Making Leadership Visible.

Leadership from the Sidelines #1

by tom on January 25th, 2012

Courtesy: Masters of Design

This past Sunday the AFC Champions, New England Patriots, and the NFC Champions, New York Giants, advanced to the Super Bowl. If a sports season is like a “year” in business, we can draw some parallels. In sports, winning games is a result of good coaching and great player performance. In business success comes from good leadership and great employee customer service. In sports, financial success … sales of tickets, concessions and merchandise … tracks winning games. In business, excellent returns come principally from product value or service delivery.

Alas, sports offers business another dimension that inspires winning games and that is the pursuit of “the ring”. At the beginning of every sports season, at any level, the quest ( translation for business: purpose ) is to become champions: division champions, conference champions, national champions, world champions … and for NFL teams: Super Bowl champions.

I believe team sports gives solid evidence about the power of purpose … the power of “why” that offers satisfaction beyond multimillion dollar player contracts (translation for business: compensation packages ).

The power of a winning vision, to me, is equally pronounced for the Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco Giants. In the wake of their losses ( each by the margin of a field goal ), none of the players groused about a missed assignment or their missed playoff bonuses. Instead they were focused on reasons for coming up short ( translation for business: lessons learned ) and an immediate post-game optimism for next season.

For “head coaches” in business it is important to personally communicate and commemorate the “winning” purpose and vision. For business leaders, what is your “super bowl”? And what is the payoff for your individual team members? Perhaps the power of your quest has to do with satisfying the innate human desire for competency and contribution toward a “championship” purpose.

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