Quotes of the Week from Me:

“Treat yourself well and treat others well.”

“You know when you need to show up.”

“Quick answers may indicate shallow reasoning.”

“Little, boring details are easy to miss and hard to carry out. When you are able to identify them, do them, and become them, you’ll discover several advantages to your new process.”

Quotes of the Week from Others:

“Before you can win, you have to believe that you’re a winner. Winners think, look, act and behave like winners. They focus on the daily process of doing what needs to be done to become a winner.” – Allistair McCaw

‘One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” – Virginia Woolf

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” – Albert Einstein

Quick Optimism:

“It’s supposed to be difficult. You just have to decide what you want to sign up for.”

This is one of my favorite opening lines anytime I am teaching athletes about the commitment it takes to improve in their sport and in their lives. There is a price to pay for everything, but if you fall in love with the potential outcome, it will be a lot more fun.

I also saw this somewhere this week and really liked it. All of these words have the same amount of letters.

Sad. Joy.

Fall. Rise.

Curse. Bless.

Ignore. Listen.

Enemies. Friends.

Immature. Maturity.

Ignorance. Knowledge.

Negativity. Positivity.

Question of the Week:

What topic do you know the most about? Do you think other people would give the same answer about you?

This week I was put in several situations where I was dependent on teammates, family, or friends to know things I didn’t know. At home it was asking my wife something about baby tendencies at 9 months old. It was also myself trying to be an encyclopedia for a curious two-year-old. I wish I was as smart as my kids seem to think I am. And of course, I show up to work every day (in-person and virtually) and have dozens of questions for teammates by the time lunch rolls around. Thankfully we are all very open about not knowing things and we are able to work together on certain questions most of the time.

But as per usual, it came down to communication when not knowing the answer to a lot of different questions. I think that’s officially my sweet spot. Call it philosophy, or an excuse for not knowing the answers to things, I probably know the most about not knowing very much.

Of course, there are topics I really enjoy and I try to stay well-read on. However, I find that with so much instant access to millions of opinions and facts, it really is humbling to sit down and think about a specific topic reading content from several professionals on the topic from my pocket. Then I got to wondering, how much knowledge does one need to be an effective leader?

I have been jumping around a few books lately, but I always come back to one that I borrowed from my office: Why Should Anyone Be Led By You? by Gareth R. Jones and Robert Goffee.

When examining the most important characteristics of truly effective leaders and making quality leadership decisions, it is rarely about how much you know. It isn’t about power, your title, how much influence and authority you possess; it really isn’t about your technical knowledge either. It’s how you use your knowledge, lean on the expertise of others and how you establish a system of loyalty and trust in members of your team. Autonomy comes to mind. So does humility and adding value. Service becomes the top priority. Not knowledge. It’s not about you, but what you can piece together based on the needs of those you are responsible for working alongside.

If I had to answer my own questions directly this week, the most recent topics that I know most about are education and baseball. I’d say plenty of people I know would think the same about me. Then comes the question of what we know about a specific aspect of our topic of choice. When I say baseball, that could mean thousands of things.

What do you know about? What does your team know about? How do you complement each other?

Make it about your team’s topics this Monday.