 Broken PlatesI’ve had this picture in my mind for several weeks. Maybe I saw it somewhere, I don’t know. I’m not exactly sure how I will use it in the future, but I do know what it’s led to in the present. Let me describe it to you.
A juggler is on stage. The camera, my view, is directly behind him looking into the audience with the performer in the foreground. The auditorium is packed - standing room only. The cheers crescendo as the challenge of each trick grows evermore difficult. The naive on-lookers rise to their feet to celebrate the performers final display of amazing talent and skill. He makes it look easy, like all great performers do. The audience's applause is thunderous and brings a wry smile to the juggler’s face, which is now glistening with a hint of sweat. He bows, nods, and stands with his hands raised in the universal sign of victory. The camera holds for a few seconds to allow him to soak in the appreciation of his performance before spinning three hundred sixty degrees to offer the audience’s view. The performer, still front and center. As the curtains jerk open, a long, winding path is revealed. It’s a well-traveled path, worn like the path to your favorite childhood climbing tree. As you look closer, something along the edge of the path begins to come into focus. The path is outlined with thousands of broken plates. The plates evoke different reactions from the two participants in the picture, the juggler and the audience. The juggler pays them no mind, gives them little attention. His acceptance of them conveys an expectedness that he had long ago willingly chosen the moment he made the decision to become a great juggler. The audience, on the other hand, is taken aback. The messiness is a surprise, even disappointing to some. They prefer the polished, flawless performance without having to acknowledge all the failures it took to get there. I think we’re much better at assuming the perspective of the audience than that of the performer, personally and as a leader. Why Should We Care? Before we approach the topic of the plates, we all need to embrace that we are on center stage in our own lives. We’re not audience members, we’re the star. Some people act as if they deserve to be the lead character in someone else’s story. And others are simply unwilling to assume the responsibility of standing center stage in their own performance. Once we’ve embraced that, once we fully own our path and direction of life, only then are we able to shift from the perspective of an audience member to the performer. We’re not the only ones with a mess behind the curtain. Every single person that has ever done something they would deem extraordinary has gotten to that point on a path littered with broken plates. Social media loves to act as if the performing version of the juggler is the only one that exists. It’s not. And, not only that, we shouldn’t even want it to be. To know that the excellence we watch in the World Cup or Olympics is tied directly to ten thousand failures gives us hope. So when the plates keep breaking on our own path, we don’t panic. We realize nothing is wrong with us, there’s just more plates to be broken on our path. Every leader worth following has a trail of broken plates behind them. The good ones just stopped being embarrassed by it. They know the mess isn't proof they failed. It’s proof they haven’t. The trail is their real resume, not the bogus page everyone hands to their potential employer. Those same leaders also realize it’s their job to help their people appreciate their broken plates and to keep breaking them. It’s easy for a leader to want perfection from those they lead, dismissing the need for all those broken plates along their path. The real danger is believing you're supposed to have a clean path. That belief is what keeps people from ever walking on stage at all. When it comes to excellence and growth, safe is one of the surest ways to not get it. REAL TALK - Action Steps Embracing failure and struggle is easy to say, but very difficult to do consistently. But, no broken plates means no standing ovation. Here are a few ideas to help you lean into it a little more.
You're not seeing the whole show, game, or performance. You're seeing the part they want the public to see. Go build your own pile of broken plates. It's the only path that leads to a center stage worth standing on. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!
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 Threshold MomentsThere’s a stillness about the end of something significant. It’s not an emptiness or a relief, but something a little more personal. It’s the feeling of standing at the edge of what was and what’s next, with just enough space between them to look around.
There are hundreds of examples to point to, but Lou Holtz’s departure from Notre Dame is the one that stands out to me. When Holtz resigned from Notre Dame in 1996, he was leaving one of the most storied programs in college football history. It was a program he had personally rebuilt from mediocrity into a national champion. When he arrived in South Bend in 1986 the team had been just 5-6 the year before. Eleven years later he left with a 100-30-2 record, a national title, and the pride of returning the program to national prominence like it was supposed to be. What's easy to miss about this moment is what it called of Holtz personally. It required him to stop long enough to see the moment clearly. To look back at the discipline, the decisions, the relationships, and the standard he had held. To recognize that all of it had led him to exactly where he was standing. Not by luck. Not by circumstance. By Process. Threshold moments ask just that of us. They ask us to pause long enough to be grateful for how we got there - the process we have chosen. Why Should We Care? Most of us blow right past threshold moments. That’s the way of the world. We finish the season and immediately start planning the next one. We hit a milestone and immediately recalibrate toward a bigger one. We close a chapter of life with one foot already in the next one. Society’s culture calls it drive and rewards that kind of momentum. And, sometimes, rightly so. But just as often push onward is merely avoidance masked as ambition. The threshold moments like the end of a season, a graduation, a resignation, a promotion, or a wedding are invitations. They are asking us to stop and take inventory. Less of the outcome, and more of the process. The choices we made when no one was watching. The relationships we built before we needed them. The standards we held when it was inconvenient. Those things didn't just show up at the threshold. They were built along the way, day after day, long before we arrived at that moment. The uncertain excitement about what comes next is real. But so is the foundation underneath it. A threshold moment is where those two things meet. The leaders who pause long enough to feel both are the ones who step into the next chapter with something solid beneath their feet. They aren't starting over. They're building on. For leaders, this doesn’t just apply to our personal lives. Our people are standing at thresholds too and most of them don't know what to do with it, so they press on. They feel the weight of it and the pull of it but race past because nobody slowed them down long enough to honor it. That's part of our job. To help them stop, look back, and recognize that the process they've lived is exactly what they're going to draw from next. How or why would they repeat it if they aren’t aware and appreciative of it? REAL TALK - Action Steps Threshold moments don't slow down on their own. They require intentional leadership of yourself and for those you lead. Here's how to start the slow down.
Your process always leads somewhere. A threshold moment is simply the place where you finally get to see it. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!  Joy > HappinessJim Collins immortalized James Stockdale in his book, Good to Great, with what he called the Stockdale Paradox. Collins described it as the ability to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, while never losing faith you will prevail in the end. It went beyond optimism. Faith and hope are foundational in the Stockdale Paradox. There must be a certainty that something better is coming, even if you can’t see it yet.
Stockdale was a Navy fighter pilot who was shot down over Vietnam in 1965. He was held as a prisoner of war for seven and a half years. In that time he was tortured dozens of times, lived in complete uncertainty with no idea when or if he would ever be released, and no idea if he would even get out alive. What kept him going wasn't optimism or circumstances eventually breaking his way. Good days were hard to find. But something deeper and more durable were at play for Stockdale. Believe it or not, it was true joy. I know, I know, it's crazy to attach joy to time spent as a POW. But joy, as Stockdale understood it, was not the absence of suffering. It was the presence of the unshakeable belief that this is not the end of the story. And, he had it in spades. Stockdale separated what he couldn’t control, like the cell, the torture, and the uncertainty, from what he could control like his identity, his values, and his hope. He held both truths at the same time and that tension, brutal honesty paired with unbreakable hope, is what allowed him to survive. Why Should We Care? Most of us are chasing happiness. And happiness obviously isn't a bad thing, it's just fragile. It's a byproduct. It shows up when things go your way and disappears when they don't. It's tied to the scoreboard, the outcome, the circumstance. Happy when we win. Happy when we're recognized. Happy when the plan works. The moment things go sideways, happiness goes with it. That's not a character flaw. That's just what happiness is. It was never designed to carry the weight we put on it. Joy is different. Joy isn't circumstantial. It's foundational. It doesn't need a good day to survive. It lives underneath the good days and the bad ones. And the thing that feeds joy, the thing that brings it to life even in the worst circumstances, is hope. Not wishful thinking or naive optimism. Hope is the deep, settled conviction that there is meaning in the struggle and something worth pressing toward on the other side of it. For leaders, your people are in the cell with you. They feel the certainty, or uncertainty. They feel the pressure. They watch what you do when the plan falls apart and the scoreboard doesn't cooperate. If all you can offer them is happy thoughts, it will last until the next hard thing shows up. And there will always be a next hard thing. But if you can deal them hope, you've given them something that survives the circumstances. And hope is always an option, you just have to choose it. REAL TALK - Action Steps The gap between a happiness-chasing leader and a hope-dealing leader is significant and your people feel it. Here's where to start closing the gap.
Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!  The Cost of NoPat Tillman understood it as well as anyone who has ever lived that I know of.
In May 2002, Tillman turned down a three-year, $3.6 million NFL contract offer to enlist in the U.S. Army with his younger brother Kevin. Tillman was 25 years old and the starting safety for the Arizona Cardinals. He had just set the Cardinals record for total tackles and, by every external measure, was a huge success and on his way to stardom. For Tillman, this wasn't the first time he said no to more money. In 2001, the Rams had offered him a five-year, $9 million contract. He turned it down to stay with Arizona. The Cardinals were the team that drafted him and we wanted to stay out of loyalty, he would later say. Think about that. He said no to $9 million before he said no to $3.6 million. He drove a beat-up truck to a facility full of guys who'd just signed multi-million dollar contracts. He read books in a locker room where most guys were watching their own highlights. He had never fit the mold. He was good being different. Those who knew him best said Tillman had values that could not be compromised. He refused to let the world negotiate with them, no matter the price tag attached to doing so. Although he never offered reasons for his decision to enlist, his actions were enough explanation. He knew what success looked like to him. He lived by it. Society didn't set the definition. He did. Why Should We Care? The night before my daughter's wedding, I received a text from Sherri Coale. Coach Coale, while she is a legendary hall of fame coach, has become a trusted mentor on all things coaching and life. Her perspective shaped in equal parts by humility and wisdom: What a day. Your gift for putting family first. Enjoy every single second. Congratulations. I've been turning that over ever since. It made me think about all my no's. The career advancements I dabbled with, was on the verge of taking, but ultimately didn't chase. The opportunities I personally wanted to tackIe, go all in on, but for some reason chose not to pursue. The trips I didn’t make, hobbies I didn’t take up, and social gatherings I skipped out on have all made a lap through my mind in the last few days following my daughter’s wedding. At the time, every one of those decisions came with a cost, as they all do. The world is loud about what success is supposed to look like. The title. The income. The popularity. It has a way of making you feel the gap between where you are and where it thinks you should be. The pressure is real and will slowly, subtly start writing your definition of success for you if you let it. The most dangerous version of this is the slow drift away from who you know you want to be. The gradual recalibration of your values toward whatever the room is rewarding. You don't wake up one day and decide to stop living your priorities, like family. You just keep saying yes to a few more things that cost you a little more time. Until one day you look up and the life you're living doesn't match the one you said you wanted. Defining success on your own terms isn't a one-time decision. It's a daily one. It requires knowing what you actually value, not what you're supposed to value, and then being willing to pay the price of the no when those two things conflict. The no is never free. But neither is the yes. I’ve often asked myself, if I would’ve changed just one of those choices would my whole life be different? Would the life of my kids have gone differently? And, now I think I finally know the answer: Absolutely. Different doesn’t necessarily mean better or worse, but it surely would be different. The world is a lousy mentor. I’m convinced the fastest way to make a mess of things is to make decisions based on what you think the world wants and deems successful. No matter how loudly it shouts, the world doesn’t know. You do. It’s just a matter of whether we have the clarity and conviction to live by it. REAL TALK - Action Steps Stop negotiating your definition of success with the world. Building that kind of clarity takes intentional work. Here's where to start.
Where are you with your definition of success? Are you living it or are you saying ‘yes’ to things that do not align with it? Are you slowly allowing the world to rewrite it for you? Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here! |
About bcI'm a teacher, coach, and parent seeking excellence while defining success on my own terms. Archives
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