Horizon Point Consulting

Category: General

Horizon Point writes about dozens of leadership, career, workplace, and workforce topics. Sometimes we write whatever we want. Read this category for general blogs from the HPC team.

  • Do you have a better half? A final word on Leadership Lessons for College Football

    I’ll admit, after writing about leadership lessons gleaned from Nick Saban and college football over the last several weeks, even I’m beginning to tire about all the hype over the man.   As Warren St. John points out in his GQ article on Saban,  many people associate him with the devil.   (Note:  Even if you don’t like football, read St. John’s article, he is a fabulous writer.)

    Love him or hate him (in the sake of full disclosure, we love him at our house), one thing I got out of St. John’s article, among many is that Saban has a better half.  “Ms. Terry”.

    St. John writes,

    “The role of helping Saban interact with the outside world falls to his wife, the outgoing daughter of a West Virginia coal miner who is known in Saban’s world simply as “Ms. Terry,” a down-home nickname that undersells her savvy. When it comes to her husband, she serves as both a protective gatekeeper and an all-knowing oracle.”

    And more,

    “The big question in Alabama, and in college football, is how long Saban will stick around. Everyone has a theory. Steven Rumsey remembers asking him once about the possibility of his leaving. Saban’s response: “Terry likes it here.”

    “I remember getting my feelings hurt,” Rumsey tells me. “I thought, It’d mean the world to me, Nick, if you said, ‘I like it here.’ But after thinking about it, a practice field looks the same if you’re at Baltimore, U.S.C., Texas, Tampa. The grass is the grass, the goalposts are the goalposts, and if you work sixteen-hour days it’s all thesame to you. So really when he said, ‘Terry likes it here,’ what he was saying was, ‘That’s the most important thing to me, because she’s the one who’s got to experience the life here.’”

    Leaders come with all types of relationships in their lives, some married, some single, among many other things.  I don’t think there is a rhyme or reason to leadership capabilities and whether or not you mark “filing jointly” on your tax return.

    However, I would venture to guess that every leader who is striving towards a purpose and a passion has someone at their wing, someone who completes them and whothey are, who supports them continually.

    You’ve heard the saying, “Behind every good man is a good woman.”  Well, BESIDE every good leader, male or female, is a good man or woman.

    Who is by your side?

  • Don’t Want to Wake Up With Regrets? Create a Mission Statement

    Don’t Want to Wake Up With Regrets? Create a Mission Statement

    Mission statements are critical to directing success.  Companies have them, why don’t individuals?  Having one can help you focus and reach what you want to accomplish in life by answering the who, what, why and how of you.  Its not a mission statement unless it is written down. Whether or not you are trying to make career or college decisions in your life, everyone needs to have a personal mission statement.

    The exercises focused on identifying finding your talents, passions and values, for career purposes are a good starting place to help you discover your mission.  Just as the best place for shining your light for your career is at the intersection of these three things, so is your personal mission.   If you haven’t taken the time identify your talents, passions and values, I would encourage you to identify your top three in each area by looking at the resources here on the blog that have focused on talents, passions and values throughout 2013.   When you define your mission, you should be able to live out your talents, passions, and values through it.

    Don’t want to wake up with regrets?

    We use a workshop called The Power of 3 to walk people through creating personal mission statements, goals and success strategies for themselves in order to help them insure they are living life to the fullest.   They help people not wake up one day with a whole list of regrets.  Mission statements also help people say no to things that aren’t inline with their mission (more on this later).

    You can download the worksheet to this workshop here: Power of 3 Worksheet.

    We’ll be talking about each area as they relate to being successful over the next few weeks.

    Here are some other tools for creating a mission statement for yourself:

    What is your personal mission?

  • Leadership Lessons from College Football: Maximize and Recognize your Rudys

    We’re so close to the kick-off of football season that you can almost taste it. Less than four days to go till the season kicks-off with Thursday night match-ups.

    With the kick-off of the season, it’s hard to neglect the leadership lessons that come from the game, the players and thecoaches. With all the coaches talking about practices and preparing their team, another leadership lesson struck me last week.Every player is important.

    Find “some dreamers that just won’t quit.”

    Nick Saban was being interviewed after a practice and what did he talk about? The walk-ons.   The walk-ons? Most people would think, who cares about them? Let’s talk about whether or not Yeldon (the star running back) or McCarron (the star quarter back) have a shot at the Heisman this year. Why would we talk about the walk-ons?

    Saban discussed how the walk-ons are, week in and week out, the key to getting the team ready for the games. If they weren’t willing to give their all in practice, the team wouldn’t be ready for its next opponent.

    We all need some “dreamers that just won’t quit” to inspire success on our team. Talent only takes you so far. The rest is sheer heart.

     

     

    Want to inspire your team to see the value in every player?

    Nothing illustrates the value of team drive and morale affected by a walk-on than the movie Rudy.   Show it to your people, and facilitate a discussion about the value every person brings to the table.

    Here are some things you might want to discuss with your team after watching the movie:

    1. How does talent only go so far in the workplace?
    2. What does the coach mean by, “I wish I could put your heart in some of my players bodies.”?   How do you select and/or train people to have “heart” in the workplace?
    3. Who are your Rudys in the workplace? Do they get rewarded and recognized for their effort? Why or why not?
    4.  How you could create more Rudys in the workplace?

  • It’s Okay to Go Gray- Making Career Decisions in a Black and White World

    It’s Okay to Go Gray- Making Career Decisions in a Black and White World

    While coaching a young man this week that had returned home from college with a degree but with no promising job prospects, I realized that is it much easier to point people towards traditional career paths through traditional educational channels than to take them into a “gray” zone.

    Becoming a teacher (although this is not what he had completed a degree in college for) was one of the career routes, among others, that was a possibility after talking with him and reviewing his career assessment results.

    I found myself, whether best or not for this young man, wanting to point him down this path because I could concretely tell him how to get there.  Get a teaching certificate, student teach, apply with school systems. I could tell him what educational avenues to pursue to get a teaching certificate and what would make him marketable to school systems.

    The other few potential avenues for him, not so black and white. In fact, they would require much more exploration, planning and effort on his part. But would these routes make him happier and more “successful”?

    In a guest post on UnCollege’s blog this week, I highlight how to define successful career.   Defining success is very personal and oftentimes takes people down very gray pathways.

    UnCollege has realized that traditional avenues of education beyond high school may not be the best for everyone inhelping to achieve success. Their unique approach focuses on what the founder Dale Stephens says are, “the real requirements” for success: “curiosity, confidence, and grit.” They have created a “gap year” to help people hone these requirements for success via an untraditional or gray channel.

    Don’t choose a career just because its easy to map a course to get there

    In making wise career decisions, you need know your talents, passions and values,  and then create a game plan to chart your own course to get there.This may be through black and white channels or it may take you down the gray road. Regardless of the path it takes you to get there, we’ll be offering up success tools for the next several weeks to help you create your own plan and chart your own course to success.

    Did you choose or are you tempted to choose a career because the path to get there is or was clearly defined? If so, do you wish you’d thought in gray instead of black and white or do you need help creating a game plan for your gray zone?

  • Leadership Lessons from College Football: The “Medicore” and Team Success

    Leadership Lessons from College Football: The “Medicore” and Team Success

    “Mediocre people don’t like high achievers and high achievers don’t like mediocre people so if you let those two things co-exist on your team it’s never going to work out right.” Nick Saban

    Want to demotivate someone who does an outstanding job for you?   Pay little attention to them and pay more attention to your less than “A” players. It doesn’t matter if it is positive or negative attention, its attention. Pay them the same that you pay your less than “A” players, but give them less work because they aren’t performing. Give that work to your “A” players. I guarantee you your best performers will start to get frustrated and then you have one less “A” player on your team because they will either leave you or become one of “them”.

    Although Nick Saban can’t pay players (let’s hope he’s not!), he realizes that the best way to sabotage a team is to allow players to stay on the team that don’t make a “choice” as he says be disciplined in their work and performance. “Discipline is something you choose. You choose it. It’s not God given, you do the right thing, the right way, the right time all the time- that’s a choice,” he says.

    While recently attending a workshop presented by the Ritz-Carlton Center for Leadership, I heard the speaker site the statistic that 18% of people are disengaged workers. She called them “cave people” and said we (as leaders) spend way too much of our time on them.   I think she is talking about the same “mediocre” crowd Saban is talking about. Our time spent away from intense focus on our A team keeps people away from leading championship teams.

    Want to build a championship team? Get rid of your cave people; you’ll be doing everyone a favor, including them in the long run.

     

    Want more on this topic?

    80/20 principle

    Saban Quotes from “Nick Saban gives unexpected pep talk”

    Leadership Lessons from College Football Post 1