Focus On The Journey More Than The Results

This week I have been extremely focused on my message “Lighting the WICK of Leadership.”  I believe that leaders, and we're all leaders, have a responsibility to bring energy to our lives each day that will inspire others and propel us to be the best version of ourselves.  The energy we bring is distributed through Working hard, acting with Integrity, being Committed and treating people with Kindness.  Everything in life and leadership comes back to these principles.  As I sat with these principles this week and did some reflecting I had some deeper thoughts about how I measure the effectiveness of this message when I apply it to my life.

As a lifelong competitor and coach I have always been obsessed with results.  The wins and losses I accumulated and the statistics that gave me insight into my performances were always so important to me and my evaluation of my performance or the performance of the teams I was leading.  We live in a world that is consumed with the results.  This isn’t surprising based on the competitive nature of our economy, politics and love for sports.  The problem with this philosophy is that you don’t always win and we don’t always get the results we want.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but we make it out to be bad and in some cases people allow it to become catastrophic.  

Please don’t get me wrong. I believe in goals and I want to be successful, but our approach needs to be amended.  I know when I became a leader the hardest thing for me to learn was how to build a like minded culture especially when you had a lot of different personalities with their own individual goals on the same team.  I learned to always focus on the standards, expectations and procedures we had established for our program along with group cohesiveness to get us to where we wanted to go.  Even with this focus I still struggled to get it right until late in my career when I started to put together some key pieces of advice that I had received along the way.  I was reminded of this advice this week and as things fell into place I wanted to include it in this week’s post.  

I have been reading Jim Murphy’s book Inner Excellence and he was talking about how important the process is rather than the results.  This instantly took me back to my first year in teaching and a man I coached with named Howard Griesinger.  He would often tell us young teachers and coaches that the most important thing in coaching was to “take care of the little things and the big things would take care of themselves.”  In his own way he was telling us that what you did during your journey was important and that is where your focus should be.  

The second point of reflection for the week came when I saw my high school football coach John Danks, in my hometown at a football scrimmage.  We began talking about players, teams, coaching and all the memories that go along with a conversation on a football Friday night in your hometown.  The thing that struck me was I remember when he told us all one of the great secrets of life when we were young high school athletes.  He told us that when all of it was over, when we had played our last game the thing that would matter the most was the memories we carried and the people we shared them with.  Wow, that is what it’s all about. It speaks directly to the idea that Jim Murphy was talking about.  This life and our march through it really is more about the journey than the results.  

The reflections, conversations and readings I’ve had this week got me to dive into what is most important to me.  When I became a head coach I worked hard at building a feeling of togetherness and when I became a principal I constantly reminded people that it was about relationships first, last and always.  If we aren’t building an appreciation and love for the journey and the people we are on it with, the results don’t matter.  The most fun I’ve ever had is visiting with the people I have suffered with talking about what we went through and all the laughs and even tears that come with those memories and lessons.  The last thing we mention and sometimes we don’t even mention it is how successful we were.  When I was a principal I used to tell our staff on the first day of each school year that people won’t remember everything you teach them but they will remember how you make them feel.  Take a moment to think back about the teachers, coaches, bosses and coworkers you’ve had in your life.  I bet the first thing that comes to your mind is how they made you feel and what opinion you have of them based on that experience. It isn't what you accomplished or didn’t accomplish.  

This week I want to call on you to focus more on the journey and the people that are on it with you than the results.  I will guarantee this will bring you more joy, happiness and ultimately success than being focused on the outcome.  Start with making your interactions with people count by being kind, being a good listener and being genuinely engaged in your time with them.  Have a great week and don’t forget to light the WICK of leadership.