Whereas achieving standard results enables us to do a better job and have a better career, deep results are different. Deep results are about being better leaders. Of course, being a better leader will have a positive impact on your job and your career. But there is something else involved: Being a better leader means being a better person. Who we are as a leader and who we are as a person should be same thing. If they're not, we diminish both our leadership and person we are.

Look at it this way: Standard results are about "doing"; deep results are about "being". Our most important achievements as leaders are not just what we achieve but who we become in that achieving.

For instance, if we don't get standard results in our job, we fail in that job or at least in that particular aspect of job.

But in realm of deep results, such failure might lead to success if in that failure, we find a better way to lead, a better way to be better.

Here are some ways deep results differ from standard results.

--Deep results emerge over longer periods of time.

--Deep results encompass wider circles outside your job, usually impacting your family, friends, and relatives.

--Deep results are often not conventionally successful results. They can come in guise of failure.

--Deep results can't be quantified. They're usually a quality of living or being.

--Deep results are often not immediately apparent. Usually, you become aware of them after they appear and sometimes long after they appear.

--Deep results are formed in your inner life and choices you make over things you control, your opinions, aspirations, and desires.

--Deep results shape, and are shaped by, character. How does one go about getting deep results? There are many paths up this mountain. But one path is straight and steep and clear. In Part Two, I'll show you that path and provide examples of deep results in action.

2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

--Doug Collins, member of '72 U.S. Olympic team that ultimately lost gold medal on a disputed call to Soviet Union, describes dramatic moments at end of game. We're losing by one. The Soviets have ball. The clock's running out. I hide behind center, bait a guy into throwing a pass, knock it loose and grab it. A Russian goes under me as I'm going up for lay-up. I'm KO'd for a second. The coaches run to me. John Bach, one of assistants, says, 'We gotta get somebody to shoot fouls." But coach Hank Iba says, 'If Doug can walk, he'll shoot.' That electrified me. The coach believed in me. I can't even remember feeling any pressure. Three dribbles, spin ball, toss it in, same as in my backyard. I hit 'em both and got lead. I didn't know what I was made of until then." –deep results.

--Herb Rammrath, a General Electric client of mine in late 1980s, told me this. "I was a young Naval officer reporting with many other new sailors aboard an aircraft carrier. The captain met us in a formation on flight deck. He shook my hand and went down line greeting many other sailors. I didn't think anything of it until several weeks later when he passed by me in a passageway. He said, ‘Hi, Herb!' I never forgot that. He remembered my name despite fact that he had met scores of new sailors that day. It's made a tremendous impact on me till this day." –deep results.

--Seeing abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison dragged with a rope down a Boston Street, Wendell Phillips became so outraged that he joined abolitionist movement and became one of its most effective activists. –deep results.

Many people go through their careers ignorant of deep results. But when you view your career as a whole, don't you think that ultimate yardstick of your life should be deep results? Deep results are not about getting but giving, not about doing but becoming, not about material accumulation but about enrichment of human relationships. From now on, when thinking about getting results in your jobs and your career, think too of deep results you should achieve.

2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.