[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70UF82nysIU”]
Today, I saw a video clip of Heather Dorniden running in the Big 10 600m track championship. At one point she’s leading the race but she trips and falls with a little less than one lap to go. Now in last place and quarter lap behind she some how finds another gear and kills it.
Total Belief, Total Commitment
Two weeks ago I was listening to Warren Rustand talk about leadership. Warren went on to discuss how leadership is a march down a long road, not always in a straight line, but always directed toward some distant landmark. Finally, leadership involves total belief and commitment.
Later that evening I was talking with fellow entrepreneurs, Lisa Hufford, CEO of Simplicity Consulting and John Chen, CEO of Geoteaming about the presentation. The discussion that we had centered around the video clips that were shown. All of them were sports related and all of them were focused on men. In today’s business world we’re seeing more and more women in CEO positions and major leadership roles. Regardless of whether you’re a man or woman, it’s going to take total belief and total commitment. Exhibiting any thing less than that and you’re not going to be a very good leader. You can tell employees that it’s their job to do something but that’s not leadership, that’s called just being a manager. A true leader is going to inspire people so that they also believe and commit.
As a leader, you could be cruising along in first place, but, inevitably something comes out of left left and knocks you down. It could be something like:
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- Things not going as planned.
- Not raising as much money to start your company.
- Personal challenges.
- Having a key employee quit.
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No matter what it is — what are you going to do in those situations? After seeing the video of Heather Dorniden, I’d suggest digging deeper and like Dorniden says in her own words “That last 50 meters, I hit a gear that I never knew I had”.
For more on Heather Dorniden, here’s a great write up about the race.
