Practice How You Play, and You Will Play How You Practiced: Keys to Inspiring Leadership

“It is not the will to win that matters – everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.” Paul “Bear” Bryant

Once we finish the leadership programs we teach, we conduct satisfaction surveys as part of our continuous improvement process at Unlock Engine. Among the questions we have, there is one in particular where we assess what is the interest of the participants to become an inspiring leader? and the result is an overwhelming 90% of positive answers, the problem that we see many times, is that many people do not understand what it takes to achieve it.

The art of leadership is like any other discipline, in my opinion, there are three fundamental elements to be an expert and achieve success.

First, the fundamentals must be learned, knowing them gives you the basis to achieve it. You cannot become an exceptional painter if you don’t learn the technique, nor will you be an inspiring leader without knowing in detail what behaviors will lead you to achieve it.

Second, once you understand what you have to do, you have to practice it many times, fail a good proportion of them and perfect your skills. They say that practice makes perfect, this applies equally to leading. To become a great leader, you have to display the right behaviors, many times, you will have to change habits that don’t help you in the process, all this requires a lot of conscious practice until you reach an unconscious competence that’ll lead you to success.

Third, you must be committed to becoming an inspirational leader. This tends to be easier said than done, because committing implies being willing to recognize your faults, to learn, not to give up in the face of failure and to stand firm in your conviction no matter what.

Without the latter, the other two things don’t happen, either because you never have the true disposition to learn or because you feel that with a little practice you’ve already mastered it, which most of the time is false. But equally, a great commitment is useless if you’re not given the fundamentals and the opportunity to practice them.

During my professional career I learned many things, but I have to be honest that the first time I had people in my charge, I wasn’t completely clear about what I had to do as a leader. I was clear about my responsibilities as a manager, but I didn't know how to lead. I had a lot of commitment and the intention to practice, but I really wasn't clear on the behaviors that would make me a great leader. This is the complexity of leading, it requires that you perfect certain behaviors and be consistent with them, otherwise the whole process is useless. Behaviors as important as trust, require, amongst many things, practice and perseverance, because as they say, trust goes up the stairs but goes down the elevator, one mistake can erase all your progress.

A few years ago I saw the movie “Eddie the Eagle”, this tells the true story of Michael David Edwards, a British man whose dream was always to participate in the Olympic Games, the problem however was that he didn’t stand out in any discipline. It’s an entertaining movie, in my opinion, it’s different and leaves you with many lessons, however it’s not my intention to spoil it for you in this blog because I really recommend you see it. But I think that one of the most important messages it left me, was the big difference between wanting to achieve something and really wanting to prepare to achieve it. The world and our daily life are full of examples of this, surely we’d like to achieve certain things; running a marathon, losing weight, playing an instrument, etc., but very few of us have the true will to prepare ourselves to achieve them, that is the big difference. In leadership it’s the same, I hear many people who want to be leaders, dream and imagine their lives and successes around the idea of it, unfortunately not everyone decides to prepare to achieve it.

I am convinced that leaders are not born, leaders are made with dedication, effort and a lot of sacrifice. I also firmly believe that all people deserve to have a great leader, this may or may not be the boss, in the end that is just an assignment, but what we really want to find in our path is that one person who helps us to be better, to develop our maximum potential, you can decide if you want to prepare yourself to be that person.