A Good Leader Takes Ownership

I have coached baseball teams at an elite level for many years. I taught many young players how to hit. And I also believe that I have the ability and experience to recognize a good hitter when I see one. Many years ago, I had a trainer that I knew and respected working with my oldest son. As he threw to my oldest son, my youngest son got into the tunnel next to where they were working and began hitting baseballs off of the tee. All of a sudden, my son who was only four or five at the time said to the trainer, "Hey Jim, I am a good hitter.” And Jim responded, "yes Nolan, I can see that!”

I loved the movie Moneyball. There is a great scene from the movie that has huge applicability to organizational culture and success. In the scene the scouting team is talking about players that they would like to add to the Athletics roster. They get to a certain player, who they say is a good hitter. They talk about how the ball jumps off of his bat and how much “pop" he has. One of them says that when he hits you can hear the pop all over the stadium. Billy Bean, the general manager of the team looks at the stat sheet and asks all of his scouts, "If he is a good hitter, why doesn’t he hit good?"

I have seen that so many times not only in baseball but also in business. I have seen young men who were drafted that could not hit and eventually failed. They failed because they had “pop” but they could not hit. I also saw hitters, great hitters, that went un-drafted because of a particular scout’s opinion.

And too often in business you will find an employee who very often has been around for a long time who has big responsibilities and who commands attention in meetings. I saw several of them in the company that I consulted with. And when asked for their opinion on the person, the leaders’ reply was “He (or she) is great. Awesome person! Really good.” But when you step back and take a look at it he or she doesn’t deliver results – or those results are mediocre, or their turnover is incredibly bad because no one wants to work for them. People don't want to work for them because they realize that they are technically far more competent than the manager who knows nothing about what he is trying to manage. Yet the manager takes all the credit with upper management.

So, I always ask the same question… If he is so good, why doesn’t he deliver results? You see organizations suffer when they continue to rely on people who don’t deliver the results that they are being paid to deliver. And very often when the results are not there we look at the product or service or product market fit or the competition when we should be ensuring that we have the people we need to succeed.

But what I have noticed is that what separates high performers from others is not necessarily skill level. It is recovery ability and speed. I have coached athletes at the national level and executives leading 100 million dollar companies, and I can tell you a secret: Most great leaders' overload on preparation and under train for failure. The problem is that in most high-performance situations failure will happen. The question is how fast will you reset, adjust, refocus and recommit under pressure? The great athletes and executives do this very well.

As I work with executives, I train them to recognize their failure. To own it - no denial, no blaming it on someone else, no drama. They need to immediately return their focus to the mission and shift their focus to the goal. Then they need to respond with action. Any small movement forward builds momentum.

Some of the best athletes that I have coached showed the entire team what determination looked like before it had ever seemed like a problem. And the best executives showed me determination before others had even identified the problem. This not only made them better athletes and executives, but the entire team was better for it.

Unfortunately, the opposite is also true. I witnessed a firm with several people in it who blamed their failures on everyone and everything else. As I told the leadership of that firm, this is a non-sustainable model, and it will be a detriment to the company in the long run. And it was.

A good hitter excels because he adjusts to his failures. And a good business executive excels when they train for the failures, recognize them, and return to the mission and focus without looking for someone or something to blame. Scripture says, "If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small." But we were given the strength to face our adversity with strength.

How are you building your team? Are they capable of failing and recovering or do they only perform when things are running smoothly? If it is the former, maybe we should talk.