Newman’s Legacy Leadership Blog

The Power of a Good Question

Leaders sometimes feel like they have to tell others what they need to know and what they need to do. But, it is far more important for a Legacy Leader to be able to ask a good question! The best question for a Legacy Leader to ask always starts with what. You might think “why”questions would be better but most followers hear “why” questions as accusations. Some leaders think “how” questions reveal the best results but when followers hear how questions they too often get lost in processes and procedures from their past. “What” questions tend to require followers to think more about where to go in the future.

Not just any “what” question will do, however. The “what” questions that help the most are questions like: what do you think we should do? What do you think might happen if we did X? What does this mean to our team? And questions of this type. These questions are asking followers to explore possibilities and dreams. These questions begin to lay the ground work for action. They also tell the followers that the leader is interested in their ideas. The power of these questions is amazing and the Legacy Leader realizes how much this engages the team and energizes team members.

Here’s an exercise for you try. Think of things that you want your team to do or plan and then write down a few short, open “what” questions that will get them to start thinking about what you need them to plan or do. Open questions can’t be answered with a few words. They require thought and explanation. Some examples of these types of questions are: 1) What do you think is the most important thing for us to get done in the next 90 days and what about that action do you think that will make a big difference for us? 2) What 3 obstacles do you see holding us back and what do you think will help us reduce the impact of those obstacles? 3) What gaps do you think exist in our processes and/or personnel? What should we do about that? When we get people to engage in thoughtful reflection regarding how our organization functions, we increase the probability of engagement and ownership. With greater engagement and ownership, we increase commitment, and this leads to more focused and higher energy actions. This is usually the foundation for improved success rates and higher satisfaction.

Legacy Leadership and Compassion

Of the four C’s of Legacy Leadership, the most important one is compassion. You can be committed and be an excellent communicator and be the most consistent leader ever but if you lack compassion, all of that does not amount to much more than being a hard-nosed, smooth-talking, always present pain-in-the butt! Compassion connects us to one another. It is more than empathy. It is that amazing quality that tells another person “I may not be able to fully understand all that you are going through but I have this human connection with you that says I want the absolute best for you and I am willing to work with you so that you can achieve the best you can today, tomorrow, and on into our connected future. If I am a leader of an organization, and I approach everyone in my organization this way, the message I am sharing is that I understand that in order for this organization to succeed, each and every one of you must also succeed. And in order for each and everyone of you to succeed, I must be cognizant of everything each of you must deal with in your journey and I must connect with each of you on a truly human basis.

Why don’t more leaders do this? Because it is so hard and takes so much energy, most leaders are unwilling to do what it takes. Too many leaders want to take the easy way out. Too many leaders just want all of the their people to just get over it and get on with it. This leads to a plethora of inadequacies. Inadequate communication, training, research, expectation clarification, information sharing, guidance, and many other organizational necessities result in inefficeint and ineffective operations. When compassion is considered to be fluff rather than the most important quality, all other qualities become less meaningful. The fundamental truth is that followers will not give a rip about how much you know, how much you can do, how many people you know, or how important you are until they know how much you really care about them. Getting others to do what must be done depends far more on our caring than it does on our planning and strategizing. The best strategic plan will never be effectively implemented by people who do not believe in the person bringing them the plan. Those people will never believe in someone who they do not trust and they will never trust someone who they believe does not really care about them.

I can hear the protests now! But these people don’t work hard enough to deserve any compassion from me. If they just worked harder, then I would feel like I could show them I care. This is putting the cart before the horse! It never works backwards. Feeling worthless cannot be converted into feeling worthy by being beaten into submission. The individual that feels beaten down may do what is minimally required to prevent then next beating but will never do the quality of work needed to produce greatness. The goal of every Legacy Leader is not to exist as an organization that just gets by. The goal is always to achieve excellence; to be recognized for greatness! Truly great organizations are fueled by compassion.

The next question is, “How does the compassionate leader deal with those individuals that would take advantage of a compassionate system for their own personal gain at the expense of others?” If compassion is a core value of the organization, the answer is clear. Those who would take advantage of the system are violating that core value and need to correct the situation or they cannot be part of the organization. Shirking one’s responsibilities, whether that means getting tasks completed and meeting expectations, or it means being considerate and compassionate of others, is not consistent with being part of the organization. Those that cannot live by the values of the organization, cannot be part of the organization.

The last piece I would like to address is the mistaken view that compassion is a sign of weakness. Much to the contrary, I would suggest that compassion is really a sign of strength. To truly display compassion requires that a leader become vulerable and those who will expose their vulerabilities are always stronger of character than those who will not. It takes an incredible amount of strength to be able to expose one’s own “soft spots” to a world that might choose to take advantage of those apparent weaknesses. Those who keep their own vulnerabilities hidden out of fear of those who might attack are actually far weaker than are those who are brave enough to open up. It is through compassion that we truly demonstrate our strength as a leader. This is true because the compassionate leader is not a sappy, sentimental person, but is quite the opposite. The compassionate leader is an individual of conviction and action. It is not about laying about and sympathizing with those less fortunate. It is about engaging in the activities that will lead to the betterment of all. True compassion gets important things done. True compassion is characterized by decisive action. True compassion does not just point out the inequities, it rights wrongs and corrects inaccuracies. True compassion is how we move from where we do not want to be to where we know we should be. Legacy Leaders are compassionate leaders!

The Four Cs of a Legacy Culture

We have noticed, in our ten years of work with our clients, that there are some very specific keys to their ongoing success. We refer to these as the Four Cs of a Legacy Culture. Every organization struggles with these and, from time to time, will get all four of these factors working for them at the same time. The more often these four are present simultaneously, the more time the organization operates in a high performance zone.

The first C is Commitment. When everyone on the team is 100% committed to most important goals of the organization, the chances of achieving those goals increases exponentially. Failure to commit, by even one member of the team puts the team in jeopardy of not having the energy to achieve the goal. For a leader, being able to generate real commitments from your team is your most important job. But, how do you get that strong of a commitment from everyone on your team? That’s where the other three Cs come in.

The second C is Communication. Communication is so important and it is too often misunderstood. Many think it’s about getting the message out but that is only a small part of the communication puzzle. For your message to be heard, received, understod, and accepted requires so much more than getting the message out. The number one component of good communication is not speaking, it’s listening. The number two component of communication is to know the people who are part of the communication group. How do they prefer to be communicated to? How do they hear things? How do they process information? Are the quick to respond or do they need time to reflect? The Legacy Leader takes the time to engage, fully, in the process of communication.

The third C is Consistency. How many times do organizations start initiatives only to give up on them after a few months? Why does this happen? One reason is a lack of consistency. In the heat of the daily tasks and the frequent emergencies that crop up, the easiest thing to set aside is that new initiative. So a meeting is missed. A deadline is not met. And after a few of these incidents, the new initiative just fades away. Staff acquires a an “and this too shall pass” attitude resulting in future initiatves fizzling out as well. By creating a consistent check in, that is no more than 30 minutes in length, where every member of the team briefly informs the team as to their progress and actions to be taken next week, the initiatve is kept alive and in everyone’s minds. That consistent accountability act never lets the initiative die. If everyone knows that at the same time, on the same day, every week they will have to report on progress and declare actions for the coming week, the commitment is renewed.

The last C is Compassion. One of the biggest obstacles to success is lack of focus. One of the biggest contributors to breaks in focus is what’s going on in our lives. If a team member is not feeling well, or has difficulties at home, or has loved ones with issues, it is hard for them to zero in on what needs to be done. Too many managers of people want to tell them to leave their personal lives at home but that is almost impossible and is not worth the energy it takes to make that happen. A compassionate leader understands that work is best done by whole people and that those that are hurting will be less than fully capable. In addition, our team members will remember that we were compassionate and they will give even greater efforts when they have had a chance to deal with whatever it was that threw them off their game.

There is so much more that can be said about each of these but I will leave it at this for now. I will revisit each of these in future blog posts. A full post can be used to explore more detail about each of the four Cs. My next post will dig deeper into commitment.

When is it OK to Break the Rules

I’m sure everyone has heard of the latest scandal in professional sports. Cheating to win is an abomination in the eyes of most Americans and we especially dislike it when it directly effects our favorite team. But, is there ever a time when it’s ok to break the rules? Certainly, the civil rights movement, a time when people said laws that discriminate against people because of the color of their skin needed to be violated, that was the right thing to do. How do we know if breaking the rules is the right thing to do?

This latest Major League Baseball scandal gives us a hint. When a team breaks a rule to give itself an unfair advantage over the other teams, that is truly wrong. Breaking the rules in this case was not done to right a wrong or to level the playing field. Breaking these rules was done to give one class of people, the Houston Astros, an unfair advanatge over another class of people; every other team. The immorality of the decisions made is easy to understand. Our decisions should hold a few fundamental truths to be sacrosanct. Among these are first do no harm, second no one person is more important than any other person, and third every person should have access to the same opportunities. When we create systems, rules, and processes that prevent anyone from having the same access to opportunity as any other person, that is when it is ok to break the rules. The founders of the USA had these principles in mind when the Nation was created. Our Declaration of Independence very specifically declares: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

How does a simple violation of MLB rules really violate the spirit of the Founding of Our Nation? Some might say, in the course of life on this planet, it really doesn’t matter. I say, it does! When the leadership of the Houston Astros decided it was alright to cheat, what they said was we are above all the other teams. The most important thing is winning and whatever we can do to give us an advantage, well that’s the right thing to do. Early in our Nation’s history, some of the most wealthy of our Founders decided that there were exceptions to the quote I provided from the Declaration of Independence. Tradition, at the time, said the exceptions were people of African decent, Native Americans, people who had religious leanings different from them, and women and children. Laws were made that marginalized each of those classes of people. Today, some of those categories are still marginalized. Just like the Houston Astros, who said it’s ok to give ourselves an advantage over the others, some of our Founders said, it’s ok to give ourselves an advantage over these others. In fact, it’s the right thing to do.

If, as a free society, we are going to ever truly behave as a free society, we must understand the implications of leadership. Leaders must be above the pettiness that allows us to unballance any playing field. Equality of opportunity must exist in every situation. Whether one group succeeds over another group must always be determined by its preparation, determination, persistence, energy investment and execution. Success should never be allowed as a result of creating an inequality in opportunity. We have a reat deal of work to do in this world. In too many instances, the cards are stacked. The lesson from the Houston Astros cannot be it’s wrong to get caught. The take away needs to be it’s wrong to take unfair advantage of anyone. It’s wrong to stack the deck. Winning must only be a product of how willing we are to work harder, prepare more, learn more, and invest more of ourselves than others are willing to. It is also important to note that in every field, there is plenty of room for many winners and that the outcome of a few events does not define winners or losers. Knowing how the Houston Astros won their World Series Titles tells me they didn’t deserve it. Looking at the application of that statement outside of baseball, how many apparently successful people and organizations don’t deserve where they are and what they have today?

What is Culture By Choice?

Culture By Choice is, and I hesitate to use this term, a consulting company. I hesitate to use the term consulting because we are different from what most people think of when they hear “consulting company.” We help our clients discover the best culture for what they are trying to accomplish. We pride ourselves in our ability to help our clients build dynamic teams by coaching their leaders, managers and employees to help everyone
achieve their fullest potential.

We realize that we must always focus on the people first. All the best systems, processes, strategies, tactics, and techniques will never help a company succeed if the people lack the capacity for success. Our most fundamental concept is that an organization’s culture will determine its opportunity for success and the culture is always a reflection of the people in the organization. To generate success means we must create a success culture and that can only happen when the people of the organization believe and behave in a way that promotes that business’s success.

Our efforts with our clients always begins by analyzing the existing culture. We do this through individual assessments, interviews, observations, questionnaires, and town-hall style meetings. Once we know what the existing culture is, we can help our clients visualize what they want their culture to be. In most cases, there is a discrepancy between what is desired and what is. This leads to a cultural development plan that focuses on a few critical behaviors at a time. These behaviors become company expectations for what members of the organization will and will not do. Failure to do what is expected or doing what will not be tolerated, whether intentional or not, means an individual cannot be part of the organization. Too often, many organizations are not crystal clear as to what these behaviors are. Culture By Choice helps it’s clients create that clarity.

Once we know what behaviors are desired, and we have an idea as to how much change will be required for key people to be able to implement these behaviors, we can create the support mechanisms that promote these behaviors and link them to business objectives. Just wanting everyone to behave in a certain way will not make it happen. There must be incentives for people to make the change. People will do what they are most comfortable doing unless there is a significant incentive for doing things differently. Even with incentives there will need to be an accountability system in place that holds everyone, even leadership, accountable for meeting expectations. It’s not about punishing those who fall short. It’s about figuring out what is needed to increase the chances for success.

Every organization also has informal leaders. Culture By Choice helps our clients identify who those informal leaders are and provides coaching to make sure that those leaders are working towards the same goals as the company. These informal leaders are too often a seriously underutilized asset for many companies. Success cultures nurture and encourage these leaders based on their own desires for growth and development. These informal leaders are frequently the people you will need to help manage the positive culture you create. When executive level leaders allow these informal leaders to hold them, the executive leadership, accountable for the same expectations placed on everyone else, the pace of positive change accelerates. Once this cultural transformation begins, the mindsets of all team members begin to change in a very positive way.

Culture By Choice has been helping our clients create the culture they want for over 10 years. Our success is our best sales pitch. Spend some time with anyone we’ve worked with and you’ll see what developing a positive organizational culture can do. Feel free to message me if you’d like to learn more or if you’re interested in finding out how you can do what we do. I’m always interested in having a conversation about the possibilities.

The Top 3 Goals for Every Legacy Leader: 1) Build Trusting Relationships 2) Build Trusting Relationships 3) Build Trusting Relationships

What do we mean when we say trust? In my experience, I have discovered that different people think of trust in different terms. For that reason, before a team begins building trust among themselves, they must clearly define trust for that team. I have most typically heard of three different levels of trust. The first level has to do with honesty. Can we trust you to be truthful and honor the rights of ownership? The second level deals with actions. Can we trust you to do what you say you are going to do? And the third level is all about vulnerability. Can we trust you not to take advantage of our exposed vulnerabilities?

Why is trust so important? Just think about it. If you have a choice between doing business with someone you trust and someone you don’t trust, which one will you choose? How about working for someone you don’t trust? How do you feel about that? When we trust those we deal with, it makes life a little easier. When trust does not exist, everything gets more difficult. Teams that trust one another produce better outcomes than teams that lack trust.

How does a team build the trusting relationships that are needed to become a high functioning team? I can tell you, it never happens by chance. When we just assume that everyone will be trustworthy, we set ourselves up for making the old adage come true. To assume makes an ass out of u and me! The reason this happens is not inherent dishonesty, it’s the failure to clarify what we mean by trust, what behaviors will demonstrate trust, and how we will create our trust accountability system. Teams that really trust one another know how to call out team members for lapses. Whether those lapses are intentional or accidental doesn’t matter. If our team is to become high functioning, we must all accept the responsibility for calling out one another for those lapses. Intent doesn’t matter! Intent is always an interpreted thing anyway. What I believe your intention was and what you actually intended often don’t match and that discrepancy will depend on our biases. It’s best to just let it go.

Since we need to be intentional, we should create opportunities for proving our collective trustworthiness. Every team meeting provides a chance to test team trust. Team members need to be challenged to open up and share their most creative ideas and to share the trust concerns that have cropped up since the last meeting. Guidelines for doing this sharing must be established and be enforced. Foremost among these guidelines is the use of I messages and the prohibition of the use of You messages. As I’ve written in a previous blog, an I message has 3 parts: 1) I observed, heard, saw, 2) I felt, and 3) I interpreted this to mean. This is followed by a request for clarification, such as; can you help me understand what your point-of-view on this matter is? In contrast, You messages are accusatory with an intention of shifting responsibility for whatever is going on from me to you. The key to success is making sure everyone knows how the trust mechanism works for the team and then making sure everyone abides by that process. No exceptions! Everyone, especially the “boss,” must abide by the rules.

I’m always interested in feedback. When you try this trust building approach, let me know what happens. If your team is anything like any of the teams I have worked with before, I expect to hear about improved trust. Please don’t be afraid to share your experience with me. The more we learn, the better we can all be.

What I Really Believe!

I saw this picture with the caption above it and just had to share it. I believe we have looked so hard at what separates us from the crowd that we’ve failed to see what makes us all alike. In 2002, a group of geneticists concluded that the difference in the genetics between the two most diverse individuals they could find was less than 0.1%. That means in 99.9% of their genetic makeup was identical. That very dark child and the very light child look so different but they are, genetically speaking, virtually the same. To hate either one because of those minute differences is inconceivable to me!

The family of humankind consists of people who appear to be quite different but, in all reality, the differences have more to do with what we have experienced than anything else. What we see is not as critical as what is in our hearts. Where we are from is not nearly as important as where we intend to go. How we get to our destination should not concern us as much as who will travel with us on our journey. There will be less room for hate in our lives if we fill our hearts with love!

If I am to love my life, I must personally be aware of how my life connects to the rest of the biosphere. To believe that my life can exist independently from all else that lives is to demonstrate a lack of understanding as to how life actually works. My very existence is dependent upon so many other living organisms that if I tried to list them all, I would surely miss some. Some I would miss due to oversight but many I would miss due to a lack of awareness.

If we truly believe that we can ignore the messages our living planet is sending us without facing dire consequences, then we have learned very little in our time on this blue dot in the universe. We are both significant and so highly insignificant, all at the same time. We are significant in that no matter how small our actions may seem to be, they can have a huge ripple effect on our world. One act of malice can rot away the fabric of a community, while one act of kindness can instill hope in dozens. When we intentionally try to make a difference we always do. We might not see how at the time, but eventually, that good will grow and take on a life of its own. At this same time, as we are acting here on Earth, what we do is imperceptible to more than 99.99999% of the universe. Of all the mass that exists, our earth is less than a molecule of water in all the oceans on earth by comparison. We are each significant to humanity but so insignificant universally.

What does all this mean to me, just one out of 7.7 billion people. I may be insignificant in our universe but I can make a difference in the existence of every living thing I touch. That can only happen if I am willing to take personal responsibility for what I do. Knowing that every action I take has consequences, I can choose to be a force for good or a force for bad. Doing good is a conscious choice. If I do not choose to actively participate in behaviors that are good for our planet and my fellow humans, I leave the consequences of my actions up to chance. I believe that we have operated on autopilot for way too long. It’s time for each of us to be intentional. We all need to do what’s right. That requires us to pay attention to what we do. It requires us to be aware of the consequences of our actions. It requires us to think first and act later. Our neighbors are depending us and so is everything else!

Getting out of the Box

A friend of mine once told elementary school students that we all need to think outside the box! One child responded by saying; “What Box?” We are not born in a box. In our early years we are unlimited in our thinking. We saw connections where adults failed to see them. Sometimes we saw connections that really did not exist. In those times, adults made sure we knew the error of our thinking. By repeatedly pointing out how our logic was flawed, adults created the boxes that now constrain us. Because of how painful those experiences were, we have grown to become quite comfortable in our boxes. The problem is, however, as Einstein is reported to have said; “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Thinking differently requires getting out of the box.

Coming up with out of the box ideas requires organizations to create space for thinking differently. To do this is quite simple but, once again, it is a task that can be very hard to accomplish. We are trained to get things to fit into neat little boxes. It creates efficiency and organizations everywhere are always looking for more efficiency. But efficiency without effectiveness is useless. Maximizing both efficiency and effectiveness can often require us to look at our world differently and this means getting outside of our boxes. The simplicity of encouraging outside the box thinking lies in providing incentives for doing so and eliminating all reprisals for failures that result from out of the box efforts. Although the idea is quite simple, the implementation of the idea is quite complex. Not all people will respond to the same incentives so a variety of incentives may be required and this creates the potential for inequities in how our team members are treated. Plus, allowing people to fail, over and over, we run the risk of severely reducing productivity. So it’s a simple idea that is very difficult to implement. So how do we safely and smoothly get outside our the box?

My recommendation is to establish an “I got an idea” program in your organization. With this program, any organization member who get’s an idea about how things might be improved by doing something different, is encouraged, through incentives and assurances of safety, to bring that idea to an “I got an idea” meeting. In that meeting, the innovator would share the idea with a team of people whose job it will be to pick it apart, not to demonstrate that it won’t work, but to figure out how to make it work. If the team cannot, in a reasonable time, figure out how to make the idea work, the idea gets placed on the idea shelf and is revisited from time to time to figure out if it can work. The cornerstone of the program must be trust. Your people must have a level of trust that allows them to be vulnerable with the full belief that they will not be taken advantage of and that they will benefit from being an innovator. The incentives used should relate to what motivates the people who bring the idea to the meeting. The incentives should not be standardized. They should be as out of the box as the system you are creating. Resist the temptation of using material rewards as the only means of incentivizing this creative work. If money or material gain is the only reward, you will miss those who are more motivated by aesthetics, altruism, knowledge, independence, order and structure, or opportunities for leadership. If you can, establish a specific location to be the “Innovation Center.” It can be a room or just a space where innovators can go to hold out of the box conversations.

How these systems work is as different as are the companies that use them. Companies like Google, Zappos, and Southwest Airlines are known for their creative cultures but there are dozens more that are not so well known, but are equally invested in finding the creative gems hiding in the ranks of their team members. I would encourage any leader to investigate what these more unheard of companies are doing. As I researched these companies for this blog post, I was overwhelmed by the number of companies that are truly innovators. Some may not be the largest organizations but some were huge. Check out what New York Life is doing or Signify (previously known as Phillips Lighting) or even AT & T! If there are so many innovative companies out there, why are so many others still entrenched in their boxes. Even more critical is the question, why are so many schools still stuck in boxes that are so old? It’s a wonder that they haven’t disintegrated into dust.

Where do All These Ideas Come From?

Since I began this Blog last September, I have made 52 posts. Each of these has been either an idea I have developed or a post of an article I had previously written for another purpose. I was asked where do all these ideas come from? So, this post will address one of the most important behaviors of any Legacy Leader; open minded observation.

What prevents the average person from coming up with new ideas is observing what goes on around them with a fixed mindset. When you try to fit everything you experience into a context that only considers your personal view of the world, the application of each experience is constrained. By asking one simple question you change your level of understanding and your opportunity for creative applications. That question is “what are all the ways this experience can be interpreted and applied to my world?” Once you start looking for these broader interpretations and applications you open your mind to many ideas you never thought of before. In reality, these may not be new ideas for the world, but they can be major innovations for you.

By failing to examine alternative interpretations and applications of what you observe and experience, you limit your ability to understand. Using the same lens to examine everything prevents you from seeing details that can only be seen through a different lens. Until the invention of the microscope, science had no idea that living organisms were made up of cells. This breakthrough observation has led to millions of new ideas that have saved millions and millions of lives and has led to amazing improvements in the quality of life we all experience. But, by failing to continue our ongoing search for alternative interpretations and applications of the observations we make, we relegate our minds to the dark world of the fixed mindset.

The most innovative people can suddenly become the people who protect the status quo when they forget how they became innovators. It didn’t happen by protecting what is. It happened by being open to other possibilities, other ways to interpret what seems like the “right way,” and other perspectives. Truly having an open mindset requires vigilance. Our brains have evolved with a protective default setting. Our brains will naturally try to create a safe zone. It is in this safe zone that growth stops and fear begins. All change and innovation ceases. It is here that we become convinced that we have reached the end and that no further improvements can be made. I have a personal experience that illustrates this point. More than 40 years ago, a very knowledgeable science teacher was told by one of his students that his father had just photographed a water molecule. That teacher told the student that was not possible. It would take a microscope that used lenses that were impossible to make. Of course, as we know today, if you use an entirely different technology to help the human eye make the observation, photographs of the water molecule is completely possible. That student’s father was Dr. Albert Crewe, the inventor of the scanning transmission electron microscope. As soon as we believe we can’t improve any more, we are right but only about ourselves. The rest of the world will continue to look for new ideas, new interpretations of old ideas, and new applications for both.

So all these ideas, they will keep on coming as long as I am open to the possibilities. You can be too. Change your mindset and you change your opportunities. Be open not fixed. That’s the secret to being able to have an endless stream of ideas.

What Legacy Leaders can Learn from the NFL Playoffs

Conventional wisdom tells us that each year there is one successful team in the NFL; the team that wins the Super Bowl! There are 32 teams in the NFL and there are definitely teams that have won more games than other teams, but what really defines success in the NFL? I would argue that success can be best defined by 3 critical reality factors: reality of expectations, reality of preparation, and reality of performance. At the beginning of the season, a set of expectations for the outcome of the season were clearly stated. Each team prepared for the season using strategies and systems they hoped would result in enough victories to make it into the playoffs. The season began and team performances resulted in won-loss records that determined who would make it.

So what really led to the performance each team experienced? Preparation certainly contributed. Teams prepared physically, emotionally, strategically, tactically, intellectually, and even spiritually. They considered data and statistics because they wanted to be able to employ what they considered to be the highest probability of success game plans each week. Every team did this but we still had winners and losers. There are the 12 teams that made the playoffs and they 20 that did not. Some would say the difference was talent but there are definitely other factors such as injuries, an the ability to adapt, adjust, and improvise. The analysts talk about the intangibles like the ability to see the field or to anticipate next moves but how do you develop these skills? Why do some people acquire these skills while others do not? And what about luck? Sometimes the football bounces funny or a defensive back falls down. Sometimes the officials miss a critical penalty. What can we really learn from the NFL Playoffs?

Here are my 5 lessons for Legacy Leaders based on the NFL Playoffs.

1. Base your definition of success not on whether you win or lose the game but on what you do with the opportunity you have. Any single endeavor can result in success or failure. Success on this event may not mean anything more than good fortune. Likewise, do not wallow in failure should you not come out on top. Learn from every experience.

2. As you reflect on the experience, question everything. Pick apart every aspect of your preparation and how you dealt with what you confronted. Look at both the good and the bad. Don’t do this in an attempt to figure out who screwed up but do it so you will better know what to do next time.

3. Study what your competition did. What did they do that gave them the upper hand? What did key players do and what did the coaches/managers do that worked? What did they do that was significantly different from what you did?

4. Immediately start your preparation for your next contest. Whether you win or lose, it’s not the end. There is a tomorrow. Start preparation for that tomorrow while the thoughts, data, and statistics are fresh.

5. No matter how great or bad you feel, following the contest, your team’s emotions will be more intense. Be the leader your team needs. Help them heal when they fail and get refocused when they succeed. Let them enjoy the victory but help them look forward to their next big game.

The difference between the teams that make the playoffs and those that don’t can be just a few mistakes here or there. Finding the keys to improvement can help you make it next time. Learning from every experience is the only way to turn the corner.