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Hard Fun

June 22, 2018

One of the features that attracts students to school sports is that competitive athletics is “hard fun.” Most students want to have fun, and most students ascribe greater value to that which doesn’t come too easily.

I don’t think we change much as we mature. We continue to value most the things that require effort ... the activities which, when completed, feel like an accomplishment.

It’s why I cherish my recent high altitude hike on the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu ... the hardest physical challenge I’ve had since double-session football practices in high school and college.

It’s why coaches often will say their favorite season was the .500 record with over-achievers, not the conference championship with under-achievers.

It’s why students will return to class reunions this summer, 10 and 20 years after their graduation, and compliment especially the teachers and coaches who required the most of them as students and athletes.

What the very best classrooms and competitive athletic and activity programs do is challenge students. They push students to discover that they can move beyond where they thought their limits might be. They encourage students to explore their capabilities and to experience the joy of exceeding their expectations.

Holding Back

February 24, 2015

I wrote last week in this space about the positive place for disagreement in organizations; and I held back on pushing the topic a bit further.

Sometimes an organization leader has to hold back. Sometimes the leader needs to recognize that the organization has more disagreement than it can handle and that taking on another topic for which much disagreement is likely would be like drinking from a fire hose.

In Leadership on the Line (HBS, 2002), authors Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky write that “leadership requires disturbing people – but at a rate they can absorb.”

Heifetz and Linsky describe the need to “orchestrate the conflict” in four steps:

  1. “Create a holding environment” – a safe place to interact.
  2. “Control the temperature” – turn the heat up to get people’s attention, and turn it down for them to cool off or to catch up.
  3. “Set the pace” – not too fast that we leave too many people behind; not too slow that we lose the vision and momentum.
  4. “Show the future” – remind people of the “orienting value” – that is, the positive reason to go through all the negative rancor.