. There are always ways for you to improve. If the MVP of the NFL and the single-season touchdown record holder can find ways to improve his game and spot places that he could have made more touchdowns, then you can find areas of your own performance that you could tweak to become better and more efficient.
2. When a leader voluntarily evaluates his/her own performance, the rest of the team will follow. Oftentimes leading by example is far more important than leading by instruction. You want your team to be able to evaluate themselves, so show them how it’s done.
3. It’s a team game. You might not be a football player, or even a sports fan, but you are probably working in a team. Teamwork means, believe it or not, working together. When you constantly evaluate yourself and improve yourself, you make yourself and your team better.
4. Failure and success are equally instructional. This is perhaps the most important lesson. Manning learned not just from his mistakes, but also from his successes. He had the most successful individual season he ever had in 2013, even though he ended up losing the Superbowl. Both his failures and his successes were instrumental in teaching him and his team the lessons they needed to learn in order to win two years later.

Have you ever taken the time to stop and evaluate yourself and your outcomes? What did you learn about yourself?

The post Case Study: Peyton Manning and the Value of Self-Evaluation as a Leader appeared first on Great North Dynamics.

One spring afternoon I was working alone in our front office and had to help an elderly gentleman who introduced himself as “the smartest person you will ever meet.” This customer told me that whenever he walks into a room, he is always the smartest person in that room. Apparently, all of his friends call him up whenever they have a problem they can’t solve, because he always has the answers.

Here’s a free tip:

The best way to get an arrogant person to like you is to let them brag about themselves.

Deep down, we all have an ego that loves to be stroked, so I let this guy go off about how much of a genius he is for over ten minutes before we finally got down to why he needed my help. It turns out that this self-professed genius had created a rather difficult legal problem for himself because, rather than follow specific instructions on a government form, he had knowingly chosen to put incorrect information on the form.

I explained the simple fix to this gentleman, and I advised him that though it might take a few weeks and a couple pages of paperwork, he would be able to rectify the situation without too much headache. The client’s response was that he was smarter than any bureaucrat, and he wasn’t going to do anything to fix the problem because it wasn’t his fault.

My client experienced a long period of difficulty due to his unwillingness to take advice from someone else; he wanted someone else to fix the problem, because he was positive that he was in the right. His behaviour is symptomatic of a deeper issue that has become prevalent today: an unwillingness to be taught.

People are often ready and willing to learn, but being taught is a different ball game. Learning is an action to be proud of because you are bettering yourself; being taught is a humbling experience because it means that someone else knows something that you don’t.

You must always be ready for someone to teach you something.

The willingness to be taught, or “teachability,” is an important trait for everyone, but it is vital for a leader. A leader should be searching for learning experiences in every situation.

1. You are not the smartest person in the room

No matter how much education you have, how well you scored on your exams, how much random knowledge you have, or how long you have trained in your field, there will be people who are smarter, have more education, more training, and better test scores than you.

It is important to have knowledge; after all, knowledge is power. It is equally important to not equate knowledge with prestige.

Just because you know something does not mean that you know everything.

Whether you are a high school drop out or a PhD, you have some knowledge that you can share with other people, but there is still so much that you can learn from other people.

One of my mentors and good friends, Mike Mannes, once said, “If you find that you’re always the smartest person in the room, you need to find new friends.” This is key.

Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you.

You should be seeking to learn new things, and you can only learn things from people who know things that you don’t. If you want to be a leader, your friends should be able to teach you stuff. Their knowledge might be about different topics than yours (maybe you’re a geologist and your friend is an English major), but they should be in a position that they can teach you.

Learning from friends or the people around you does not — and should not — have to be a formal affair. You can learn so much from people in general conversation, if you are open and willing to be taught. Whether they agree with you or not (more on this in point number three), you can still learn so much from someone just by listening to them speak.

Before you can learn from someone, you have to humble yourself and admit that there is something that they can teach you.

2. You can learn something from anyone

As much as you should be learning from your friends and the people you spend time with, you should also be learning every day from, well, anyone.

If you are willing to admit that you are not the smartest person in the room, the next step is to admit that, just possibly, the person who you consider to be less smart than you might still have something to teach you.

I have met too many people in academia who equate their degree or level of education with a position on the totem pole of intelligence. The higher your degree or level of education, the smarter you are, and if you have a higher degree of education than the next person, that makes you automatically smarter than that person.

The same is true, however, outside of academia. People with less education tend to discriminate against people within academia. They assume that academics are being brainwashed by the education system and that Regular Joe can learn far more by reading stuff on the internet than Doctor Don can learn at school.

The truth is that neither person is correct. Yes, you have to work hard and learn a lot of information to earn a degree in college or university, but that does not necessarily make you more intelligent than if you never went to school; it just gives you a wider breadth of knowledge. It is true that by going to school, academics are learning what other people want them to learn, but that does not mean that their education is any less valuable for it.

No matter how much education or self-led learning you have, you still have so much to learn. You cannot prejudice who you learn from based on your judgement of their intelligence.

Everyone can teach you something, even if it is simply how not to do something.

I was once volunteering with a group that was putting on a weekend leadership conference. A couple of hours before the door opened, the technical crew was doing a final check of the sound, lights, and visual aids. In their check they found a glitch in one of their programs that would not allow them to run one of their video files.

With the clock counting down, the tech team was working frantically to fix the glitch and get the program running. I know next to nothing about these sorts of errors, so I was observing but not getting involved. Standing next to me was a young woman who, like me, knew very little about technical errors, but she had seen this error before and she had an idea on how to fix it.

When this young woman suggested her solution to the tech team, she was told in a polite manner that it wouldn’t work and to leave the fix to the experts. For another twenty minutes these experts continued to work on the bug with no progress. Finally, after trying everything they could possibly think of, the tech team allowed this young woman to attempt her fix. Five minutes later, the program was debugged and the file ran perfectly.

Like I said, I am no technical expert, so I can’t tell you how this young woman fixed the error, but she did. Even though she had no technical training, she had seen the bug before and remembered how to fix it. The problem was that the so-called experts refused to believe that an untrained person could have the knowledge to fix such a problem.

We can all be like this team, blinded by our own knowledge, or at least our perception of our own knowledge.

Never assume that someone cannot teach you something useful.

3. Debate is about learning

With both an academic and a professional background in politics and political science, you can be sure that I have experienced my fair share of debates. I found that debates among university students — especially political science students — could get fierce. It’s easy to dig your heels into the ground and give up no ground when you’re engaged in a passionate argument.

I had a professor in university who loved debate and always prodded it along. If someone was on the fence, he would force that individual to take a side. The same was true of presentations: the professor would ask you to research a topic, present both sides of the debate, take a position in the debate yourself, and then open up the floor to the rest of the class for their ideas. More than once his classroom devolved into a chaotic maelstrom.

My professor’s tactics were not, however, designed to foster disunity; rather, he promoted debate and arguments because this forced the exchange of ideas. He would urge everyone to keep an open mind and actually listen to the opposing arguments. The purpose of his debates was not to convince the opposing side, but rather to learn or consider something they hadn’t before.

I am not entirely certain that my professor’s tactics were the best-guided, but the theory behind them was true:

You can learn far more from someone with whom you disagree than agree.

Imagine two people discussing a controversial topic. Both people have the same opinion on the topic. How much critical thinking do you think will occur? Not very much. Sure, one person might bring up a fact that the other person never knew, but with no one to counter their points, how are they going to learn? If two people discuss opposing views on the same topic, they will be exposed to arguments and facts that they may have never considered before.

I am not suggesting that you should enter a debate with the intention of changing your mind. In fact, I am suggesting that you should enter debates with the willingness to learn something from your opponent. There are very few debates in this world that have one side completely correct and one side completely wrong.

Be willing to learn from your opponent; their knowledge may surprise you.

Dynamic lessons

Teachability is one of the most important attributes of an upcoming leader. There are three things to remember in order to be teachable.

1. Remember that you are not the smartest person in the room. There are always people who are smarter and better trained than you are; be willing to learn from them. You should also surround yourself on purpose with intelligent people so you can continually learn from them.
2. No matter how intelligent you are, you can learn something from anyone, even someone you might consider to be less intelligent than you are. People can surprise you.
3. You might like to argue, but debate is about learning. When you exchange differing ideas with someone, be willing to learn from them, even if you disagree.

Share in the comments section about a time that you learned something valuable from someone unexpected. Or if you disagree with me, tell me why!

Speaking of becoming teachable, if you want to learn more about how to be a strong leader, improve your creativity, succeed in life and business, or just become a better communicator, make sure you check out my page of Leadership Books That You Should Read. I have a lot of good material there that you should read.

The post Why Leaders Must Be Teachable to Succeed appeared first on Great North Dynamics.