Scripture
“Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you as well.” (Matthew 6:33)
Thought
There’s nothing like becoming the head coach. I still remember how clearly I defined my ambition when I got my first collegiate head coaching position. I knew exactly how I was going to run the program, what we were going to value on the coaching staff and ultimately what my personal ambition was as the leader of the program. I wanted to coach the person before the player. I wanted to build up individuals of character off the field while competing hard on the field. I wanted to develop leaders for life. Maybe you have your ambitions in leadership really well defined as well. It’s so critical to have success clearly defined.
Well, leadership doesn’t happen in a vacuum as we know. There are real external forces that have a way of interfering with the great desires we have outlined when we set out on the journey. I remember vividly being in the middle of an eight game losing streak early on as a head coach and that’s when my identity started to come under threat. I started to wear all the negative emotions and slowly my ambition to coach the person before the player started to take some heat. Building up men of character while competing hard on the field started to get replaced for the desire to win games and get back in contention in our conference. Leaders for life? How about we just stop losing games?!
My definition of success was getting replaced with every loss. As the losing streak stretched to ten games I remember being so depleted and frustrated. One game, (we were losing again by the way) I remember looking down the dugout at my players and assistant coaches and thinking:
“You all, are embarrassing me.”
Have you ever been leading from this type of an unhealthy place? Thankfully I never mouthed the words out loud, but unfortunately I’m sure they could feel it from my attitude. This is the negative impact of ambition drift. The experience where we begin to subtly change what we said we wanted to do, and more importantly the experience where we begin to change who we said we wanted to be.
Drift is to move aimlessly at the mercy of external forces. It is the process by which we allow external forces (wins and losses for example) to affect our development.
In our most recent podcast episode we began a new series in which we will breakdown each step of the STC6 Framework. These episodes will give a glimpse of what goes on in the leadership coaching sessions we have with emerging leaders.
In the first step of our framework we spend a great deal of time helping a leader do some internal deep work. Ultimately we believe even for the most experienced leaders, a sense of ambition drift takes place in our day to day lives. We set out saying we want to do one thing, but then over time new ambitions emerge - some great and some not so great - that pull us slowly and silently away from the type of leader we said we wanted to be.
It doesn’t have to be this way though. The STC6 Framework is helping emerging leaders discover a different way. A way in which we can better understand the forces that compete against our definition of success.
We believe the transformational leadership lifestyle is marked by our ability to fight drift and develop a system to more regularly stay the course, live our values, and pursue our personal definition of success.
In doing so, as transformational leaders we will experience more fulfillment, contentment, groundedness, and joy.
A healthy inner-life will lead to a healthy leadership life. Don’t forfeit health on the inside for a changing definition of success on the outside. And this doesn’t mean we can’t be driven. It just means we can drive from a healthy place.