My twin brother just sent me this pic from Bermuda where he is vacationing with his family! I sent him one from LA where I go every month as I commit to creating a business here in part to experience more creativity and diversity and in part to leave New England winters behind!
Kim Bowers, C.E.O. of CST Brands, a gas-station and convenience-store retailer, doesn’t trust managers who manage up really well but not down. In other words, it’s fundamentally important that your team will go to bat for you what she refers to as “walking over hot coals for you.” Creating that loyalty and bonding with your people is an indispensable leadership skill!
Adam Case, the 35-year-old offensive coordinator of the Denver Broncos never played college football and was a mediocre high school tight end by all accounts. Through a combination of hard work, ingenuity, and tenacity he worked his way up the ranks of professional football to become an invaluable part of the Broncos offense!
According to Amy Chua and Jeb Rubenfeld, Yale law professors and authors of What Drives Success? A New York Times Sunday Review feature article, success in certain ethnic groups has to do with three underlying principles: 1) A superiority complex 2) An inferiority complex 3) Impulse control. For instance, believing that certain groups are chosen, better than or more elite can add extra confidence for individuals to persevere when times are tough. Feeling not good enough, not smart enough or not successful enough can add extra drive or motivation. Without the ability to delay gratification or learn to control one’s impulses, people won’t work hard enough in the now to secure longer term success. This article is very interesting and worth considering. Some statistics are especially interesting like Nigerians who make up less than one percent of the Black population in the United States yet in 2013 nearly one quarter of the black students at Harvard Business School were of Nigerian ancestry.
It’s been an amazing year of tight finishes as the Sports section of the Sunday New York Times highlights! Tom Brady is on the cover for a reason. The Patriots have been especially good at winning in the last seconds or on the final drive! I love watching football on tv for a variety of reasons: players play hard, coaches work hard, careers are short, greatness is rewarded and great finishes make it all the better! I often use football analogies when coaching clients, even non-athletes. I talk a lot about the foundation of success: eating right, exercising, meditating, and being proactive! The more we focus on what we want and do the necessary work involved, the more likely we will achieve it. This is what Tom Brady does!
I’ve done a fair amount of suffering in my lifetime as have many of us. Sometimes, I tell clients that appearances are deceiving and that I’ve suffered far more than my confident, occasionally nonchalant style may show. One thing I’ve learned from suffering is that we can get stronger, more clear, and more aware but that doesn’t make it easy. Sometimes, all the suffering makes life seem pointless and yet other times, it makes us feel grateful for what we have. I agree with the Dalai Lama that helping others and working hard helps – so does creativity. There is nothing like that feeling of creativity to make us feel more alive and feel like our life experience, no matter how hard it is, is worthwhile. I also work on loving and letting go because all of us are faced with these ways of being every day. And the more we love and the more capable of letting go we become, the greater we enjoy the journey!