The Sideline Seat

1 Mindset Shift. 1 Sideline Story. 3 Actionable Takeaways.

Sent every Tuesday to help you build a better team.

The Mindset Shift:

We all hear that leadership is a marathon, not a sprint so we are hard wired to emphasize endurance, consistency, and incremental progress. But that belief can allow us to mistakenly shift into complacency. We assume that years of moving in the right direction give us margin for error. The truth is the opposite, leadership is fragile. The very discipline that built success must be protected every step, and every moment, along the way.

Sideline Story: The Marathon Mishaps

The running world recently gave us two painful examples of the cost of a "brief" deviation.

Last week in Atlanta, the lead pack of a major Half Marathon was cruising along toward the finish. Near the end, a series of small, cascading errors led the runners off the official course. The pack, who had money and wins on the line, lost. And to no fault of their own. They didn't lose because they weren't fast enough; they lost because the "system" they trusted for direction quite simply, failed.

A few days later at the LA Marathon, Michael Kimani Kamau led for 26.1 miles. With the finish line literally in sight, he was distracted by a fan and followed a lead vehicle’s exit path instead of staying on the track. He was correctly quickly, jumping back in bounds and seconds and corrected his error, but that lapse allowed another runner to catch him for a photo finish.

All of these runners had trained for a long time, worked hard to get into the position they were in, and they all lost anyway.

3 Actionable Takeaways:

1. Small Distractions Create Opportunities for Competition.

In business, competitors don’t need you to fail dramatically. They just need you to slow down long enough for them to catch up. Consistent attention to priorities is often the difference between winning and losing.

2. Leadership requires both stamina and presence.

A leader’s job isn’t just to keep moving forward but to stay attuned to changes, risks, and direction along the way.

3. Distraction at the end is the most dangerous distraction.

When there is time left, we can make up for a slight deviation, but when you lose focus or attention at the end of a project or plan, the consequences are usually greater.