The game doesn’t slow down for Tom Brady or for Manning. What happens in the pocket under pressure with a virtuous QB isn’t any different than what’s happening in your office or cubicle when it’s game time, if you will. You either feel overwhelmed and panic (throw it up for grabs or throw the Hail Mary). Or, you feel overwhelmed and become paralyzed (hold it a fraction too long and get blindsided).
Or, you feel energized, fully engaged, and lose yourself in the moment. You feel the field vibrate, you smell everything and everybody, you see your first receiver is blanketed and look away. You feel pressure coming from your left side and jab step ever so slightly forward all while noticing that receiver number two has fallen while making his cut. Your shoulder pads are grazed by incoming traffic as chaos comes your way in the form of linemen and linebackers. Checking down, you find your trusted tight end has found some space, some really tight, small space on his back shoulder. Without so much as thinking you flip a tight spiral where only he can catch it. The next nanosecond you are tasting turf and your left tackle is smiling as he lifts you from your crumpled state. You smile and say nothing. Your mind, you see, is already thinking; next play.
Panic, paralysis, or performance. Everybody wants to perform like Brady or Manning in their chosen profession. Few, however are willing to practice, practice, and practice some more until the pressure is overwhelmed with confidence that is rooted in hard won competence. High performing leaders remain calm when their pocket collapses. Normal leaders get pissed. Normal leaders panic ever so slightly. Normal leaders wait a tad too long. Normal leaders, you see, feel overwhelmed in their moment and wish it would all just slow down a bit. I hear this all the time. So many leaders feel they just don’t have the time to practice. There’s just not the time today. Someday, the lie to themselves, there will be enough time to sharpen the saw; for now we just have to keep sawing.
There is NEVER time.
The game never does. Your business never slows down. Your choice is to practice even though you don’t have the time. You choose. Your choices have consequences. Calm is the one you want.
Calm comes with practice under pressure and with good coaching that points out the tiny nuances you can’t quite see until you review the tape with the trained eye of another. As good as you think you are, you aren’t good enough to go it alone. Funny, Brady and Manning embrace this much more readily than most CEO’s. Funny, huh…
If I talked to your teammates would they describe you as Brady or Manning. Or, would they admit you kinda hold it a little too long…
BUILT TO LEAD 