Too Tight -- O-H-No!

It has been a few weeks since our last update.?I hope you had a great Thanksgiving.??I was fortunate enough to get to spend the holiday with extended family which in our case, is spread all over the country.?It was a blast, all but for Saturday afternoon as 11 of us watched our beloved Ohio State Buckeyes get pummeled by their arch-rival Michigan.?As our moods went from ecstatic, to neutral, to nervous, to distraught, I took comfort in the words of Al Cheatham, AFC’s Chief Operating Officer, and die-hard Auburn fan, “I refuse to let a bunch of 18-22 year-olds ruin my weekend.”?

The Buckeyes scored first, looking relaxed and confident.?The Wolverine’s top player and key to their offense then left with an injury.?But as Michigan stayed close, slowed the Buckeyes’, and then got a long touchdown on a single missed tackle, things changed. Michigan found hope while Ohio State found pressure.?And the quality of the play changed dramatically.?For the first time in 20 years, Michigan came out with a win in Columbus.??

What happened??Ohio State’s loss surely wasn’t for lack of talent, effort, or motivation.?The Buckeyes are loaded with talent, stacked with four and five-star recruits.?They train all year for this game.?One practice a week is dedicated solely to Michigan.?And coach Ryan Day is clear that beating Michigan is what matters, famously calling last season’s 12-1 record and Rose Bowl victory a disappointment.?He was public about taking responsibility for last year’s loss and made major changes in his staff.?Yet the result was arguably worse.??

In thinking about what changed over the course of the game, I remembered reading about a study of golfers, comparing the golf swings of amateurs and professionals.?When both groups swung without golf balls, the amateurs’ swings looked very close to the pros.?But when actual golf balls were used, the swings suddenly differed greatly.?The amateurs were trying too hard, adding muscle, raising their heads, or tightening their hips.?The small differences made all the difference when it came to performance under pressure.??

I wonder if all the hype and all the pressure that Ryan Day put on himself and the team had a similar impact.?Coach Day’s mistake may have been nothing more than wanting to win so badly and being so good at conveying the supposed stakes in the game for him, the team, and Buckeye Nation that he made the problem worse.?For the young players, like amateur golfers, began to tighten up, to try too hard, thinking, instead of reading and reacting.?Day himself made some cautious calls early, signaling to the team his own nervousness.?In a game as fast as top D1 college football, the slight slowdown made all the difference on several key plays.

What does “Too Tight” mean for business leaders?

1. More aggressiveness.?For many of us, our first instincts are to react instead of respond.?We get nervous ourselves, terrified of failure, so we give into our ego and start yelling.?Work harder!??Blame others!?It can’t be my fault.?It must be all those lazy, no-good, people out there.?So we do a lot more telling and a lot less listening.?
2. More control.?We also work to assert more control.?We want to direct not just every play, but every part in every play.?This leads quickly to micromanagement.?People stop solving problems at their level because someone hasn’t given them permission.?Management grinds harder and initiative quickly grinds to a halt.
3. More caution. Often leaders get overly cautious.?They fear making a mistake, so they stop everything. The world continues to move but they can’t make a decision and thus miss many critical opportunities to help themselves.?As former CIA Director, Leon Panetta says, “When faced with a crisis, the best thing a leader can do is to make the right decision.?The second best thing they can do is to make the wrong decision.?The worst thing they can do is to make no decision.”?
4. Wild initiatives.?When caution doesn’t work, leaders can then swing to the other extreme, initiating the business equivalent of the Hail Mary pass.?They start huge new initiatives that divert huge resources away from the company’s core mission.

So what’s the answer???

Colonel (Ret.) Nicole Malachowski, a combat veteran and F-16 pilot who flew with the US Air Force, Thunderbirds (the Air Force’s version of the Blue Angels), tells the story of flying through turbulence.?And while turbulence is a relatively normal experience for pilots, if pilots don’t handle it properly when in a tight formation at several hundred miles an hour at extremely low altitude, it can be deadly.?The secret to controlling turbulence, Major Malachowski learned, was to do exactly the opposite of every instinct in her body — which is to tighten your grip and try to muscle the aircraft back into control.?The challenge, as she explains it, is that this can create “Pilot Induced Oscillation” and major problems for those other aircraft around you.?Instead, when flying through turbulence, you need to loosen the grip and let the aircraft fly through it.?Here’s a link to her video.?https://youtu.be/Rpvu9IPYme8

How do you loosen the grip when every instinct in your leadership body is to tighten it??More importantly for leaders, how do you get your teammates and managers below you to loosen their grip??That’s a key challenge for leadership.

A few suggestions.??

1. Take a deep breath.?Pause.?Look up and around.?Reflect.?Get “out of the moment” even if just for a moment.?Try to gain perspective.?This gets you out of being led by emotion and back to being led by the more rational part of your brain.?
2. Understand your own emotions and acknowledge your own fear. Maybe even say it out loud.?Bring the team in.?“Guys, I’m on the struggle bus here.?We’re not doing what we need to be doing.?My body is screaming at me to move to Alpha Male mode.?I know that sucks for everyone, so I’m open to any suggestions here.”??
3. Trust yourself, your teammates, and your process.?Back to basics.?Important to recognize that you grabbing the yoke isn’t going to work.?It is likely to fail.?And just as importantly, it will be miserable for everyone in the process including you.?
4. Embrace the grind.?Acknowledge that sometimes life is simply a grind.?But you have to keep grinding.?I remember listening to Coach Urban Meyer during an interview after the 2014 Buckeyes had just won the championship.?They’d faced an early season home loss but had come back to win it all.?The interviewer asked him how the team did it.?“They embraced the grind.” He explained.?I'm paraphrasing this part, but he essentially said, "The football season is a long one, with lots of ups and downs.?But you have to put the work in.?Lift the weights, do the drills.?Get better during the season.?This team embraced that.?They did the things during the season to get better, not just hang on until the end."?Sometimes, you simply need to keep showing up, focus on doing your very best in the moment and work your way through it.?Or as the famous saying goes, “When you’re going through hell, keep going.”??

Two important things that “letting go” isn’t.?First, it’s not giving up.?Sometimes, the pressure is so great, that we completely let go.?Wrong answer.?I am assuming that the F16 pilot letting go of the joystick is a disaster for everyone.?Loosen the grip to fly with the turbulence.?Don’t let go and give over total control to it.?Caring is very important.?Not caring is a disaster, as it shows up in all sorts of problematic ways — mainly disengagement.?No one wants to follow anyone who has disengaged.

Second, “letting go” isn’t about just letting everyone out there do their own thing.?Business, like football, is a team sport.?And having core processes that everyone knows and follows — just like plays in sports — makes for winning teams.?But once people know the playbook and have bought into the culture, the trick is to trust them, to resist the urge to jump in, to yell louder, to pile on more pressure.

Ironically, the Buckeyes — despite getting blown out at home and not playing in a league championship game — have been given another shot.?They face the mighty Bulldogs of Georgia in Atlanta on New Year’s Eve and will be heavy underdogs.?If there is any hope, it is that the pressure will be off.?They have been given a second chance and expectations have dropped dramatically.?With any luck, they will play bold, fast and loose.???

For leaders, every day is a new day.?As the ancient philosopher, Confucius, says, “Everyone has two lives.?The second one begins when we realize we only get one.”?Make the best of today. It is the one we’ve got.?Trust yourself, your teammates, your goals and your processes.?You'll get through it, as those who have gone through it all before have so many times before.

Go Bucks!

Onward!

Jeff??