These last few weeks I’ve gotten lots of windshield time. I’ve driven back and forth from my home in Ann Arbor, to Iowa City, Columbus, College Station, and twice to West Lafayette, Indiana for the Big 10 Women’s Soccer Championships. My youngest daughter ‘Katie Lee Brown’ has played just about all game, every game over four years with the University of Iowa Hawkeyes, and what a beautiful ride it has been for her. Sunday’s loss in the Big 10 Championship game was her last collegiate play of any consequence, and my reflections from behind the wheel are the genesis for this blog post.
College athletics recruiting for women begins very early. At rising levels of allowable communication, these student athletes begin looking and being looked at from the 9th grade on. Most of the process is guided or facilitated by their club coach. Katie was fortunate enough to have had Doug Landefeld as her coach early on, and his advice still resonates today some six years later. He said, “Katie, go where you are wanted”. She did.
While Coach Landefeld was referring to the level of scholarship being offered, his mantra can resonate for Katie and her teammates in the coming years, and for every one of us as well. Within the context of personal relationships, customer influence and leadership, ‘go where you are wanted’ can guide us with just a few simple rules:
1. First, look for evidence – if it isn’t there, walk away…you aren’t wanted. Sometimes it’s a personal relationship in which you repeatedly work to ‘fix’ another human being, but concrete example of their progress never materializes. Sometimes it is a prospect that your boss desperately wants you to close, but the purchase order never comes. Or, it’s a job offer that carries too much ‘unlimited’ and too little ‘guaranteed’. Walk away. Find the partner that doesn’t need fixing, the client willing to invest, the job that pays.
2. Measure return on effort – there’s no more common lament than ‘it shouldn’t be this hard’. In leading others, do anything for the willing. If your involvement is resisted at every turn, stop kidding yourself, move from coaching to correction. If you want something you are not getting, don’t just carry on, do something you have not been doing. Effort should lead to return. Go to where you are wanted.
3. Consider emotion – what does life feel like? Your gut is rarely wrong, learn to trust it. I don’t mean a first blush reaction to a relationship (good or bad), to a job, or to a single customer interaction. I mean to ask you; do you feel valued in the equation? Are organizational practices, or the core habits of your significant other aligned with your own pride and priority? If not, look for a way to diminish people and practice that do not strengthen positive emotions, values, expectations and outlook.
Katie went where she was wanted. Evidence was obvious from day one. Return on her effort was ample and in balance. It felt right to her because it was right. In a few short months she will graduate and move on to new adventure. I believe she has learned to go where she is wanted in life. Have you?
