Klinsmann: High Expectations No Excuse

Reacting to an abysmal World Cup, the BBC wasted our licence fee with Gary Lineker’s pitiful Can England Win The Next World Cup. Whoever told the presenter he makes an investigative journalist needs to be shot.

Lacking coherent argument, structure or fully thought through recommendations, the only thing to be grateful for were the occasional glimpses into managing for success from an array of talking heads. The aforementioned link thankfully has a snippet from the best in this regard.

Spoken by Jurgen Klinsmann, there’s a snappy 138 words of wisdom from the German. For those who don’t know him, he’s a superstar striker from the 90s that went on to propel his country to an unfancied semi berth at their home World Cup in 2006, losing to eventual champions, Italy. It was his first ever management role.

“I think expectations or the word pressure is an excuse.

Because if you learn how to deal with your profession, with your job, then it’s no problem.

It’s actually a pleasure to have high expectations because it means you play a very good role in your profession, in your job.

You have now players, or the people within the environment of football, they only think about what other people think, write or say on television.

And that’s all not important.

If you ignore all that and you just focus on your job, on your game, then you have no problems with the fact there’s pressure or too high expectations.

I think actually you enjoy it far more.

And you need to enjoy your job no matter what you do, in what profession you are.

You need to enjoy.”

How applicable  are these sentiments to your sales pursuit? Shut out all the irrelevant noise, focus on your job and revel in any lofty expectation.