Welcome to IGW Insights Issue 23!
Some of the best leadership lessons come from legendary sports coaches, men and women who have transformed groups of talented individuals into 99th-percentile teams. Business leaders can and should steal liberally from their leadership playbooks.
Great coaches elicit sacrifice by challenging players to do more than win. Great sports coaches serve as unique role models for business leaders because, for them, the game is more than just scoring points on the board. They understand that winning games, and even championships, is the most basic requirement, the goal for which the game was invented.
But for the great coaches, there is always a goal behind the goal, a compelling vision of what winning, if achieved, can mean, not only to the team, but to everyone invested in the team, including the community for which they play.
If winning is the most basic requirement, then the commitment and athleticism it inspires are too. By creating a compelling vision, coaches inspire something deeper. They inspire sacrifice, the internal urge to go above and beyond the basic requirements.
Recommended Reading and Listening
Good to Great by Jim Collins (and his crack team of researchers) is a book worth reading. And rereading. It results from an extraordinarily disciplined study of how businesses that evolved from solid performers to truly great businesses did things differently than their peers. This is not a book to be inhaled but rather nibbled at slowly. Read a bit, then take a walk and think about your business. The book is nearing a quarter of a century since publication, and yet its insights remain relevant. This is the first in, and I believe a gateway drug to, a multi-book series Collins’ business research lab. Enjoy!
Journaling Exercise
Set a timer for 10 minutes. Put pen to paper and journal the following prompt:
What is the gift your business gives? Who is the recipient?
🚀 Your Leadership Journey Starts Here:
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Onward and upward,
Dan Weiss, CEO
