Being a Leader After an Athletic Career
Vasily Prokofyev
English 108, Section 30071
March 20, 2013
Mrs. Patricia Pullenza
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Leadership is a very important tool in a daily life, especially in a life of an athlete. However, nowadays, there is a huge problem related to it. There is a stereotype that if a person does sports then the person is a leader and has all the essential tools to be a leader in whatever situation, organization or anything else outside of sports. In other words, people mean that every sport teaches how to become a leader. They take it like something given. Unfortunately, it is not true. There are plenty of examples when a very successful athlete could not find himself or herself after a great career in sports. Most times the reason is simple as it is. A person does not know how to apply the skills of a leader on the floor to the other situations. An example is the case of NBA Hall of Fame player Isaiah Thomas who still cannot find success after his playing days. He was a commissioner for CBA (Continental Basketball Association) for two years then went bankrupt after his tenure in 1998-2000. After that he was named a head coach and later a director of basketball operations of the New York Knicks. Those five years were the worst in the club’s history; Thomas was fired again. There were a lot of other obstacles for such failure, but the main one is the absence of a leadership skillset. How can the Hall of Fame player not have it? Should we have any leadership courses to prevent such problems?
To start with, it is necessary to understand what leadership is. Kevin Eastman in “When Leadership Is Needed” points out that on the one hand it is easy to be a leader when everything is fine, but it must be realized that the biggest task is to keep leading others when something is going wrong. Leadership is one of the ways to influence people and to help them get better and find the right path in life. According to Cory Dobbs in The Leadership Quest, “There are three levels of leadership: self-leadership, leading others and leading with others.” It is clear that the highest level of leadership is when a person leads with others, but first and foremost, he or she has to learn how to lead oneself, how to hold himself or herself accountable for the actions, how to overcome difficulties that he faces while pursuing the excellence. The second level is leading with others or also called as “servant leadership”. During this phase, a person already knows how
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to lead himself and start learning how to help other people in order to achieve their dreams or goals. He simply serves them, because to become successful they need his help. It becomes crucial not only for them, but for everybody. Every day brings a new experience that makes people smarter. So being a servant leader should be that new experience. John Wooden in his book says, “Make each day a masterpiece” (97). Kevin Eastman in “When Leadership Is Needed” states that one of the most important aspects of being a true leader is the ability to tell the truth to partners or teammates. They might not like to hear it, but that is what servant leadership looks like. The highest level of leadership is when a person learns or when he already knows how to lead alongside with others. There is nothing better than that.
At the same time, it is the most difficult level of leadership to achieve. In sports it is called “team chemistry”. That is why team sports are the most difficult ones. To win a championship it is not just a matter of skills or physical condition. Team chemistry and relationships between players and coaches as well play a very important role. There are five concerns of all teammates in whatever team sport a person knows. Everybody wants to be associated with something; each and every player wants to be appreciated for what he or she does on the court or on the field as well as off the floor. Another concern is self-determination. Not every person can determine his or her abilities right. It usually causes big problems within a team. The fourth concern is status and power. Almost everybody on the team wants to have some kind of power and very often the majority of athletes do not realize that they can win only as a team and not as a bunch of individuals. As it was said before, leading with others is the highest level of leadership. Most sport teams have from one to two months of off-season training; that is the time when people get to know each other, and if they have figured out how to cope with everybody on the team, then they will be pretty successful during the season and have very high chances to win it all in the play-offs. If they do not figure out how to work within a team, then it will cause problems very difficult to fix, especially during the season. The last concern of all
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teammates is accomplishment. Every player wants to get recognition from media and from the other coaches. Very often the competition to earn most valuable player, most improved player, defensive player of the year or anything like that is much higher than the success of the team. Until each player realizes how important it can often be to serve others, they will not be successful at a high stage. John C. Maxwell in “Picking Potential Leaders” notes “…servant leaders earn the loyalty and best efforts of their people by serving the interests and investing in the development of those they lead.”
There are four activity areas for leading: physical, intellectual, emotional, and social. The most important one is the emotional area. It is great to motivate the teammates, but if a person learns how to inspire people, the results will be even greater. Kevin Eastman in “Inspiration vs. Motivation” says “Inspiration is a level above motivation in that it brings in the heart and the very fiber of a person.” One person will not necessarily be a leader in all four activity areas. He can be great at a social and emotional level, but he can be a poor intellectual leader. In this case leading with others is the best option, especially for a group of athletes, because each person adds some kind of leadership to the team. So it is great to have one physical, one intellectual, one emotional, one social, and all of them want to be servant leaders. It makes the team in general to use its full potential.
Nowadays, the problem of leadership is common, especially among athletes or former athletes. People rely on them too much when hiring for a new job, because they simply think that every athlete is a leader and can lead others in order to be successful for the whole group or a company. The reason why the situation with leadership is so is because we do not have any subjects or classes that would tell people more about leadership and how to apply it in athletics and in everyday life. There are a few leadership courses, seminars or clinics, but they are very rare and pretty difficult to find and to register for. Another reason for people to learn more about
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leadership or to attend any kind of clinic is simple. The price is high enough for an average person to go to these kinds of events. But it really is reasonable. People learn a lot from those leadership activities, and after they have studied it for a while, they are able to share their knowledge with others. It will basically be called servant leadership.
The effects of the lack of leadership, especially among athletes, are poor. As it was said, before people rely on former athletes more than they should. In business world, it usually leads to bankruptcy. In family life, it might cause internal problems with the wife and children that could lead to divorce. It is not really obvious why plenty of former athletes divorce or simply remain single. They may be able to lead themselves, but they have not learned yet how to serve others or how to lead with others. In most cases, they did not really want to learn, but all they had to do is just to start. Phil Jackson in his book Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior points out that in most cases athletes and people in general cannot start work on themselves. They always find an excuse, but in reality “…a journey of a thousand miles starts with one breath.”
Negative and unsuccessful actions in business and in family life as well as the disability to lead turn into mental problems of a former athlete. That is why we can often see on television that a former football player was driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs or a former basketball player that has been earning one million dollars monthly for ten years or so has suddenly found out that he went bankrupt. The belief is pretty much the same all the time. A person did not learn in the beginning of a sports career how to be a leader. It includes being sociable first, being able to hold accountable not only oneself, but others as well. Also, in most cases, it is important to know the colleagues, being mentally tough, knowing how to teach others without hurting their feelings, how to respect everybody, no matter what he or she has done
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before, how to show a person that he is being cared about, how to learn from the mistakes of others, and so on.
The great example of teaching how to be a leader can be found in Mesa Community College’s basketball program. Women are nationally ranked as a number one team in the country. They have great results from year to year. The answer is simple; they commit to what they do, and they are willing to learn how to lead themselves first and then how to lead all together. Every year former basketball coach Cory Dobbs, who works in the social field now, spends a couple of days with the team in order to explain the importance of helping others and being a leader not only during an athletic career, but also in everyday life. After having one-two sessions with Cory Dobbs, a person can see the difference in team chemistry. Girls have all kinds of exercises to do in order to find out who can lead in certain activity areas (physical, emotional, intellectual, social). After that it becomes like a puzzle.
Robert C. Pozen, author of “Extreme Productivity”, in his interview with Kelly L. Johnson focuses on the importance of goals. People should realize what their goals are, think which one of them is the most important and recognize which goal can be a short-term and which is a long-term goal. They will not be able to succeed at the aim if they do not know what they want to achieve.
It is impossible to improve without changes. But what is clear is that everybody can easily change if he or she makes some improvement. It does not matter if a person wants to be a better student, teammate, leader. He must change all the small parts of his life (they can be that small that he might even not pay attention to before) to make an improvement. Changes can be made in such areas of life as habits, skills, knowledge, allocation of time, expectations, mindset and many other characteristics. It is better to have a small change than to have no change at all. Most successful changes are built on realistic approaches and small actions towards the aim
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rather than an all-or-nothing approach. A change should be planned in specific situations. People should not think in general terms, instead they should be thinking of specifics. They should be an example for others. That is what it means to be a leader. Kevin Eastman in “Inspiration vs. Motivation” points out the importance of leading by example. People will not trust a person unless they see that their potential leader follow his own principles. Think about any particular situation and use the knowledge to change the situation for the better. The majority of people just say a cliché like “I work hard to be a leader,” and in reality, they do nothing to make it happen. Any change a person makes has to satisfy at least four criteria if he wants to sustain and to help to get himself to be successful. It requires the desire to change, the knowledge to change, the effort to change, and the environment which will encourage and support the change. The desire to change starts with a dissatisfaction to succeed at changing. In some way, he has visualized what he needs to improve at or to change and that it will help him to develop into a more effective team player and team leader. But no matter how much desire he has and how much knowledge about it he has, no change will be successful unless he applies an intense effort to bring it about. The environment is very important as well for implementing and sustaining the effort that he puts in to change and improve. Time is also crucial. Each and every day we have twenty-four hours to make ourselves and others better. We should be smart with the time that we have every day. Learn how to make priorities. According to Robert C. Pozen in “Extreme Productivity,” “…you should focus your time on your most critical goals.” All the small steps that a person makes will lead to a big success in the future. It is just a matter of patience and hard work (Johnson).
We can find a lot of ways out how to solve the problem of leadership, no matter how old a person is. He can be a twenty-two year-old freshman or a sixty year-old person who is already retired and trying to enjoy life. The question is if he or she really needs it and wants it. As in anything else, changes are not simple, and they are not easy at all. Leaders, especially team
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leaders, will always become successful in life, while people who might not want or simply cannot lead may find themselves being losers. There is a huge gap between leaders (winners) and people who do not lead and do not even know how to follow and learn from others. Leaders say that it can be difficult, but it is possible; losers believe that it may be possible, but it is too difficult. Leaders see the gain; losers see the pain. Leaders see possibilities; losers see problems. Leaders make it happen; losers see it happen. The list of differences can go on and on. What way to chose is up to everybody to decide. Do they still want to lose? Are they ready to change themselves and take the next step into self-improvement and a more successful and joyful life?
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