The "Real World" vs Training, what you need to know.

I always forget how working out every day on a treadmill or elliptical is totally different to walking or running around the neighborhood roads or on a local trail. Although you think you are fit from that daily workout in air conditioned bliss, when you head out the door and hit the road or trail you find a completely different set of muscles that ache.

Well, it is the same when we head out from our offices on a listing appointment, or handle a negotiation. We can have role played and explored different scenarios, but it is only when you actually do it that you find if what you practiced works or needs tweaking and further exercise.

You might believe you are an expert and are fit and ready. But when you sit in front of a new client trying to build rapport and the husband sits there with his arms crossed and head down do you really discover if your skills work. You need to use different plans, sidestep this information you so carefully prepared or skip that part of your presentation. Talk less, ask more questions. Read the body language to find out if what one is saying is the same as what their partner's body language is telling you.

When you try a surefire win-win negotiation strategy that falls flat because you have a take no prisoners negotiator on the other side of the deal, what do you do next?

You need to find the way through the jungle and however many role plays you have done, however many days on the treadmill you completed, when you head out in the "REAL" world it is entirely different and you work those other muscles. You come back tired, and whether you finished the run or failed miserably you need to assess what you need to do to improve.

Likewise with any skill, a presentation or negotiation you need to assess afterwards if what you did got the results you wanted. If not, what needs changing, how can you adapt, what do you need to work on more.

And I am not sure about you, but I find there is always room to improve, we are never totally at a place where we can sit back and presume. When we think we are, we find that hill or that person out there that reminds us there is still some more work to do. What are your thoughts?