Inner Space Cavern is located in Georgetown, Texas. Discovered accidentally in 1963 by the Texas Highway Department, it is an impressive natural wonder. My family and I visited it while on vacation. We had a good time being toured for 75 minutes, walking over a mile while 70 feet below the earth. It was a typical family vacation-type experience, except for our tour guide. She was boring, but she wasn’t. She was monotone, yet interesting. Before I knew it, I was not-so-subtly typing notes on my phone about how she was pulling this off.
My experience that day in the caverns was an intriguing reminder of two things:
1) Excellence is all around us, and fascinating displays of excellence can come from outside of your industry or expertise. My industry is education and my background is a variety of leadership roles in that context. Demonstrations of excellence by schools, superintendents, principals, and coaches are easy for me to observe. But, displays of excellence by chefs, artists, hotel receptionists, and in this case a tour guide are fascinating. Their displays of excellence have a way of unlocking creative perspectives of how I can be more excellent in my chosen field.
2) Excellence is always up to the individual. I wrote about 8 advantages that everyone has and how they can be used for excellence here. Too often, we associate excellence with resources. What we ought to do is associate excellence with resourcefulness. Few people that are doing great things, had anything handed to them. In many instances, those who have lots of resources at their disposal collect those resources throughout their efforts to be resourceful. It is in our confusion about this paradox of excellence that we create stereotypes and prototypes of what it should look like. In the case of this particular tour guide, she was not constrained by the stereotype that tour guides need to be fast-talking, highly engaging, pseudo-used car salesmen. Excellence does not need to be handcuffed by a stereotype or even a prototype. As I used to say to young high school basketball players who were clamoring over which NBA superstar’s number they would wear on their jersey (‘I want Lebron’s number!’, or ‘I want Steph’s number!’)…
‘The number doesn’t make the player. The player makes the number.’
It was a blistering hot day in central Texas and here’s what a seemingly boring, monotone Inner Space Cavern tour guide taught me about knowing excellence while I was 70 feet below the surface of the earth.
Know thyself and be thyself: Socrates is credited with saying, ‘Know thyself.’ Jordan Peterson, in his New York Times bestseller ‘12 Rules for Life’ included standing up straight and putting your shoulders back as one of the 12 non-negotiable rules of life. Do you know why? Those that really know and believe in their abilities maintain that type of posture. Our tour guide knew exactly who she was and had no intention of being anyone other than that. You know how I know? She was comfortably confident. There was no arrogance but there was no hesitation in her either. Her communication was clear, her posture strong, and her eye contact consistent. She wasn’t going to make anyone take a step back with a big personality, but she wasn’t taking a step back either. Insecurity was absent. Excellence is pursued most purely and effectively when it is not warped by insecurity.
Know the people around you: The group that she led that day was a typical eclectic group of vacationers. Toddlers, senior citizens, international students, and families like mine made up the group. Our tour guide didn’t treat us like fellow archeologists, or idiots. She tailored the information to exactly where we were, moderately interested observers. At one point, she made a call back to the main office to have a golf cart come down and assist an elderly tourist with getting back out of the cave. She also visited briefly with a family of four toddlers and asked them if they were okay with the tour moving along as they struggled in the back with their little ones. So much excellence is lost because very intelligent people don’t realize how their presence or words are impacting the people around them. Social intelligence, empathy, and sympathy are an undervalued part of excellence.
Know your material obsessively: It was clear from the opening tour stop that our guide knew her material. I don’t know if she was an archeology student from a local university or a college kid working a summer gig. What I do know is she could’ve talked a lot longer at each stop than she did. The telltale sign that she knew her material inside and out was the ridiculously dry humor she worked into each stop. She had a PhD in dad jokes. For example: when she pointed out a low-hanging part of the cave that looked like a potato chip and was almost touching the ground, she made sure to point out that the chip looked like it was about to be dipped in rockamole. Get it? She had at least a dozen of the sigh-inducing, eye-rolling jokes and she made each of them in a completely monotone voice. It was awesome. We were all buying it hook, line, and sinker. Excellence is knowing your material so well that you yield it like a surgeon’s scalpel, or get good at using it for dad jokes.
Know your process and execute it relentlessly: Throughout our 75-minute tour in the caverns, there was at least a dozen stops where our guide would point out different formations while providing scientific and historical facts. I am sure she had led the tour hundreds of times. The transition in and out of the stops, the teasers about the next stop, and her adaptation to the needs of the group seemed effortless. The first challenge of excellence is knowing your process. The second challenge, often the greater one, is to execute it well time and again. Consistency in executing a well-developed process is a superpower. It is what Daniel Chambliss called ‘the mundanity of excellence’. It is a social science research article and it is an amazing read about how boring the process of excellence can be. The excellence of our tour was founded on a well-planned and well-executed process. Do you know your process? Do you execute it with relentless consistency?
Know the expectations and exceed them: My father’s preferred definition of excellence is ‘making a habit of doing a little bit more than what is expected.’ It’s an interesting thing when expectations are exceeded. It has its own gravitational pull or momentum. Our tour was like that. As it went along, the tour guide exceeded expectations in small tangible ways, and the energy of the group changed. We were all strangers, but we all knew we were all enjoying our experience because it was exceeding our expectations. It was as if the excellence being demonstrated by the tour guide was bonding us together. I have seen this play out in a wide variety of settings. One individual, knowing the expectations and exceeding them, had a galvanizing effect on the group.
And this takes me back to one of my opening points. You are individually responsible for your excellence. But, you can also motivate others to pursue excellence through your own pursuit. If you know excellence chances are others around you will know it too.
Keep on keepin’ on, friends!
‘Bite Down and Don’t Let Go’ is a collection of writings on relentlessly leading yourself and others well. Read about it more here.
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