You might be surprised to learn that I'm not a big reader of books. Yet, occasionally, I come across a book that flows when I read it and has big enough font that even a fool like myself can keep pace and not make too many mistakes when reading in my head.

Robin Sharma has a wonderful book called The Greatness Guide in which he scribes a series of 2 page lessons that he has learnt from his life in business and now in his highly successful personal development coaching business.

One of the books lessons is;

"Be a Rock Star at Work".

Robin got the idea for the chapter from a speech made by the late, great Dr. Martin Luther King who once observed:

"If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep the streets as Michelangelo painted, or as Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause and say 'here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.'"

Wise words, but what has this got to do with scoring runs?

One of the middle to lower order batters at Millfield School has a fantastic array of on-side shots and can be a destructive hitter of a ball. This week he has become frustrated that he is not able to strike the ball through the off side with such consistency or power as he can in his on-side game.

Instead of pulling his technique to bits, instead we had a 30 second conversation which went like this:

MG: Who is your favourite off-side player?

 

Pupil: Ian Bell – he moves so well and times the pants off it!

MG: Can you picture that image of Ian Bell easing the ball through the off side?

Pupil: Yes sir MG: Is that image crystal clear, in 3D?

Pupil: Yes sir, crystal MG: What I would like you to do is become Ian Bell for the next 5 minutes, see the way he moves in your minds-eye and then be him, is that OK?

Pupil: So, I need to do...

MG: (walking back to the bowling machine) I don’t want you to do. I would like you to be Ian Bell, OK?

Pupil: (smiling) OK, gotcha

The next time we conversed was 30 balls later at the end of the bucket.

The pupil giggled as I approached him as he had hit balls in a different way, in a way which freed his body to meet the ball with a full bat face, hitting down the line of the wider ball and accessing cover and extra cover more readily.

I would be a liar if I told you that all 30 came out the screws, yet it would be safe to say that the pupil got a different result and reported back that he felt good about his bucket of balls.

Since then, the boy in question has taken most of what he experienced in that session into 2 nets.

And all he did was pretend to be someone else.

No coaching of action, or "do this, do that". Just pretend to be the person who you admire and see what happens.

It worked for him, could it work for you?