The podcast episode discusses the concept of the "Tale of the Tape" in boxing and how it can be applied to life and work. The Tale of the Tape refers to the measurements taken of a boxer before a match, which can indicate their strengths and weaknesses. The host shares the story of Muhammad Ali using his knowledge of his own strengths and his opponent's weaknesses to devise a winning strategy. The lesson is to understand one's own strengths and weaknesses and to strategically partner with others to achieve success. It emphasizes the importance of self-awareness, knowing when to step up or step back, and creating symbiotic relationships.
Hello, hi, welcome to this week's installment of the Dirty Chai Podcast with Cheo, the podcast where we talk about holistic success professionally and personally, because if it's not all-round success, this is really success. And today's episode is called The Tale of the Tape. For those who have followed me since my Career Tuesday days, you'll remember that I have talked about this before, but I also think that it is important enough for it to have its own episode here on the pod.
The Tale of the Tape is something I came across in Steve Harvey's book, Things Like Success, Apps Like Success. Steve Harvey has surprised me with his insights on social media, on YouTube, in his little motivation snippets. They've taught me a lot. And because I'm such a huge fan of his, I've heard a lot of the stories that he has to tell. And yet the story about the Tale of the Tape was a huge surprise to me in his book.
I had never come across it anywhere else. Steve is a boxing enthusiast, something I should probably take more of a keen interest in now that I find myself hosting the occasional stakeholder table at a boxing event. It is really quite disconcerting to watch people who've never met have no issue with each other beat each other up for fun. But anyway, that's not the story today. So the Tale of the Tape in boxing terms is the measurements that a boxer gets taken before a match.
So they'll take measurements of his arms, of his waist, his legs and ankles, etc., etc. And for the novice like me, that means nothing. But for the experienced person, the person who knows the boxing industry, the tape and its measurements tell a story that allows that person who knows what they're looking at or what they're hearing to make an assessment of whether or not that person is likely to win. It's remarkable, really. So the Tale of the Tape is essentially, do these measurements tell me that this person is going to win this fight or not win this fight? So having explained what the Tale of the Tape is, then Steve goes on to talk about a fight that is famous in boxing circles.
The fight was called, dubbed, the Rumble in the Jungle, and it was a boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. Muhammad Ali was the reigning champion. He had been champion for a while. And he was, for all intents and purposes, if commentators, etc., were to be believed at that time, on his way out. So he was the outgoing champion. George Foreman was the new hot kid on the block. He was super fit. All the statistics, the Tale of the Tape, as far as George was concerned, said to all the people who were assessing this match, to all the pundits, and to all the people who were likely to bet on the match, that this was going to be George's fight.
So Muhammad Ali went on to use George's Tale of the Tape to devise a new strategy that he had never used before. Because Muhammad was known for floating like a butterfly, stinging like a bee, very high energy attack, very high energy kind of game plan. For this particular fight, Muhammad came in and hung back on the ropes for the first eight rounds of the fight. It was a bizarre thing, and honestly it looked like the former champion was going to go down in sad defeat.
Not even putting up a fight, he would just hang back on the ropes, and George would come in and hit him hard, hit him hard, hit him hard. And when George would step back to take a breath, Muhammad would hit him with a punch or two, in that little window. At the end of round eight, George was getting tired, because you can only sustain high energy for a while, and boxing is a high intensity exercise. So at the end of round eight, George was getting tired, and he had more points, because he had landed more punches.
But what was interesting is, Muhammad had fewer points, but far more energy. And every time he had hit George, as he stepped back to take a breath, he had winded him and weakened him. So he did less, but he did it better. This is actually a concept from George McEwan's more modern book, Essentialism, in which he says, don't move an inch in a thousand directions, move meaningfully in the same direction. Do less, but do it better.
That's what Muhammad Ali did. At the end of round eight, in line with his strategy, George was tired, Muhammad came off the ropes, threw everything he had at George, and knocked him out. He shocked the entire world, he shocked the entire boxing universe, because the tale of the tape, as far as they had read it, was not supposed to end this way. The fight was not supposed to end this way. And it was a lesson, a masterclass, in what it means to harness the tale of the tape.
You see, a lot of us get caught up in situations, in hearing what could or couldn't happen, and we start asking disempowered questions. You see, when you ask a disempowered question, you can only get disempowered answers. So if Muhammad had looked at this and thought, my goodness, this man is younger, this man is this, this man is that, what am I going to do? Maybe I'm just going to go down, da-da-da-da-da, because this is the kind of thinking that lots of us fall into, because it's easier, and it makes sense.
If he had done that, he would have lost the fight. Instead, he asked empowered questions, knowing what this person's strengths are. How do I navigate that? What are my strengths? What are his weaknesses? And how can I use my strengths to attack his weaknesses? This is where, in sports, you often hear people say, experience will beat youth. And that is exactly what Muhammad did. He decided not to focus on what the tail of the tape was saying particularly about George's strengths, and to focus on what the tail of the tape was saying specifically about his strengths.
And then he used that to devise a strategy that would win out over George's. It's very important for you to know, in your professional space, personal space, life space, to know what your tail of the tape is. What are you good at? What are you bad at? What are you spectacular at? What are you mediocre at? When someone reads your tail of the tape, or when you read your tail of the tape, what kind of fight are you likely to win? When you look at your colleague's tail of the tape, what kind of fight are they likely to win? And I'll tell you what their relevance is.
You see, once you know what you're dealing with, you know how to harness your power and how to harness the power of the team to get an outcome that is beneficial to everybody. So a very important thing here, as much as you need to know what your strengths are, what you're good at, what your selling points are, never ever drink your own Kool-Aid. And to drink your own Kool-Aid would be Mohammed, for example, saying to himself, but I'm the greatest there ever was.
I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, da-da-da-da-da-da, without applying a strategic and honest mind to what you are actually dealing with. And that means you need to understand truly what you are excellent at, what you are good at, what you're moderate at, and what you're bad at. Not for the purpose of criticizing yourself, but for the purpose of understanding where you need bolstering, how to pick your partners, and where you can create the best and most effective level of symbiosis.
So getting to know yourself or knowing your tail of the tape looks like this. It means understanding your knowledge-based skills. What are your qualifications? What do you know about the area that you work in? If you think about, if I use myself as an example, I have a couple of degrees, I work in gambling. I understand the ins and outs of regulation in the gambling industry, I understand the ins and outs of dealing with difficult people in the gambling industry, I understand the ins and outs of talking to people a certain way, delivering difficult news, or explaining a difficult situation in a way that allows me to bring people with me.
What am I bad at? As far as knowledge and that sort of skill is concerned, admin and filing, and that is just as important. And that means I need to partner with a person or an assistant who excels at keeping track of all the things I solve. Because without those two things together, I don't actually succeed to the level that I need to. And that person who assists me without me also doesn't succeed to the level that they need to.
There is a symbiosis that is created that is mutually beneficial by understanding that I can partner with someone who is better at one thing than I am, or a couple of things, and they can partner with me where I'm better at the other things. And those two things together make magic. Then there's character-based skills. Understanding character-based skills also allows you to be in the right environment. It allows you to know when to step up and when not to step up.
You see, IQ is great, EQ is better. It's amazing how many people do not know how to read a room. It's amazing how many people do not know how to step back, how to lean in, how to exit graciously. As simple as how to resign from a job without breaking every relationship or burning every bridge, that is vital. Not because you want to use people later, no, but because there is a certain power in staying connected to people as you grow.
That is the real richness that comes from exiting places graciously and gracefully Once you understand your character-based skills and what you don't have, you can then work on bolstering your EQ if EQ is a challenge for you. If you have way too much EQ, but not enough IQ, then you want to have the EQ to recognize that maybe you should be studying a little bit more, that maybe you should be bolstering your qualifications in this way, that this is how far EQ can take you, and this is where IQ will be needed, or this is where you would plug a person that can create the symbiosis that we were talking about.
The third thing, which I've talked about in the first two, is partnering strategically or symbiosis. I've already explained this. So once you understand what your tale of the tape is, then you need to understand who on your team is vital, and what is their tale of the tape, and how do those things mesh together to create a beautiful woven cloth that produces results. Now, a very important thing of staying with this boxing metaphor is Floyd Mayweather is known for many things, bling, huge bodyguards, etc., but in the boxing world, he's known specifically for something called staying fight ready.
It's actually quite rare for a boxer to stay at fight match weight. Often when they don't have a fight on the horizon, a boxer will gain or lose weight, and then when they are scheduled to fight someone, they will then work to put on that weight or to lose it so that they qualify to fight the fight. Floyd Mayweather is particularly well known for staying in and around his fighting weight in general. What this translates to is he needs a much shorter runway to get ready, and he stays ready for an opportunity for a fight that comes.
What that looks like, what that translates to in the professional sense or in the career sense or in the life sense is don't lose touch with the tale of the tape as far as your industry is concerned. So you're working in a particular industry. Understand what's making it tick. What is going on? What is changing? How are your colleagues in different entities dealing with the same thing? How are the people in your position growing or not growing? I'm using examples that are pertinent to me because they are the most familiar, but you can adapt this to work with what you are good at.
How are people who are doing the same thing as you doing things? Look at the people who are succeeding and ask yourself what they are doing differently or what they are doing similar to what you are doing and what their weaknesses appear to be. Look at the people who are not doing well and ask yourself, what are they doing poorly? What are they doing well? What could they change that would make it work? Understand what you are doing and how it's fitting in.
Where are you pegged in your industry? That is on a macro scale. On a micro scale, it looks like understanding the projects that are pertinent to your work area, but more so that are pertinent to the success of the business. You want to be able to contribute to a conversation meaningfully at the drop of a hat. You see, there's nothing more powerful than the ability to engage with topics in your area of expertise at the drop of a hat.
It should be that if you are responsible for an area, you are so familiar with it that when you're in that management meeting or when you're in that executive committee meeting and that conversation comes up, you are able to say, this is what's happening. I have a friend in mining who's a mining engineer and she started working on understanding the green side, the green side of the industry and the evolution of the industry in line with the green policies that are coming in long before everybody else.
So that when their executive team started thinking, maybe we should start looking at powering things using green energy, she was able to jump in immediately and make suggestions and actually steer the conversation because she had stayed abreast of what was changing internationally and when the conversation was ripe in South Africa, she was fight ready and that raised her profile significantly. That is what you want to use the tail of the tape for as far as the industry is concerned.
So you want to know yourself well. You want to know yourself as far as your weaknesses are concerned. You want to know yourself as far as your strengths are concerned. You want to know what your personal tail of the tape is. You want to know what your industry tail of the tape is. You want to know what your partner's tail of the tape is. All of this, all of it translates just as easily into personal space, into relationships, into marriages, into friendships because those require investment to understand what the tail of the tape is all around and you'll be able to strategize meaningfully to develop yourself and to develop the people around you and to partner in development with other people and that is the power of the tail of the tape.
In talking about the tail of the tape, a little subtopic came up in my head and that is the subject of disempowered questions. There is no empowered answer that can ever come from asking a disempowered question and since that topic is not long enough for it to form its own episode, I thought I would quickly touch on it while we're talking about the tail of the tape because in dealing with the tail of the tape effectively, what you are actually being asked to do is consistently approach a subject matter, whether it's yourself, others or a situation, by asking empowered and empowering questions for the purpose of getting empowered and empowering answers that propel you forward.
We often underestimate the impact of the questions that we ask ourselves but as psychologists and authors alike have noted, the questions we pose can either disempower or empower us. Let's start by understanding what a disempowered question is and what an empowered question is. Asking disempowered questions focuses on the misery of the situation, focuses on the lack of power in the situation. See, asking disempowered questions is about attention to limitations, obstacles, negative assumptions and trapping yourself in the cycle of self-doubt and negativity.
I completely understand how this could happen. It's easier. It's easier and it's also, to be fair, what we've been taught. In the words of psychologist Martin Seligman, author of Learned Optimism, these questions reinforce our current beliefs and keep us stuck in a pessimistic mindset. They limit our potential for growth and development. And I often hear my peers who work in the same area saying the same thing and consequently making similar decisions. It's things like, oh, in this economy, things are hard.
In this economy, this, that. And the truth is, in recessions, a lot of millionaires are made in recessions, a lot of it, which means there is also a lot of opportunity in this economy. But to the extent the focus is on how terrible the situation is, it is very difficult to then have the ability to see how you could then become that next millionaire. The same thing was observed generally during COVID. Initially, it was with the retrenchments and a lot of negative things happened during COVID.
Let's not even begin to talk about the number of lives that were lost. It was a horrible time all around. It was also a rise of the fourth industrial revolution. It was also the time to move into new roles that had never been there before. It was also the time to negotiate hybrid work situations. It was also the time to present yourself as an alternative solution provider to problems that were popping up for the first time in that situation.
It was a time where people made a fortune from seeing those opportunities and jumping into them. And I'm not talking about people who stole tender money. We can break free from a disempowered cycle by shifting our focus to empowered questions. Now an empowered question ignites the spark of possibility. It invites solution. Carol Dwork highlights in her book, Mindset, The Psychology of Success, that asking empowered questions is what leads to a growth mindset where we believe in our ability to learn and improve.
As I've touched on in various episodes and in previous episodes, I've touched on how your brain works, on the reticular activating system, on your brain's ability to filter information in order to keep you sane. To the extent that your subconscious understands that what we are trying to do is stay stuck in self-doubt and negativity, it will quite literally filter out everything else so that you do not have the ability to spot an opportunity. What you then understand once you read books like The New Psychology of Success is understanding that an empowered question unlocks something in your brain.
It unlocks what I called in the previous episode, the ability to see red cards, right? Otherwise, you don't see them. It unlocks the ability to say to yourself, right, this is a crappy situation. What can I do about it? Rather than this is a crappy situation, I'm going to lie down and die. A disempowered question is, why is everything so difficult? An empowered question is, what can I learn from this and how can I overcome it? Who can I talk to? Who has overcome it? Where have I seen success like this before? Can I go there? Can I seek access? Can I talk to those people? Can I learn from them? A disempowered question would be, why do I always make mistakes? An empowered question is, what lessons can I extract from my mistakes to improve and grow? I remember getting frustrated with a perception of how I deal with email at one of my employers.
The most empowering thing I did was to stop because initially I got frustrated, got a little teary in private a few times, and then I thought to myself, what is it that these people need in order for them to stop perceiving me this way? They need to be assured that I'm receiving things and I'm actioning them. How can I give them that? And I did that. I created a framework that would provide that support. Even though my ego took a hit, my feelings took a hit, once I had done that, it took just a couple of weeks for trust to be fully restored and for people to start tipping out of the way so that I could do the work that I needed to do.
And I could easily have gone on and fallen into the, ah, these people trap, ah, da, da, da, da. It's easy and it's comfortable to fall in there, but I hope you see the difference. You see, an empowered question sparks curiosity, it inspires action, it paves the way for personal growth and for solutionist thinking. So as much as it's not a natural thing for most brains to lean in that direction, cultivate the habit of asking empowered questions.
You can draw inspiration from all the psychologists I've mentioned, read the books that I've talked about, and then you will be amazed at how the ability to ask an empowered question and the ability to understand and, and wield your tail of the tape can make you a superhero in the professional sense, in the personal sense, in the friendship sense, in the life sense. Thank you for joining me this week, and I hope this episode has been as empowering as intended, as educational as intended, as engaging as intended, because my calling is to collect information and to put it out there for those who need to receive and hopefully do something with.
And if this makes a difference or saves at least one person the amount of time it took me to read all of these books and put this together for you, then my purpose is fulfilled. Thank you for your time, and have a great week. Catch you next Tuesday. Oh, P.S. If you liked the episode, please leave me a rating, please leave me a comment, please talk to me, because every now and then that imposter syndrome hits me hard, and I'd love some affirmation.
That's one of my love languages.
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