A Born Leader? Or a Learned Leader?
A Born Leader? Or a Learned Leader?
The Mancs are coming!
Manchester United Football Club is coming to America!
A friend tells me now that I live in Indiana, I am within range to be a Chicago Cubs fan. That’s her team. Maybe I will buy a hat. But she knows Man United is my team. My wife, Andrea, gave me tickets to see them for my birthday during their summer 2024 tour. I will be the one screaming as if I’ve lost my dignity.
Man United plays in the Premier League and has a list of wins and titles a mile long. They are hugely popular. They don’t always win, of course; although they’ve just won the FA Cup, a big deal in England. The thing about the concept of winning in sports is that every play, every game, can be consequential. And whether you win or lose a season, you start again next year. Everyone starts over to do it again.
There’s the game in front of you on the pitch or the field or the court. That’s the finite game. You know who the players are, what the duration is and what the rules are that will define the end.
But in sports there’s always an infinite game going on in the background as well. Is the team rebuilding for a couple of years before chasing a title? Strategizing toward acquiring a top player who will change everything? Coming under new coaching leadership for a fresh wind?
I once had a beautiful, specially purchased clipboard to try to bring vision to my daughter’s soccer team. I’m not sure how many of those elementary-age children adequately appreciated my drawings or lists, but even my own foray into sports had me reflecting on leadership.
Simon Sinek has written a book called “The Infinite Game.” He reminds us that for most of us, the work we engage in goes far beyond us. It’s not about winning something particular right in front of us. Consider the differences between the IBM and Apple cultures. Apple wanted to provide the best product. IBM wanted to blow everyone else out of the water.
An infinite game, like the games of IBM and Apple, has both known and unknown players, rules that change and no fixed end. The objective is not to be ahead in the score when the clock runs out; the objective is to keep playing. There is no clock.
Sinek lays out five principles for organizations to keep playing the long game, the infinite game.
1. Just cause. Offer employees a Cause so Just they would be willing to sacrifice their own interests to advance it.
2. Trusting teams. Create an environment in which people can work at their natural best and ensure the psychological safety of teams.
3. Worthy rival. A worthy rival is another player in the game that’s worthy of comparison. They reveal weaknesses that represent opportunities to improve.
4. Existential flexibility. Have the capacity to make a profound strategic shift in order to advance your Just Cause.
5. Courage to lead. It’s unbelievably hard to keep a Just Cause in mind as the guiding principle, especially if you have to make decisions that hurt in the short term.
Health and human services is not about short-term wins. It is not about running to wrong conclusions. We’re about walking to better conclusions. This is leadership that will help our community.
I think and read about leadership a lot, not only because my job puts me in a position with responsibility to lead people and resources, but also because I’m genuinely interested in the questions that swirl around the topic.
I’ve reflected on people I’ve respected as leaders, loved as leaders, and could say with all my heart they have been good. They are good at their jobs. They are good at not making me feel bad when they coach me and mentor me. Others follow because they can tell the leader is connected to them in authentic ways. They offer a Cause that teams want to serve whole-heartedly, and they lead courageously.
Hats and clipboards can be useful, and with the right stickers, they are incredibly fun, but I think Simon Sinek has given us some specific leadership tools that can help us bring our Cause to our community in a way that keeps us all reaching further than ourselves for the sake of others. And I hope that’s a team we all want to be on.
