BUILT TO LEAD has made it our purpose to discover what causes individuals, teams, and leaders to sustain high performance. There is much to study and learn on this very broad and interesting topic. On this journey, we study, learn and apply. Our applications are first and foremost on ourselves, then on our coaching clients and those that attend our leadership programs. Mostly we study history. We have learned a ton but still have much discovery to come. However, we do believe we’ve found the “melody line” to sustained high performance. Fear works for a season. Love sustains for a lifetime! Great individuals, teams, and leaders are built and sustained by Love.
Many athletes, artists, and entrepreneurs have reached the top by playing to their own and others fears. None have sustained their fear induced perch for long. Fear produced performance comes at an energy sapping price. Fear wears you out.
Love gives you energy, passion and resilience. Love is leverage. Great, high performance individuals, teams, and leaders love themselves, each other, their work and life. These high performance teams are not only fun to watch…they are magic. Like the energizer bunny, they just keep going and going and going.
Of course there are many other ingredients to building a great life, a great team, and great leaders. We will cover that ground a bit later. First things first. Live the melody line. If you want to build sustainable high performance, drop the F bomb… become a LOVEcat.
A great “business” book on this topic is Love is the Killer App, by Tim Sanders. Jim Tressel gave all the Buckeyes the book Season of Life, by Jeffrey Marx. After reading this one you will be a fan of Tressel and maybe even the Buckeyes to boot! Oh yea, it’s about…LOVE. How can LOVE sustain football performance? Check it out and see for yourself. Lastly, if you just want to watch a great movie to catch this very squishy theme… go ahead and rent The Greatest Game Ever Played. You could even send one of your little guys in to get it for you since it’s a Disney movie about two caddies…one of which wins the 1913 U.S. Open.
“It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it, and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.” Suu Kyi
BUILT TO LEAD 
From C.S.Lewis; “The Weight of Glory”
Those who have attained everlasting life in the vision of God doubtless know very well that it is no mere bribe, but the very consumation of their earthey discipleship; but we who have not yet attained it cannot know this in the same way, and cannot even begin to know it at all except by continuing to obey and finding the first reward of our obedience in our increasing power to desire the ultimate reward. Just in proportion as the desire grows, our FEAR lest it should be a mercenary desire will die away and finally be recognized as an absurdity. But probably this will not, for most of us, happen in a day; poetry replaces grammar, gospel replaces law, longing transforms obedience, as gradually as the tide lifts a grounded ship.
My take is, the closer we get to God ( working vertically), the easier it is to work horizontally with out fear.
It is hard to see at the begining and wil take time and effort, but each step in the right direction enables you to gain strength and courage which makes the next step easier.