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.