Inspirational Link Leadership
The US Women’s Open showed the rewards of hard work
Last Saturday, since we have the privilege of living nearby (and since my business gives me the flexibility to do those things), we were part of the crowd that flocked to the Broadmoor Resort in Colorado Springs to watch the US Women’s Open Golf Championship.
If you’re a golfer, even (perhaps especially) if you’re a man, you should watch professional women ply their trade… you’ll learn a lot about how to hit the golf ball. And if you’re a businessperson or leader looking to increase your ability to inspire your people, you could learn great lessons in personal responsibility and inspirational leadership from these women.
I play golf, and am a fan enough to watch the tournaments on television and have attended several tournaments as a spectator. On Saturday I was reminded why I love seeing these women at work: THEY WORK. That’s not to say your swings are overdone, or that you swing too hard. The fact is you see them between rounds, early in the morning, all the time, working on their game.
They’re out there on the putting green. They’re taking endless shots out of the practice bunkers. They’re on the driving range, swinging. These women seem to be living lives that are endless golf lessons, and they’ll tell you they learn more about the game every time they hit a club.
And that’s why they know, within a narrow range, where the ball will end up when they set up a shot in a tournament.
I think of some of the 20-somethings I know who are the age of these girls, and I try to imagine those guys doing so much work to be good at something. The fact is that the vast majority will not. They would be bored to tears. In fact, the Harvard Business Review reported on a new study showing that fewer American high school students than ever before say they would work if they had a lot of money. But it’s a simple fact that you have to do boring things, over and over, for days, weeks, and years, to be good at anything.
A recent documentary about the great chess player of the 1970s, Bobby Fischer, made the same point. They say that the greats of any profession spend at least 10,000 hours learning and practicing their craft. I used to tell singers under my direction essentially the same thing: “As soon as you’ve gone through this song 500 times, you’ll have it locked away and you’ll never forget it.” And there is no shortcut.
Do you need talent? Sure. But we all have much greater talents than most of us realize. I would say that anyone who is interested enough in golf, chess, singing, or leadership to spend 10,000 hours learning…that person is talented enough. We all know that the most talented competitor doesn’t always win. That’s why someone invented the phrase “Heart of a champion.”
People are inspired by greatness. But they are also inspired by the honest effort to achieve it. Some of the most inspiring leaders I’ve met were talented young people who hadn’t put in anything close to 10,000 hours, but who were clearly and visibly on their own personal blueprint for greatness.
If you’re looking for the inspiration to go big, get out there and start rocking. Start with your 10,000 hours. Do the boring stuff. And when you pause to reflect, look around you and see if there are others watching you, taking cues and setting off on their own journey…thanks to the inspiration you’ve given them.
by Michael D. Hume, M.S.