Mon • Mar 29th, 2010 • by Tom Nees • Comments 0
when you are at the mercy of what you cannot see
If you’ve read the bestseller “Blind Side: Evolution of a Game” by sports-writer Michael Lewis or seen the movie adaptation, you know the story. It’s about how Michael Oher, a black kid from Memphis – underprivileged but physically talented with academic potential – is discovered and eventually accepted into a private Christian school. With little chance of success on the football field or in the classroom he is adopted in by an affluent, evangelical, white family and tutored by the mother – a movie role for which Sandra Bullock won an Academy Award.
The title “Blind Side,” is a story of its own.
Lewis writes that after a career ending injury to Washington Redskins’ quarterback Joe Theismann in 1985, professional football teams knew they needed big, strong, fast left offensive tackles to protect the blind side of their right-handed quarterbacks.
Michael Oher fit the description and was spotted by scouts early. Out of high school he received a scholarship to play for Ole Miss and later drafted by the Baltimore Ravens where he plays—you guessed it, left tackle.
Left tackles are among the highest paid players in the NFL. On passing plays they must protect the blind side of the even higher paid right-handed quarterbacks.
We are more familiar with our own blind side when driving. Even with dual rearview mirrors there is a spot behind us that we can’t see. We’re always in danger of being blind-sided.
There is an application here to leadership as well life. A quarterback, Lewis writes, “is at the mercy of what he can’t see.” Aren’t we all?
In leadership coaching I occasionally organize a support team to meet with a leader for no other purpose than helping the leader succeed. It’s like having the support and protection of an offensive line including a good left tackle.
All of us, leaders included, have blind sides. Marshall Goldsmith describes “the success delusion” in his book “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.” Successful leaders, he has learned, are often blind to their own shortcomings. Big picture leaders are particularly vulnerable.
The best protection from being blindsided is to seek feedback from people who see what we cannot see. Without a good feedback loop the big picture can become an illusion.
Ever hear the comment, “I’ve got your back” – which means someone is looking out for you – protecting your blind side? We need protection from own delusions as well as from circumstances over which we have no control.
You can bet that Baltimore Orioles’ quarterback Joe Flacco is glad Michael Oher has his blind side.
Mon • Mar 8th, 2010 • by Tom Nees • Comments 0
three questions to help overcome adversity
Adversities hit leaders like earthquakes writes Lisa J. Marshall in “Speak the Truth and Point to Hope: the leaders journey to maturity”. Without warning everything is shaken. The ground shifts. Nothing remains the same.
“Getting fired, the loss of loved ones through death or divorce, a deeply felt spiritual experience, nearly dying oneself, having to fire people, even an organizational collapse of some kind . . . What all such experiences have in common is the sense of a tectonic plate shift, after which life is never quite the same.”
Noted writer and leadership development consultant John Baldoni has a video on “How to Bounce Back from Adversity.” (Baldoni’s book “Lead by Example” – has been chosen as one of the best leadership books in 2009) His video is worth a couple of minutes of your time. Leaders he says should debrief adversity with three questions:
One thing for sure – adversity will come. Bad things happen to good people. Leaders make mistakes.
It’s not what happens to you as much as how you handle what happens to you that makes the difference between success and failure.
After digging out of the death and destruction left by earthquakes in Haiti and now Chile, leaders there are asking the questions – what happened? how could we have done better? and, what have we learned?
In spite of their despair and grief, Haitians and Chileans are hoping for a better day—like a phoenix rising out of the rubble.
So it is with leaders who bounce back, overcome adversity, and never give up.
Mon • Mar 1st, 2010 • by Tom Nees • Comments 0
During the winter Olympics the announcer for the two-man bobsled competition explained that the pilot must not allow himself to be controlled by the track. I wondered about that. The track is a given. It doesn’t do anything. It’s just there. How can it determine the result?
I learned that if the bobsled pilot allows the track to control him it will mean defeat if not disaster. So it is with leadership. There are givens for every leader, circumstances they do not create yet must control.
Leadership like bobsledding requires skill—the skill to guide with a steady hand. Sometimes the givens are well known—like the bobsled course where teams have the opportunity to practice in advance. No surprises there. But even though they’ve been down the track many times, success requires focus, concentration and determination.
In leadership, as in life, we are not given the opportunity to practice in advance. And the givens are always changing—nothing remains the same. Discontinuous, unpredictable change is more often than not the course of life. When the course keeps changing we may find ourselves reacting, trying to hold on, out of control, unsure of the outcome.
Successful leaders take charge of themselves as well as their bobsled/assignment.
I’ve seen leaders lose it emotionally. They continue to go through the motions for a while but they have given up on the inside—like coasting down the bobsled track hoping to finish without overturning.
Others lose control of the bobsled itself. However talented, well trained and committed, through a lack of focus and discipline they allow the demands of their assignment to shape them. I have seen it often. The job shapes the leader rather than the leader shaping the job.
In Olympic competition split seconds separate the winners from the rest. Fortunately, in leadership as in life we don’t have to compete to succeed.
Nevertheless the leader in a bobsled is either controlled by or in control of the track.