Today, we will explore Leadership principles drawn from sports, business, Christianity and personal relationships and how effective leadership ideas come from these diverse areas. We’ll look at the common threads and we will continue on this journey to create our own personal blueprints.
in my past four posts, I gave you my personal overview on the areas of sports , business, Christian faith, and personal relationships. Now, I want to go further and pull out the intersecting lessons for leadership.
Regardless of what season you may be at in your life, we continue to hold leadership roles. I want to share some invaluable insights.
Sports Leadership Principles
Have you ever heard the saying Teamwork makes the dream work. Building from scratch, it took me five years, of recruiting players, building, and captaining a USTA women’s tennis team. Our mission statement was “Let’s be the team that works hard, plays hard, and gets better together.” We pulled this off and experienced tremendous success. We became known as “The no drama team.”
Discipline is important Another key area.The training required to get better in sports requires discipline and putting in the time on a consistent basis.
Facing set backs and bouncing back is also a key lesson in sports leadership. This is known as resilence. Think back to your own experiences. You have likely bounced back from a variety of losses.
Sports requires becoming effective in relaying the objectives and strategies for the desired result. This is communication and it is huge! I had a coach back when I was in high school that was tough! He created a belief in our teams that made a significant impact. Our women’s teams won many State Championships in all the sports. I played Volleyball, Basketball and track. We became a powerhouse team and gained respect across the state. He communicated beliefin us. Think about when a team wins a national championship, like the Super Bowl, and you hear the players talk about their coaches and how they inspired belief and that led to their victory! Did you ever have a coach like this?
Business Leadership Principles
Successful leaders in business have clear vision and strategic goals for their organizations–offen called strategic vision. I experienced this in my 5th year working for the Southwestern Company. In previous posts, I’ve mentioned that I worked for a company thru college that taught the skills of being an entrepreneur. The company recruited and relocated college students in the summer to sell educational books door-to-door. One particular year that I worked for the company, I had a vision to recruit 20 college students from Oregon State with the goal of having a top 10 team in the company. I accomplished this goal–but it took strategic vision and goals!
Another key leadership principle is adapability. A statement I use all the time is “If that doesn’t work, try something else!”
Integrity is being good for your word. Never asking someone to do something you aren’t willing to do yourself.
Great business leaders are committed to ongoing learning and developmlea–which is continious learning.
Christian Leadership Principles
Jesus’ example of servant leadership humility, compassion, selflessness, guidance and faith–and, of course, love. Seeking guidance through prayer relying on faith in decision making has been a big one for me in creating and recording my podcast episodes.
Great Christian leaders embody forgiveness, grace and understanding. Believe me this is one of my biggest challenges. I say this all the time “I’m a sinner saved by grace!”
Personal Relationship Principles
Last, we come to personal relationship principles. These key areas: communication skiski–“Say what you mean and mean what you say!”, empathy, conflict resolution, and trust building are all foundational for personal relationshiprelationshis.
I hope you are seeing what I am see. Drawing on parallels from these diverse areas like sports, business, Christian truths, and personal relationships can equip us to become unstoppable leaders. I feel identifying these principles across these different domains, and implementing them, will boost our leadership effectiveness and open up new avenues for success!
I encourage you to get out that journal and write out these ideas. Pull the ideas that bring you clarity about your own leaderships skills. Add ideas I may not have covered. With this series we are going to continue to build our own personal blueprints!
I hope these ideas are challenging your thinking! I hope you are reflecting about your personal experiences that relate to these ideas.
Next in this series, we well be talking about Values: “Building Strong Foundations: Common Ground in Values.” We’re going to continue digging and pulling successful principles from these four areas sports, business, Christian principles, and personal relationships. We will continue to discover the common threads of integrity, perseverance, and empathy from these areas to form the solid base for success. Continue to join me and stay on this journey for more insights on creating strong foundations that go beyond the surface.
Monette hosts a weekly podcast: Mornings with Monette. She has been a lifelong learner and and appreciates the opportunity to share what she has learned–both through her podcast and here at The Best-Life Project (based on the content of her weekly podcast). Her messages are raw, honest and straight from the heart. She lives in Albuquerque, NM with her husband Leland. They have three adult children and are enjoying living their best lives filled with travel and adventure.
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