Bracketology & Leadership

It’s March. It’s Madness. It’s March Madness! If you know much about me, you know about my love of college basketball. Women’s and Men’s. In a former life, I was fortunate to teach these athletes and actually had season tickets (12th row from the floor!) to watch some of the most amazing athleticism around. And of course, in the Southeastern Conference (SEC).

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What you may be thinking is that I am going to write about the office bracketology pool. Nope. In fact, I want us to take a look at how leadership and bracketology actually have a few things in common:

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Let’s first start with

1. Bracketology:

Is a set of predictions about the participants in and outcomes of the games in a sports tournament, typically presented on a diagram representing the sequence of games. So, in leadership, bracketology could be the activity of predicting outcomes and possibly diagramming what the options are, what options progress, and what option ultimately wins out? ?Or the activity of leaders placing organizational teams in diagrams to help decipher why and how to achieve a solution?

1. Bracketologist

A leader could be called a bracketologist, who is instrumental in placing employees/teams/options in various regions or situations.?This process involves the use of a selection method process, the “NET”, resume, and quadrants. ?In sports, the goal of bracketology is to chart teams with routes to the final game and ensure no region is unfairly lopsided and competition is as fair as possible – despite what the fans may say!?The term bracketologists doesn't mean an individual is uniquely skilled at predicting what will happen in the NCAA tournament, but rather that they predict what the bracket will look like on Selection Sunday. Like bracketologists, leaders are skilled at predicting which teams will perform their best and what their outcomes could produce.

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Next

1. NET

We're not talking about cutting down the net. Rather, this is the acronym for the NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET), which replaced Rating Percentage Index (RPI) as the primary metric used to rank teams. Per the?NCAA website , NET is a combination of four factors: team value index, net efficiency, winning percentage and adjusted win percentage. How these factors are actually weighted is anyone's guess. The NCAA works with the selection committee, coaches, basketball analytics and experts to come up with some top-secret formula, which is never shared with the public. Same with a successful organization. They will share their achievements and how they got there but may not be in the position to share the intimate details of their winning success. Think of for example, the “secret recipe,” “secret sauce,” or “secret weapon.” NET ranking is the backbone for all tournament resume information.

1. Resume:

Just like a job resume, a team's tournament resume (or team sheet) is a one-page snapshot of everything it has done to deserve (or not deserve) consideration for the NCAA tournament.

Resumes are broken down into four quadrants (more on that term shortly), which is extremely helpful in quickly identifying good wins and bad losses. Other tidbits of information on a resume include NET ranking, strength of schedule, and records by location. Just like a tournament selection committee, a hiring committee along with the leader will look at the full body of work experiences, successes, contributions, and any other metric that will help to decide if an individual is a fit for the organizational team.

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1. Quadrants

Games will fall into one of four quadrants, which are based on a combination of the opponent's NET ranking and the location of the game. With leadership, we can analyze them based on styles and within quadrants.

There are many types of leadership styles and as such could advance to the Sweet 16, The Elite 8, or Final 4. There will be some styles that are on the bubble and won’t make the cut. However, there are some leadership styles like transformational, authentic, servant, charismatic, transactional, or behavioral that usually do! There is no definitive answer as to which is the winning leadership style in any given season, however there are traits that seem to succeed any time of the year: innovative, encourager, coach, servant, and inspiring. What other leadership styles transcend seasons?

Until next time, you will find me analyzing my brackets!

#leadership; #marchmadness: #leadershipstyles; #bracketology;