Leadership Is More Than Just Kicking A Ball

Leadership is not just an individual skill; it’s a social and relational process that drives success when teams align around a shared purpose.

Photo by Vienna Reyes on Unsplash

“As a leader people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Pat Summitt

And there’s certainly more to leadership than kicking a ball. Some would argue that it’s really about getting the midfield right, and it’s about enabling and compelling those you lead to go further, faster, cross the line and deliver. Nothing pseudo, mysterious, or complicated, and nothing more or less.

Also, it’s not about your position, being at the top of the pyramid or out in front leading the charge. It’s actually about being at the centre, holding that space and remaining there come what may. Whilst playing the long game with an authentic kindness that permits others to find where they fit and rolling the pitch for them to run onto.

That’s a view, but does it hold true across the entire leadership spectrum? If leadership is nothing else it has to be the right kind for the context and situation, and it needs a leader to show up in the right headspace and with the right heart space.

Because as the very successful American women’s basketball head coach Patricia Susan Summitt points out at the top of this piece, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Hearts, Minds & Matches

Photo by Alice Yamamura on Unsplash

“So, as a leader how do you win hearts, minds and matches?”

As mentioned in a recent piece, ‘The Big Small & How We Learned To Love Complexity’, there was the following Footnote — “Coming soon we’ll be taking a look at leadership through the lens of Brazilian football and finding out why Dinizismo is so important.”

So, let’s do just that. Fernando Diniz is perhaps a name you’re not familiar with, unless you are a South American soccer geek. But as head coach of the Rio de Janeiro Serie A club Fluminese he achieved something rather…