Who's helping you to succeed?
Episode 15 of Part 1 of our Introduction series: Setting the stage for success.
Habits: Stretch | Ongoing learning
Skills: Relationships | Communication
Description: This episode introduces the importance of looking for support or help from others when it comes to achieving your biggest goals. We discuss the benefits of coaches, mentors and more, and why they are important to achieving whatever success you want.
Suggested student exercise
Where do you need help and who could you turn to?
Ask students to review their list of areas that they’d like to improve in from the last episode (Episode 14 - What exactly is perfect practice?)
Then, next to area for improvement, list as many people that they could turn to for help in getting better.
If they can’t think of a person they know who could help, think about someone who it would be good to know who could help. For example, if you wanted to get better at cooking, it would be good to have a chef as a mentor. Try to be as specific as possible, for example, if you wanted to be great at cooking Italian food, you might list – ‘A respected Italian Chef’ as a possible mentor or source of help.
How this lesson might be applied in the classroom
This episode introduces the idea that no successful person has reached the top of their field without help from others along the way. Whether through coaches, mentors, bosses, colleagues, trainers, nutritionists or physicians, every successful person has needed support and guidance. As a result, reaching out for help should not be seen as a sign of weakness or failure, but rather a smart move to help any individual achieve a desired outcome.
Prompts for classroom discussion include:
Can you think of a time when achieving something would have been easier if you'd asked for help?
Can you think of a time when you didn't achieve something but might have if you'd asked for help?
What thoughts come to minds when you think of asking for support to achieve something?
When you think of something you want to achieve, can you easily think of someone who could help you?
If you can't think of someone to help you, do you know someone who might help you think of a good person to help you?
If you can think of someone to help you – what might stop you from asking them for help?
What would you do if you asked someone for help and they said no?
Some specific discussion points
Discussion of any literary works, historical figures, or current events featuring prominent individuals offers an opportunity to discuss the specific support that well known individuals have received from others. There is also an ability to consider many of the well worn quotes from business leaders who exclaim the virtues of 'building a great team' or the importance of 'getting the right people on board'.
Some possible questions may include:
Why do you think getting help is so important?
If you receive help from someone to achieve your goals, does it make the achievement any less impressive? Why/Why not?
When thinking of a successful person, can you think of any specific people they might have to help them?
Why do you think that people who are the best in the world at what they do still have coaches or trainers?
When do you think the best time to get support is?
What do you think are the main reasons people don't get support?
How could they overcome these barriers?
Discussing the quote from this episode:
"Personal relationships are the fertile soil from which all advancement, all success, all achievement in real life grows." — Ben Stein
Possible areas of discussion may include:
Do you agree with this statement? Why/Why not?
Why do you think the Passion Arena team chose this quote instead of one about mentoring or coaching?
What it it about 'personal relationships' that make them so important to success and achievement?
What areas of life do you think people need personal relationships to help them with?
Please let us know how we could improve this episode?
We're always keen to hear how our work can be improved. If you can think of anything we can do to improve either the delivery of our content, the content itself, the exercises, or our guides to how the lesson can be applied in the classroom, please let us know.