Sports Metaphors for the Non-Sports Leader

I have never been a sports guy. During first grade, my parents signed me up for kids soccer. I’m pretty sure this was at the recommendation of our family pediatrician. He probably thought I would benefit from the physical activity. We honestly lost EVERY single game we played. I may have been one of those kids who kicked the ball into the other team’s goal. I’m not proud of that season of play and my parents didn’t make me do it again. Even at 6, I knew it didn’t mean much when we got a trophy at the end of the season.

My sports prowess didn’t improve later in life. I took Band to keep from having to take PE in middle school. In high school, PE teams were not looking for me when they had a choice. This translates into my watching habits also. Unless it’s Carolina Basketball, the Super Bowl or the Olympics, my TV rarely lingers on sports.

But regardless of how much of a sports person I am, sports metaphors are EVERYWHERE around me. In life, in work, in ministry. Sometimes a good sports metaphor is the simplest way to achieve shared understanding. So whether you’re into sports or not, you should have a working knowledge of these. If you can use them, it will help you when you speak to an audience that does have sports awareness.

“move the ball down the field”

In football, the goal is to gain yards every play with the eventual objective being a touchdown by getting to the end zone. As such, moving the ball down the field is making measured progress toward your goal.

To use this metaphor well, though, you need to clearly identify two things:

What’s your goal? Is it clearly defined? When I was kicking the ball the wrong direction as a 6 year old clueless soccer player, I wasn’t moving toward the goal. In the same way, many teams spend lots of time and energy moving things around without a clearly defined goal. You can’t claim to be moving DOWN the field, if you don’t know which direction the end zone is!
What counts as progress? If you identify your goal but it is not easy to measure, anyone on the team might regard any activity as progress. It’s important for us as leaders to spell out our goals and activities in ways that our teams know clearly when we are, OR are not, moving toward the goal.

“who dropped the ball?”

When a sports team is working together to achieve a goal, dropping the ball ends the forward progress.

In a project team, even if there is not actual competition, there are often times when things stop moving forward. Things aren’t going the way they are supposed to and you are not seeing the results you would like. In such a moment, the team needs to identify where things went wrong and if any particular player was the source of the failure. This should NEVER be unto tearing that person apart.

If you can identify the breakdown, you can work to address it. You can try to bring healing or restoration at the point of failure. Maybe that team member needed better backup or more resources. Whatever the need may have been, you won’t fix it well and start moving forward if you don’t take the time to think it through.

Maybe the breakdown happened in a handoff. The pass moment is one of the most critical moments of any basketball game. The ball is moving from one player’s hands to another, often through open air. If an opponent can get in at just the right moment and gain control of the ball before it gets to the other player, the tide of the game is turned.

In a team setting, make the new ownership clear when a work task is passed from one player to the next. This is where our next metaphor comes in.

“the ball is in your court”

My girls spent a brief time trying out youth tennis. It was rather painful to watch because they didn’t quite have the coordination to keep up with where the ball was moving. They tried hard though and I was proud of the attempt.

Doubles tennis is when two players compete on each side of the net, typically each taking responsibility if the ball comes to their half of the court. The girls’ coach kept telling the kids “you have to call it”. Inevitably, the ball would go to one girl’s side but the other girl was so focused on hitting it, they would run over top of each other. Alternatively, both girls would be watching one side of the court and not go after the ball when it went to the other side.

As a team works together on a project, it is important that everyone clearly understand who is responsible for details every step of the way. Sally thinks Jim is working on things and Jim thinks Fred took over that piece. Fred was out of the office the last couple of days and suddenly we are making no progress.

If everyone thinks someone else is on it, no one is on it. If you’re a team leader or a player, take time to make sure everyone knows who is responsible for different functions each step of the process.

Conclusion

These are just a few of the common ones I have seen in my experience. I use these metaphors all regularly even though I would not be likely to excel at any of these sports in actual practice. What about you? Are there any others you can think of?

Leadership of a Project Team is a lot like Driving a Car

From time to time, you may be called upon to take the leadership role on a project. Whether you have done this before or not, there are a number of key factors that need to be considered. In my experience, these factors are very similar to the things you have to consider when driving a car.

Here are a few things you should consider:

Who’s in the drivers’ seat?

It takes a variety of skills and inputs to complete a project successfully. But just like you can only have one person behind the wheel of a car, one person needs to be clearly tasked with the leadership role on the project. This doesn’t have to be the person with final authority for the results, but it has to be the person who can make decisions and direct others as the project work moves forward.

Where are you heading?

A starting point for any good project effort is to identify the eventual goal, the destination. What do want to be true when the work has been completed? Spell this out as clearly as possible for everyone on the team. Each player can make better decisions if they have this awareness.

Do you have a particular route in mind?

Once a goal has been identified, it’s ideal to identify your preferred plan to achieve that destination. This is like your road map. Even a GPS tool that guides you step by step to a destination begins by identifying a preferred route.

I did an exercise with my team recently using a set of Legos. Any one person can build anything out of a pile of Legos. But if you want two people to work together to build one thing, it helps for there to be step-by-step instructions (preferably with pictures) to guide this process. I call this a Project Plan (See below for a simple template you can use to help with this step in your development). You should outline as much information as possible in this document. Don’t expect it to be perfect, but anything you can prepare in advance will help.

How will you pace yourself as you go along?

A variety of factors contribute to deciding how fast you can move toward your destination. On a road trip, things like road construction along your route, other vehicles, and car maintenance will control your pace. When you’re working with a team on a project, there are similar constraints:

Influences outside the organization like legal and cultural boundaries
Other projects going in inside your own organization that compete for resources
Skill capacity and other factors related to the individual players on your team

You should work to identify these in advance and monitor for changes in them as you go along. Sometimes people try to disregard one of these constraints and move faster than their project team can handle. This inevitably creates challenges down the road. Leadership should try to anticipate and prevent challenges by managing a healthy pace.

How’s it feel while you’re driving?

Earlier this year, I went on a road trip with a few co-workers. Whenever you have more than one person in the car, there will likely be a difference of opinion regarding how warm or cold we want it to be. I see this temperature choice as being very similar to team culture choices. Some teams commit to brutal honesty among the team and try not to let feelings get in the way of progress. When you don’t have a strong history of working together, or just because some prefer it that way, it’s helpful to take a more considerate tone in team dialogue.

If I like it cold and you like it hot, we have to find a compromise to ride together happily down the road. That compromise usually requires some level of sacrifice from both sides. But that compromise can’t begin until both of us discuss how we want things to feel. If you’re working on a team, whether you’re in the leadership role or not, take time to get people to talk out their preferences in this area.

How will you know when to go right or left?

Often on trips, my wife and I take turns driving. Whoever isn’t driving takes an equally important role – the Navigator. Someone needs to be looking at the project plan (you can’t always stay attuned to this when you’re driving) and making decisions regarding things that should happen next. This may be the person who has ultimate authority over the results or it may be a fellow player who has experience with similar projects.

The bottom line is that someone needs to be tasked with making project decisions as things move forward. This doesn’t always have to be the driver. But if you don’t have a plan in this area, you will find yourself stuck at a fork in the road.

What other areas have you found which are key to providing leadership to a project team?

Resources

Simple Project Plan Template

Maximizing the Effectiveness of Meetings

I spend much of my life in meetings. In fact when my role changed a few years back, my girls decided that my new title should be Meeting Pastor. Not sure how that works on a business card, but it certainly describes my activities! And when you spend that much of your life in any activity, you hope to make them as effective as possible.

A few practical tips can give you healthy disciplines for meetings and maximize their effectiveness.

Here’s a few tips I have found to maximize the meetings I participate in, whether I’m leading them or not:

PURPOSE: When someone schedules a meeting, usually they have a purpose for coming together. Many don’t communicate that purpose. If someone asks you to attend a meeting but doesn’t make the meeting’s purpose clear, just ask. Knowing the purpose will help you be better prepared. It will also help you measure afterward whether the meeting was effective or not.

PARTICIPANTS: You should also understand your reason for being in the meeting. Here are some great reasons to be in a meeting: to give or receive information, to offer input to a decision or decisions, to build relationships among a team.)

Special note regarding recurring meetings (monthly, weekly, etc.): If a meeting is scheduled on a recurring basis because it seemed like a regular discussion was necessary at the time, that purpose can sometimes be forgotten a few months or years later. If there’s a leadership transition, a new leader may “inherit” a meeting rhythm and not even realize why specific meetings initially took place. Bottom line: If a recurring meeting doesn’t have a clear and understood purpose, it will often feel like a waste of time, and may actually be one. If you’re expected to be in a recurring meeting, ask (in a respectable way) the leader of the meeting to help you understand the purpose of the meeting. Also, if that doesn’t immediately give you an understanding of your purpose IN the meeting, ask that next.

Having an understood purpose for a meeting will help establish an AGENDA: the list of items for discussion that are to be covered in a meeting. Ideally, the agenda will be communicated in advance OR at the top of the meeting. That way everyone knows where we’re going in our time together. If you know that something that is important to you is item 5 on the agenda, you will be better able to participate in the discussion of items 1-4.

NOTES: I personally choose to take notes in meetings where I am participating. These help me for future reference if I want to know what was covered at the meeting several weeks ago. My memory is no longer sufficient to keep all details in my head. Good note-taking skills prevent this from being necessary.

ACTION ITEMS: Most meetings that I participate in produce one or more action items that will need to be done by individuals in the meeting after its conclusion. Ideally these should be written down by individuals who will be responsible to increase the chance that they will be completed. Some facilitators allocate a few minutes at the end of each meeting to quickly review action items that have come up to make sure everyone is clear on who will be responsible for their completion and by when.

I developed a simple tool that I use in meetings whether I’m leading or not. It helps reinforce good meeting disciplines. Feel free to download and use or modify for your own benefit. Download here. Leave me a comment below if this is helpful to you.

Eric Syfrett

Committed learner, solution-oriented leader, blessed husband and dad

Tag: leadership