 Know Your ChickensIt’s April 2023 and we’re in Lissone, Italy. I’m coaching Team Ohio in the Jit Lissone tournament. Our team has yet to meet each other, let alone practice together. At this point, basketball is an afterthought. We’re just trying to get from the airport to the hotel.
The ride in the local taxi was like being in a real-life version of Mario Kart with another hundred cars on the road with us, a reckless driver as our guide, and everyone honking, waiving their fists, and shouting profanities. I was literally on the edge of my seat. Now at our hotel we connected with our host that would take care of the travel to and from the gym. He was a local also, but seemed much more … relaxed than our previous driver. Alberto is our guy and would become a highlight of the entire trip. He greets us with a handshake, a hug, and a hearty “Bonjourno!”. He was the Italy I expected, or at least hoped for. Alberto is clearly a seasoned vet. He is engaging with all eight of us in the van at the same time. Cracking jokes, carrying on conversations on his phone, navigating traffic, checking on our plans for the evening … and he’s doing it all without slowing down. It really is amazing. Then, Alberto takes the most memorable call of the trip. As he goes back and forth with a friend and is wrapping up the conversation, he chuckles and carelessly says (with his cool Italian accent quipped), “Ah, yes, I know my chicken!” I immediately think, chicken?! Too memorable to ignore, I ask what the phrase means. Alberto hesitates, searching for just the right English words to match, then replies: “Ah, you know, eh, very close; my chicken, very close. They your chicken, you their chicken; very close. You do anything for them. I know my chicken.” Why Should We Care? It was at this moment I began to wonder, who are my chickens? I’m lucky and have a family that is “very close”. They are my chickens. But, beyond that, identifying my chickens wasn’t so easy. I have a few, but it’s not a lot. And, I suppose that’s how it’s supposed to be. I mean, who wants too many chickens, right? To be your chicken, you must’ve seen the other person at their low point and chose to stay with them. You must’ve gone through some really difficult things together and grown closer as a result of it. You can never question their intentions. When good things happen, you are happier for them than you are for yourself. No distance is too far to drive and no time is too late or early. Time literally flies when you’re with one of your chickens. Even time apart evaporates as soon as you reconnect with your chicken - you immediately pick up right where you left off. Chickens are not best friends. The relationship doesn’t have the ups and downs of even the closest friendships. Think of them like the special forces for your foxhole. They energize you, lighten your mood, and guide you to see the best of yourself and others. I’m confident you have a chicken or two. Don’t take them for granted - take advantage of every opportunity to spend time with them. You’ll never regret it. REAL TALK - Action Steps If you’re struggling to figure out who your chickens are, I think I can help. If you’re in a relationship, I hope your significant other is one of your chickens. If not, well, that sucks - probably need to fix that. Here are a few ideas on singling out a few chickens.
Where we spend our time is a choice. We all have lives to live. But, when you have an opportunity to spend time with your chicken, don’t let it pass you by. You never get the opportunity back. 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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 The Limits of ControlWhen I began coaching over twenty-five years ago, control was my mission. I wanted to control our players, control the game, and control the opinions everyone had of me. Make no mistake, it was about me. Afterall, what does the need for control say if not, I know best?
It’s not that I hadn’t been exposed to a different way. My high school coach was not a controlling leader at all. He was incredible at empowering his players by asking questions, listening to the answers, then adjusting according to what he heard. I knew that’s who I wanted to be as a coach, but young-me was unwilling. Early in my career I roamed the sidelines, screaming instructions to the players on every pass and barking at officials on every call. I was willing to white-knuckle success if I had to. And, for a while, I did to some extent. We won a reasonable number of games - enough for other people to think I was a decent coach, which was all that mattered to me at the time. But, it didn’t last. It couldn’t. By the time my seventh season rolled around I was exhausted. I still loved basketball and I loved coaching, but I knew I couldn’t continue going about it the same way. Something had to change - either me or my job. I decided I was the one that needed to adjust. Why Should We Care? Along that same time, I started paying much closer attention to how some other coaches coached - not what offense or defense they ran, which had been my focus previously, but how they acted on the sidelines, how they responded after a mistake, and how they interacted with their players and officials. There was one coach in our area that I followed particularly closely: PJ Bertemes. He was a very successful high school coach by this time. His team’s always impressed me with their discipline and toughness. The other thing that stood out about PJ was his sideline demeanor. He sat, watched the game, and offered his insights when they were needed. There was no effort to control every play by his players or dictate the next call by the officials. But man, could he coach. His teams consistently maxed out their talent and overachieved. Clearly, the work had been done, the trust established, and the game plan mastered. As for the game, the outcome was surrendered. PJ had influence, he didn’t need control. As leaders, it’s influence we should be seeking, not control. Influence empowers those we lead. It has the potential to elevate them beyond their potential, far surpassing the contribution mere control would offer. Influence is scary though. Others must choose to allow themselves to be influenced. And, it’s not a one-time commitment. They get to choose every day. REAL TALK - Action Steps Growing our influence requires intentional actions. We are not influential merely because of our age or our title - I’m sure you can name plenty of examples to illustrate this point from your own life. Here are a few ways to magnify your influence on those you lead.
Control is cleaner, more simple, and feeds the ego. It’s also cold, transactional, and limiting. Influence is messy, complicated, and ego-free. It’s also warm, transformational, and … the only path to excellence. 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!  Volunteers v HostagesIn March of 2019, Pittsburgh Steelers’ coach, Mike Tomlin, was asked about the loss of star players Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell. Brown’s departure was a result of a trade, one in which many felt the Steelers didn’t receive nearly enough for given the Pro Bowl receiver’s stats. While Bell opted out of the Steel City for more money through free agency. Neither were amicable.
When asked about it, Tomlin got straight to the point. “We can’t do this with hostages, man. We need volunteers,” Tomlin said. “We need good players, good guys who want to be here and if guys can’t check those boxes, it’s probably best for all parties involved to go our separate ways.” Volunteers, not hostages. What a clear expression of the required mindset for teams to excel. Why Should We Care? Let’s consider the reasons most people volunteer: to support a cause they believe in, to help others, for personal fulfillment, to improve a skill, or maybe to give back. To state the obvious, when we volunteer we want to be where we are; we’re choosing that specific option over many others. That autonomy in volunteering is far more powerful than we want to admit. We can’t force people to volunteer. We control hostages. We can make them do whatever we want them to do. Hostages wanting, or not wanting, to be there, or to do what is asked of them, is irrelevant - they’re hostages. They do what we tell them to do. Hostages are there for our gain, not their enjoyment. It’s clear that volunteers give more than hostages. Not only do they give more, but it is given with more care, passion, intent, and love than a hostage will ever give. It turns out just wanting to be where you are is pretty important. As part of this volunteer, not hostage focus leaders need to understand we are not simply talking about physical location or presence on a team. While that is unequivocally true, the most common shackles of the hostage are applied to role identification. What part do I play on the team? Am I happy with it? Do I feel it’s important? It’s not enough that we want to be on the team. We must also want to be doing what we are doing for the team. REAL TALK - Action Steps Of course, our teams will always have people on them that are at varying ends of the volunteer - hostage spectrum. The best teams are always heavily bent towards the volunteer end. Here are a few ideas for filling your team with volunteers rather than hostages.
Tomlin said, “We can’t do this with hostages, man. We need volunteers.” The ‘this’ he is referring to is excellence. Accepting hostages is compromising excellence. 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!  Community & InconvenienceI love watching the Olympics.
Of course, I enjoy the mainstream sports like basketball and soccer, but they aren’t what make the Olympics so appealing. It’s all the other ones. The novelty of sports like badminton, ping-pong, and water polo are captivating. The dynamic between individuals and teams in sports like gymnastics and swimming is fascinating. The purity of track and field, mesmerizing. The physicality and athleticism of rugby, amazing. The Olympic games offer everything great about sport. Two areas that have stood out for me: the power of community and the inconvenience of obstacles. Clearly the Olympics pull the country together, unifying our support for a single athlete or team. But, they also turn a light on the support systems that have helped to elevate these athletes to an Olympic level. Clearly, they have not gotten here on their own and all parties are fully invested. If there’s anything more prevalent than the success of the athletes competing, it’s the quantity of their failures. From injury to foster homes, seemingly every athlete has overcome numerous challenges to be where they are. At some point in their journey, each stopped seeing obstacles and started seeing inconveniences. That’s a significant difference. Two very different aspects of the Olympics, but both critical in their arrival to this stage. Why Should We Care? Everyone wants to belong to something. Those aspiring for excellence, like the athletes at the Olympics, realize it’s not a want, but a need. Our community is our strength. Sometimes communities lift us up and sometimes they calm us down. Sometimes they highlight our strengths and sometimes they expose our areas of weakness. But, one thing is clear about a community - they are for us. They cheer, and cry, like each moment was theirs … because it is in a real community. The community makes the athlete just as much as the athlete makes the community. The teams we lead are exactly the same. Each individual we lead wants to belong to something - something special, where they’re doing work that is important, and they’re making a difference. Everyone wants to contribute to their community. I love a good comeback story as much as the next guy, but it seems like the media dramatizes everyone’s background into a rags to riches story now. What I’ve come to realize is that we’ve all had challenges and the degree of the challenge is secondary to our perspective on it. To an Olympic athlete, every adversity, regardless of its magnitude, has become nothing more than an inconvenience. Helping those we lead establish a resilience that thinks inconvenience rather than road block is paramount to our team’s success. REAL TALK - Action Steps Sure, there are hundreds of factors that play into the performance of an individual and team. The impact of each can be debated. What’s not debatable is the value of community and a grit, resilient mindset. Here are a few ideas to grow each:
We need others. We can’t quit. Sometimes we need others so we don’t quit. 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!  Patiently UrgentEvery season, the second week of practice, we do an exercise with our team that we call Two Strengths, One Weakness. It’s a lead into solidifying and clarifying roles, one of the most important aspects of any successful team.
Each player is tasked with sharing two strengths and one weakness for every member of the team, including the coaches. A significant level of trust is needed in order for this exercise to have maximum impact (I’ve found sixteen year old basketball players to be significantly better at this than their older counterparts). We take one team member at a time and share everyone’s strengths for that player followed by everyone’s weakness. As others are sharing, the teammate we are focused on takes notes then shares what he heard others say followed by his own strengths and weaknesses from his perspective. There’s a lot going on there that is foundational to our team. As a coach who has gone through the exercise each year for more than a decade, I’ve noticed a commonality for the feedback I receive. In my best years - best here does not necessarily equate to wins, rather maximizing our group - my strengths have always pointed to pushing and challenging the edges of what is accepted. My weakness, from the player’s perspective, is usually reported as impatience. I do recognize how fine that line is. At my best, I think I’m both urgent and patient. Why Should We Care? Excellence requires this balance. Patience leads to happiness and satisfaction, appreciation and acceptance. It combats the need for immediate results and leads to the fulfillment we long for in life that far surpasses the fleeting feeling of materialistic, comparison-based success. We are often fooled into believing that contentment is derived from achievement and accolades, when it is actually the result of patience in the process. It’s this consistent, deliberate work that enlightens us to the edges of our potential and where urgency comes into play. While urgency has a negative connotation, it calls for action. And, action is required for progress. We don’t float up stream. And, if we don’t paddle, all we’re doing is floating. Urgency encourages me to embrace change much quicker than the pleasure of contentment. Leaders need to keep this reality on the front of their minds and intentionally welcome adversity while operating with a bias for action. It's an opportunity for those who choose to view our struggles in that light. Confidence is a factor too, but confidence in what? Confidence in our ability to keep going, to be ok regardless of the outcome, to adjust our process as needed based on the results. A balance of patience and urgency bolsters confidence rather than eroding it. Now, if our confidence is tied directly to the applause of a comparison-based society, then I suppose we will neither be patient or urgent enough. REAL TALK - Action Steps Finding the balance between maintaining confidence while never being satisfied is the line we need to walk as leaders - challenge & support, champion & expose. Here are a few ideas on doing both:
It’s a fine line - celebrating current success while pushing forward in pursuit of growth, appreciating contentment with the result while constantly working to improve the process. But, it is the line leaders of excellence are willing to walk. 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!  Content v ComplacentJimmy loves his job. He looks forward to virtually everything about his daily duties because no situation is ever exactly the same. There are a few aspects of his current role that he doesn’t enjoy, but he realizes they are necessary for him to perform at the level he aspires to. Jimmy doesn’t watch the clock. Overtime doesn’t exist. He works until the job is done - and done to the standard he expects of himself. Jimmy looks forward to seeing his team every day. Learning from them, helping them grow, and having people who fill in for his weaknesses allow Jimmy to perform at a higher level than he ever could on his own. He and his team are always looking for a new edge, or angle, to stretch themselves. He loves what he does and who he does it with.
Jimmy is content. Johnny loves his job too. He looks forward to his daily duties and enjoys almost all aspects of his role, mainly because he’s comfortable with them. The ones he doesn’t enjoy he does anyway, usually without complaint. Johnny checks the clock every now and then, but he’s not ruled by it. He works until the workday is done, performing at the standard expected of him. Overtime does exist and Johnny does it when he has to. Johnny likes his team but most of the relationships have run their course and are nothing more than coexisting work partnerships. Johnny and his team believe ‘if it ain’t broke, then don’t fix it’ so they stick religiously to the way they’ve always done things. He enjoys what he does and who he does it with. Johnny is complacent. Why Should We Care? As you read through those paragraphs, there are subtle differences in Jimmy and Johnny’s approach to their work. Let’s take a little closer look at the differences. Jimmy and Johnny both love their jobs, but for two different reasons. Jimmy because he is consistently being stretched and Johnny because he is comfortable. For Jimmy it’s not really work, it’s what he does. For Johnny, it’s most definitely work - he’s good at it, but it’s still work. Jimmy works to the standard he expects of himself. Johnny works to the standard others expect of him. Jimmy sees the differences and unique contributions of his team. Johnny sees the similarities and limitations of his team. Jimmy is constantly stretching. Johnny is constantly shrinking. Contentment is misunderstood. It’s happiness and satisfaction. It’s appreciation. Contentment recognizes the benefit of the work, the value in the struggle and embraces them as a vital part of the road towards excellence. Contentment doesn’t push us to tire of these things, but further validates them as foundational in our success. Complacency does none of this. It takes the work and struggle for granted, looking to minimize them while still maintaining an acceptable level of performance. It wants to avoid struggle yet maintain success. Complacency diminishes the process while still desiring the same outcome. REAL TALK - Action Steps Ah, to avoid complacency and find contentment - that would be the goal, wouldn’t it? Here are a few ideas to guide you on that walk. Growing Contentment
Reducing Complacency
Contentment is a critical part of excellence while complacency has no place in it. Complacency is a thief of the soul, and contentment Robin Hood. 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!  Owning ItAs a high school athletic director, I had to hire and fire several coaches over my five year tenure. Both are difficult and bring their own unique challenges, but I always felt hiring was the more difficult of the two to get right. Firing was usually pretty clear. Oddly enough, there is one characteristic that shines a bright light on both scenarios - ownership.
Hiring is more difficult because you don’t know. You ask questions, check references, and observe behaviors; but at the end of the day you’re guessing. Of course, you are trying to gather information on a number of factors like knowledge, character, humility, personality … but, if you’re wise, a willingness to own all aspects of the position should be of the highest priority. I don’t want to make it sound like firing someone is easy. It’s certainly not, but it is often more clear than hiring. Like hiring, there are a number of factors to be considered when dismissing someone. I’ve found many of those factors to be coachable and not a singular reason for termination. One consistent exception is the willingness to own the situation - and there is no guessing needed. Just ask questions. If you get excuses and blame, there’s a good chance they need to go. If you can’t own it, you can’t lead. Why Should We Care? Let’s focus on two critical aspects of ownership that are paramount to excellence - impact and agency. Impact is the degree to which you affect someone or something. All of our impact is dependent on us believing that we matter - our presence, our thoughts, and our actions. It all matters. It makes a difference. If we don’t believe that, then what’s the point? We must own our impact. This is where everyone’s impact starts Beyond that, leaders that own their impact are aware of how their actions affect others. It’s not random, happenstance, or luck. Leaders that own their impact are intentional with every interaction. They believe a life could change at any moment. Agency is a sense of control - of our thoughts and our actions. Agency is also a belief in yourself to be able to handle any situation. If we have agency, we believe we’re going to be okay regardless of what is thrown at us. The situation doesn’t matter to leaders with agency. They will own it no matter what. They make it happen. For clarity, the opposite of agency is victimhood. People with a victim mindset have no belief in themselves. They are always at the mercy of others or circumstances. They own nothing. They are indifferent about their impact and unaware of their agency. Victims are allergic to owning. REAL TALK - Action Steps We can take a huge step towards taking ownership simply by eliminating a victim mindset. Take a look at the list below to see if there are any actions you could stop doing in your life that are encouraging you to think like a victim.
Leadership starts with owning your impact and agency. Unfortunately, for many, it ends there as well. It’s simple, not easy. Take full ownership of everything that happens in your life and things will stop happening to you and start happening 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!  Healthy DiscontentAccording to Mirriam-Webster, discontent is ‘the lack of satisfaction with one’s possessions, status, or situation; a lack of contentment’. While the definition suffices on the surface, I think it lacks some critical aspects when applied to leadership.
The three arms of discontentment mentioned are a little misguided. A lack of satisfaction with one’s possessions is frivolous, at best. You picked it or inherited or kept it. If you don’t like it, then get rid of it. It’s your possession. Why intentionally choose to be discontent around something you can literally rid yourself of? A lack of satisfaction with one’s status is simply a comparison with others. We need to eliminate any energy spent on concerning ourselves with other people’s opinion on our position or rank. Whatever you are, be a great one. A lack of satisfaction with one’s situation is ignorant. Your choices led you to the exact place you are right now. Being discontent with your situation is like eating Twinkies for breakfast and being upset about gaining weight. It’s not that complicated. Now, I get it. It’s not that you hate your possessions, you just want nicer ones. It’s not that you are completely disgruntled with your job, you would just like to be a little higher on the chain of command. It’s not that your situation is the worst in the world, you just wish it was better. It makes sense, but general discontentment isn’t going to help with that. We need healthy discontentment. Why Should We Care? Healthy discontent is centered on processes, not outcomes. Its disgust comes from the way something is done, not the result it produces. And, honestly, with the best in the world, it’s always present. It’s common for leaders, and people in general, to allow the results to be the trigger for creating discontent in the process. Unfortunately, the result is a lag measure … and lag measures make you late to the party. Lag measures are a measure of what has happened - past tense. Being discontent with lag measures is a waste of time. Instead, our attention needs to be directed to lead measures - those things we do that lead to the outcome we desire. It’s a measure of what is happening. Leaders on the path to excellence have mastered the dichotomy of healthy discontent. They are content with their possessions, yet striving to improve. They are not concerned with their status, but consumed with their impact. They are accepting of their circumstances, while owning the origin of them. Discontent is an unhealthy feeling tied to results that generates anxiety, frustration, and worry. Healthy discontent is a feeling married to the process that initiates reflection, evaluation, and constant change. REAL TALK - Action Steps Though I think we would benefit to consider applying the idea of healthy discontentment to most areas of our lives, here are a few areas outside the box to consider:
Discontent opposes all aspects of acceptance. Healthy discontent embraces acceptance of outcomes while challenging the process. Afterall, our lifestyle determines our life. 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!  Being SoftNassim Taleb’s book Antifragile defines antifragility as becoming more robust when exposed to stressors, uncertainty, or risk. One of Taleb’s talking points in the book is the difference between fragile, resilient, and antifragile.
A wine glass is an easy example of fragile. I don’t own any wine glasses, but when I pick one up I’m always worried about breaking it. In my mind, one mishap and the glass will shatter. I’m careful with them and, honestly, don’t really enjoy being around them because of it. A plastic cup, on the other hand, is more in my comfort zone. It’s a good example of resilience. If you drop a plastic cup, which makes up about ninety percent of our drinking containers, it will maintain its size and shape. The stressor of being dropped doesn’t have an ill effect on the cup itself. It remains pretty much the same. There isn’t an ideal example for something that is antifragile. Things that are antifragile do more than survive stressors, uncertainty, and risk. They are improved by them. Antifragility takes resilience to another level and is the antithesis of fragile. Identifying things into categories of fragile, resilient, or antifragile is fairly simple: expose them to stressors - like dropping them - and simply observe the results. The same is true for us and the people we lead. Why Should We Care? Fragile is the coaching equivalent to soft and, in the coaching world, we love to describe players and teams as soft. Unfortunately, most of the time the players don’t have a full understanding of what soft even means, let alone how to change it. It’s elementary coaching to simply call out what you observe - like riding in a car with someone reading every sign out loud. It doesn’t take long for us to block them out or tell them to ‘shut up’. Before we get to understanding and changing it, we should at least acknowledge the reality of the acceptance of being soft, because it is a thing. I don’t know that blame can be placed on any certain group or specific activity, but it is clear that leadership now must intentionally plan to confront this ever present drift towards fragility. Parenting is a good place to start. Helicopter parenting used to be the concern - hovering around the playground ready to snatch little Jenny off the ground the second she fell. By being close by helicopter parents could limit the time of distress and struggle, swooping in to save her. Parents rationalize this as good parenting by keeping the child safe in the moment. However, in an effort to help, they actually harm because while the child may be void of minor injury in the moment she is now also void of the skills required to manage the distress the injury would have provided. I would argue the latter is significantly more important. As if the helicopter parents weren’t enough, now we have snowplow parents that are the concern - they’re still parked close by but they’ve either decked Jenny out with a helmet and knee pads, forbidden her from playing on any equipment that has even a remote chance of causing harm, gone to the city council to have swing sets removed from the playground all together. Again, in an effort to help, they manage to do even more harm by handcuffing the child to fragility. Leadership, it seems, has followed suit. Helicopter leaders are nothing more than micro-managers. Their intent is good, but they always end up clipping the wings of those they lead. Snowplow leaders are most often exposed by the feedback they give - padded and vauge. By removing the hard truths we think we are softening the blow and protecting our people. When really we’re robbing them of the opportunity to become antifragile. REAL TALK - Action Steps Becoming antifragile should be a goal all leaders have for the people we lead. We should have it for our children (I mean, what’s more important!), as well as our employees. However, society is now structured to keep people fragile - much more money to be made there. Here are a few ways to move them towards becoming antifragile.
We have a choice in this matter of softness. The label, just or not, is a culmination of the actions we take. If fragility is a reflection of our choices, then so is antifragility. Choose wisely. 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!  Opportunity CostI entered college undecided on what I wanted to major in. My family has always been in education - my dad, a lifelong high school science teacher, and my mom, a school bus driver. It’s the world I grew up in so I knew the ins and outs of what each aspect of the school year brought. I was well aware of the things that lifestyle afforded us - summers free, holidays off, and access to facilities. I was also well aware of what that lifestyle did not afford us - money to do anything on those free summers and holidays.
What I was fairly blind to was the things a non-teaching lifestyle affords. As I began considering the options for my future, the list quickly narrowed to two professions, both of which I could see myself doing, and enjoying, for the rest of my life: teaching and medicine. Not much difference there, right?! As a doctor, I loved the idea of helping people in their most vulnerable moments. I loved the idea of studying and becoming an expert on something that was difficult to understand. I loved the idea of providing a caring, personal touch to service that had been absent in many of my experiences. Many of those ideas which I appreciated paralleled with teaching. I knew what a life as a teacher would feel like. I had no idea about life as a doctor. First of all, I wasn’t in love with the years and years of schooling required to become a doctor. Not that I’m opposed to school, but much of that time would likely be spent void of patient interaction. I didn’t like the time I would need to spend away from my family in order to gain a position that afforded me the option to be with them. Eventually that balance would swing, but the sacrifice to get to that point was significant. And, I didn’t like the debt I would undoubtedly be in following all the necessary schooling. The problem, of course, is that I couldn’t have the things I loved without the things I didn’t like. Why Should We Care? Let’s think about an example everyone seems to struggle with: youth sports. When you attend a game you have three options: you can be a fan and cheer, you can be a coach and coach, or you can be an official and referee. You have to pick one. By choosing one, you are, by default, not choosing the other two. You can’t be a fan and referee. You can’t coach and be a fan. You can’t be a referee and coach. It doesn’t work. And, yes, I realize this fact escapes most. This is a simple reality in leadership as well. Every choice we make has a corresponding cost that we are choosing as well. The opportunity cost however is not just the immediate sacrifice. It includes the myriad of opportunities that making a different choice encompasses. Of course it’s impossible to anticipate every potential possibility, but it’s negligent to not explore it. Excellent leaders understand both what they are gaining, as well as giving up, with each choice. REAL TALK - Action Steps It’s easy to see the opportunity costs after the fact, but excellent leaders anticipate and plan for it. Here are a few areas to consider and standards to have in place in order to be best prepared for the pending opportunity cost.
Opportunity cost is something we must deal with as a leader. It’s more than the immediate loss of potential gain. Navigating it with intentionality is a symbol of clarity, self-awareness, and excellence. 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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