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What I learned about Leadership from playing Pickleball – Mary T. O’Sullivan
by Mary T. O’Sullivan, MSOL, contributing writer on business leadership
“… you don’t become masterful at living and leading just by living and leading. Just like in pickleball, you need to do your reps. You need to commit to repeatable, predictable practice.” – Jim Dethmer
How do you get good at pickleball? As I learned in the last few weeks, it’s a lot of work. I took lessons, I played several games, but I just could not unlock the secrets of being a decent player. My coach urged me to practice and although it felt futile at first, I rented a practice court and hit the ball against a wall for 90 minutes. I realized that like any other skill, practice and repetition were the means to becoming a player who other people wanted on their team.
The slamming of the ball against the plywood wall in the gym, brought me back to days of living in Syracuse, NY, where lacrosse is like a religion. From the time kids can hold a lacrosse stick, you’ll see them and hear them in the school yards and back yards playing wall ball, for hours. And the high school lacrosse teams are among the best in the state and in the nation. Why? Because they practice and hit the ball against a wall over and over again, indefatigably. As in pickleball, lacrosse develops hand eye coordination, foot speed, and ball control, getting the ball to where you want it to be.
And so it is with leadership. Leaders all over the world attend workshops and retreats, read books, attend lectures, tune into podcasts, and bring in consultants to improve a company’s leadership culture, but as any pickleball or lacrosse player will tell you, you don’t achieve greatness unless you repeatedly practice your skill. According to Forbes, the top leadership development skills are integrity and honesty, trust, interpersonal or soft skills, the ability to delegate, empathy, and flexibility, among others. These skills will never be learned by using intellect and imagination alone.
If we take lessons from the world of pickleball and lacrosse, that means practicing these skills repeatedly, until they become rote. How does that happen? If you pick just one of these areas, say, honesty, you take it upon yourself to act with honesty in all your actions. That means never fudging the truth on quarterly reports, performance reviews, and always giving honest feedback. If you desire to improve your soft skills, you need to think before you act, modulate your tone of voice and body language, and demonstrate a caring attitude every day when you show up to work.
The same goes for delegation. If you hog all the work because you don’t think other people are as capable as you are, you are robbing your team of the ability to accelerate and grow. When you consistently show your trust in employees by delegation, you will increase their learning and unload some work that may not be appropriate for your level.
The act of practicing good leadership behavior on a consistent basis makes you a conscious leader, one that is thoughtful and deliberate and knows what they are doing. You may not always get it right – I’ve hit my pickleball over the backboard, only to watch it pathetically roll down to the floor and loll there without a bounce. Even the best lacrosse players occasionally miss the goal or hit the pipe, but they get back up and practice that shot over and over until it becomes totally natural, as if it were an innate and instinctive skill.
According to Entrepreneur Magazine “To be a truly successful leader in your profession, you need to constantly be working on your skills, personal development, and your ability to work with others.” Although successful leadership looks natural and seems to come without effort, it actually takes a lot of practice and careful nurturing. That means playing “wall ball” with your leadership skills continuously. Practice hard, and when you get into the game, it will seem second nature as scoring a goal or accomplishing more than five volleys in pickleball.
“Leadership and pickleball. They’re both harder than expected and follow the same principles to win”. – Jay Steinfeld
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Read all Mary’s columns here: https://rinewstoday.com/mary-t-osullivan-msol-pcc-shrm-scp/
Mary T. O’Sullivan, Master of Science, Organizational Leadership, International Coaching Federation Professional Certified Coach, Society of Human Resource Management, “Senior Certified Professional. Graduate Certificate in Executive and Professional Career Coaching, University of Texas at Dallas. Member, Beta Gamma Sigma, the International Honor Society. Advanced Studies in Education from Montclair University, SUNY Oswego and Syracuse University. Mary is also a certified Six Sigma Specialist, Contract Specialist, IPT Leader and holds a Certificate in Essentials of Human Resource Management from SHRM.
www.encoreexecutivecoaching.com