Stickability: The importance of consistency

“It’s not what you do, it’s how many times you do it” - Gary Morgan

In my role as a coach, I see so many people try something once without success and then quitting. In January, the gym that I attended was packed with lots of new faces but, come February, it was the usual faces still there as the new starters had no doubt already quit.

I see it with people that want to lose weight: they watch what they eat, count all the calories, so on and so forth. It seems that, as soon as they realise the full extent of the task that is in front of them, they quit.

I see it in leaders that explain something once to a member of their team and wonder why it doesn’t get the result they hoped for, so they give up. I see it when leaders want me to run one training session (I call this ‘one dip’ training) for their team and then expect massive transformation. You see the thing most leaders forget is that “It’s not what you do, it’s how often you do it”. It’s about consistency or, as I call it, stickability.

What is Stickability?

Stickability is the ability to stick to a goal or task regardless of the difficulty. People who possess the quality of stickability achieve goals such as developing team members, business growth, weight loss, getting fit, etc.

Leadership and Stickability

Great leaders have the ability to do small things on a consistent basis; for example, they will go to the gym 3 or 4 times a week for 30 minutes, whereas those that don’t have stickability may go to the gym once for 2 hours, wake up in the morning aching, and never go back again because of the pain. Leaders that have stickability understand that they need to communicate with their team little and often. They also understand the importance of investing in leadership, sales, or customer service training and coaching programmes rather than a ‘one dip’ approach to training.

Those with stickability know that if they stick at something, they will eventually get results. They don’t necessarily know when, but they know that they will.

Helping your Team Members to Develop Stickability

Even when leaders have stickability, it doesn’t necessarily equate to their team members automatically acquiring it by association. In fact, one of the challenges many leaders need my help with is helping their team members to learn the quality of stickability. They often say: “If I can stick to things then why can’t my team”. The simple answer is they just haven’t learned how to yet. I have helped many individuals that work in leadership, sales, and customer service to learn the skill. Below are just three of the many ways that I use to help them learn stickability:

1.  Identify a compelling goal – This needs to be a goal that, when they see themselves reaching it, it really excites them. It needs to be so compelling that they will stick to it even when they have setbacks.

2.  Read self-development books – Reading books is a great way to develop oneself whilst at the same time learning stickability. Some of the books that I have suggested they read are ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’ by Susan Jeffers, ‘You are badass’ by Jan Sincero, ‘The miracle morning’ by Hal Elrod, ‘7 Habits of highly effective people’ by Stephen Covey, ‘The power of now’ by Eckhart Tolle, ‘Eat that frog’ by Brian Tracy and ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff’ by Richard Carlson.

3.  Accountability – I use this along with reading self-development books. I ask them to read a minimum of a paragraph of the book they are reading per week and to then send me a brief review of the what they have read and anything they have applied. This helps them to get in the habit of sticking to something to its completion.

Leaders and individuals that work in sales or customer service and apply the above soon learn that “It’s not what you do, it’s how often you do it”. Just like many others have learned.

If you would like my helping in either developing stickability for yourself or your team then please message me here on LinkedIn.

Thank you for taking the time to read my article.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Gary.