Leading with Strength

5 leadership lessons from building strong individuals

For 6 years, I took a break from my career to understand the field of strength. I became a Strong First Certified strength coach. Strength is a primary quality of life. It is, quite literally, a force multiplier that makes all the other qualities better. Physical strength makes you better athlete. Mental strength makes you a better achiever.

?Here are five lessons about leadership I learned coaching others to become stronger.

Let the student make mistakes

Humans are Antifragile beings, designed to learn from (small) mistakes and failures (remember that we learn to walk by falling). And so, we make mistakes. That is just how we learn.

Each person, each body is unique, with their own set of limitations, restrictions, and strengths. As coach, my role is to make sure my student 1) becomes as strong and as independent as quickly as possible, that is, masters the skill and 2) does not hurt themselves in the process. So, as coach, you let them make the mistake unless they are in danger of hurting themselves. These mistakes are just part of the learning process, and they will either figure it out or come to you saying, "something doesn't feel right".

I follow the same principle when I manage and lead people.

Every person is unique and will learn in their own way. They must go through their own process and feel their way around the instructions and the goals.? As a manager or leader, my role is to ensure they don't make mistakes that can hurt them.

One Cue at a Time

The kettlebell swing is a wonderful movement, with many benefits. It is also complex and hard to master. Coaching effectively requires me to ensure I am not overburdening or confusing my athlete.

As students learn, the coach's task is to stand back and identify one cue, and only one cue, that will fix multiple issues and improve the overall quality.

The same goes for almost everything we do at work. No PRD is ever perfect, no project goes without hiccups or surprises. Through all this, you want your people to not only deliver, but also to improve.? When you see things that don't seem right, stand back, and try to understand the “why”. Do they need better communication skills, or speak slower, or faster? Or that they need to trust themselves? Or a little more practice? Give the right cue, and watch their downstream performance improve like magic.

Activate, Stabilize, Move (Awareness, Consistency, Drive)

Our bodies were designed to move. Years of sitting (the new smoking) has caused important muscles to “sleep”, leading to dysfunctional movement patterns. And the brain cannot use what it cannot see. So, the first step is to activate the muscle. Then we move to stabilizing to joint, and finally, the movement and loading the movement.

In strength coaching, people expect to already be experts at movement, even if it is their first class. I mean, everyone knows how to run, right? As it turns out, not quite.

When leading people, this translates to 1) build awareness 2) build consistency 3) drive. Awareness goes both ways, to make someone else aware of themselves, their abilities, their strengths, or weaknesses, you must be able to see and gauge them for yourself. When you build the right foundation of awareness, you can push them a lot higher and harder than without that awareness. However, whenever pushing anyone, I always keep #1 in mind. Even the best athletes can get injured pushing themselves to the limit.

Build Systems not Plans

This has been one of the hardest lessons for me to learn, and I am only now beginning to appreciate after having spent over 2 decades as an athlete.

Plans fail. Systems evolve, improve, and are generally antifragile.

What’s the difference you might ask?? In strength training parlance, say you want to increase your bench press, you can do with a plan that tells you the exact number of sets, reps and weight to lift to improve your exercise press. But if your goal is to get stronger, or jump higher, or perform better, you need a system. A system would have the plan built into it, but it would also have resilience. While plans might fail when you miss a few training days, or when life gets in the way, the system would evolve around the same and will keep you improving. A system would address every aspect of your performance, for example, your mindset, your recovery, nutrition, mobility, strength, power, energy systems, and so on.

Systems need well defined parameters or dimensions. So, when leading people, I try and build a system of performance based on care, communication (inter-personal), understanding and domain-expertise, communication (professional), self-belief, resilience, and fun! I believe these abilities help build happy, confident individuals, who in turn will help build strong teams. When individuals in a team can communicate effectively with each other and about the product they are building or the problem they are solving, when they have belief in themselves and their teammates, when they feel like sharing with and learning from each other, and when they are having fun coming to work every day, I know I have done my job as a leader.

Last but not least, always be a student

I realized early into my strength coaching career that I did not know it all. And became addicted to learning. Books, videos, courses, I left no stone unturned. After decades of experience, I am proud to report, I still don’t know it all! The StrongFirst ethos states that the coach is “a student of strength”. Always learning, ready to discard preset and established notions.

I bring the same ethos to my work and leadership. “Be curious, not judgmental” as spake the great Ted Lasso. Curious about what drives my team, who my people are, what are their passions, their goals for their lives. What can I learn from them? What can I teach them? "Stay humble, stay learning."

Add that to "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." and get back to me with the results!

Stronger together

The surest way to kill an idea is to keep it to yourself :) With that in mind, I invite you to bring this to life and help build strong individuals and teams, and become stronger yourself.

Leave your thoughts and comments; What do you think of these five lessons? What do you use to build strong teams and individuals? Leave your comments and