I have spent my career, over twenty years now, building high performance service businesses, and supporting performance coaches across the world and across disciplines.
My current focus is filling a gap I see, namely performance coaches come out of school with amazing specialized knowledge and craft, but without the leadership skills to apply them in high performance environments, and without the business skills to monetize them and create a sustainable career.
I’m building a professional development community across these two topics, and have partnered with Alex Auerbach, current Performance Psychologist for the Jacksonville Jaguars, to do it.
On this journey, I’ve been thinking a lot about leadership and what it means. And I have been reading a ton about it, so I thought it would be great to share one of my findings this week and hopefully provide a mirror for you around your leadership currently. I can tell you, in my short career in formal and informal positions of leadership, it is the most challenging, rewarding, frustrating, scary and growth inducing journey. Much like parenting, the act of choosing to lead will deconstruct you and build you into a better person, let alone leader.
“At West Point, influenced directly by the reflections of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, I finally crystallized a short definition of leadership that best fits with everything I’ve suited and observed.
That definition is simply this: Leadership is the art of getting people to want to do what must be done. Leadership is not personality, Leadership is not charisma. Leadership is not power. Leadership is not giving orders. Leadership has nothing to do with position or rank or title or any of that. True leadership only exists if people follow when they would otherwise have the freedom to not follow.”
Jim Collins in What to Make of a Life
West Point may be the institution that has been most successful in developing leaders, and General Eisenhower was certainly one of the greatest leaders in a generation of great leaders.
Leadership is bringing people along with you towards your vision or goals. It is creating the buy in or understanding of athletes so that they make the time and value your services, be that performance psychology, strength & conditioning or another discipline.
This is the gap I see constantly. Coaches spend years mastering their discipline and can create a kick-ass power point presentation with cutting edge science. They assume athletes will follow because of their knowledge, the letters behind their name, or the irrefutable evidence they present.
But knowledge doesn’t earn trust. Leadership is the skill that turns expertise into influence, and it’s the one most coaches are never taught.
Are you an effective leader currently?