Visionary Leaders Forgive Themselves and Move On

Reinventing Sport Leadership - Part 11 of 16

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“Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anyone else expects of you. Never excuse yourself” [Henry Ward Beecher]

I have recently gone through a workplace experience that did not turn out the way I expected. It is not because I did not much wrong. Rather I missed signs in other colleagues’ behaviour and actions that ought to have given me an indication that our programme was not going in the right direction. Indeed, the efforts we all put in, except for one or two people, were not commensurate with the outcomes. Yes, I and other colleagues put in a lot although our programme failed to achieve its annual goal.

The most natural things I could have done as the leader would have been to blame everybody and everything for what went wrong. And there was evidence that some people should be held accountable for the outcome we ended up with. As it is the usual case in sport when a person fails to meet the set targets, there are consequences. Indeed, there have been consequences and a time to move on has arrived.

In order to set the stage for moving on, I had to face my team with confidence that I had learned from the experience. In addressing the team, I explained that today is a new day. Yesterday is gone with its successes and challenges. There is absolutely nothing we can do about yesterday. Similarly, there is almost nothing we can do about yesterday – we can go back, we cannot redo what we were to have done properly, even if we blamed someone else for our problems, things would never change. However, we can do a lot about the new day, and if we are fortunate to be alive, about tomorrow and maybe the next day, week, month, and years. The moral of the story here is that I decided, years ago to measure my life in days and not in years. Because of this, I live every day as if it the last day of my life in which I must try to do the few or many things I have to do, that day, to the best of my abilities.

I also explained that life is also like a book with each page a new minute, hour, day, week, month, or a year. Personally, I like to take life on a day-to-day basis and always work hard to ensure that I live each new day with maximum intensity. In no way do I mean going all over the place in a hurry. There is this prayer that as Anglicans we pray regularly. It says that:

“this is another day, O Lord. I know not what it will bring forth, but make me ready, Lord, for whatever it may be. If I am to stand up, help me to stand bravely. If I am to sit still, help me to sit quietly. If I am to lie low, help me to do it patiently. And if I am to do nothing, help me to do it gallantly…. Amen.”

I like the part that says that “If I am to do nothing, help me to do it gallantly.” Now life being like a book, each page brings new information or extends the story further. Of course, unlike real life, I can go back to pages read earlier to refresh my memory on something that gets to click with a latter part of the story, theory, or information. But the principle is that each page of a book, come with new ideas, information, and knowledge. So is every day in everyone’s life. If we do not open a new page, we do not learn anything new while also not showing discipline.

Then I pointed out that a new day or new page implies change. It means that I have changed, and they have changed. I am a couple more hours older than I was when I went to bed the previous, and so they are too. This is a train that we cannot stop – it keeps chugging on towards our individual sunsets, whenever they will be. As we get older by each second, minute, hour, day, week, and year, we are changing and the things around us, including other people, are changing. It would be such a great thing if everyone is changing for the better to be able to use the new day, the advantage of growing older, and newly acquired experience to our and other people’s advantage. Well, this is wishful thinking. However, with encouragement, I believe that people who are followers in an organisation can make their lives easier if they realise doing the same things, they did the previous/time, they will achieve the same results. Change, be it a new day or new page in a book, demands taking advantage of being offered a fresh opportunity to do things differently. If mistakes were made the previous day, week, month, or year, rather than feeling sorry for oneself, it is critical to learn from those shortcomings, and not waste time with recriminations that do solve anything.

After explaining change in the form of a new day and its demands, and turning a new page in a book, I explained where we went wrong and why we had to make changes in personnel, attitudes, commitment, and perspective. I extolled the team to honour and respect one another as each one of them turn to do their part to the best of their abilities. As they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I am waiting to see whether the team will have been able to move on our failures or lack of accomplishment and there will be renewed energy and focus change and do things differently in order to achieve a better and different outcome from the previous year.

My role as the leader is critical in this process of renewal. I like the saying by Leo Buscaglia, a favourite motivational speaker of mine who said,

“Love yourself – accept yourself – forgive yourself – and be good to yourself, because without you the rest of us are without a source of many wonderful things.”

This is very profound for me as a leader. A leader is needed to step up to the plate every minute, hour, week, month, and year, especially when things have not gone or are not going according to plan. A great leader must inspire and show resilience. A great leader introduces change as soon as it is needed. A great leader fails fast (this is something I was not able to do in the situation I have described above). These are the lessons I have learned quite recently. As an aspirational visionary leader (I am not there yet), I learned to take responsibility, to be held accountable, to initiate change, and inspire my team with a new vision. My team and I forgave ourselves for our sins of omission and commission. The sins of omission and commission are a discussion for another. Just remember, as Conrad Hilton has said,

“Success seems connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.”