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Showing posts from September, 2021

Leadership Advice From A Chess Grandmaster

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Garry Kasparov  is a chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion, writer, and political activist, whom many consider to be the greatest chess player of all time. From 1986 until his retirement in 2005, Kasparov was ranked world No. 1 for 225 out of 228 months. His makes some terrific points about coaching and competition that all leaders should keep in mind: "There’s this conventional wisdom that it’s possible to give universal advice — a tip. But we’re all different. Your decision-making process is as unique as your fingerprints or your DNA. Something that works for you may be counterproductive for me. Some of us are more aggressive; some more defensive. You have to understand who you are, know what you’re capable of and what you’re not, and then try to construct a game — or a deal or a campaign — in which your superior qualities will be factors and your disadvantages will not be displayed." Thought for the week: If you want to achieve greatness stop asking for p

Andre Agassi On Managing Emotions

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I’ve seen people use emotion, positive or negative, as a tool and it works for them. But typically, the more you can remove emotion, the more efficient you’ll be. You can be an inch from winning but still miles away if you allow emotion to interfere with the last step. So you have to accept: the weather, heat, rain, stops and starts, the line calls, whatever your opponent is giving you, however tired or injured you are. There are so many things that can distract you from taking care of business. Thought for the week: The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not in fighting the old, but on building the new.   Open: An Autobiography

Developing Competitors

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The following article is form Marc Hill, Current Deputy Athletics Director for the University of Kentucky & former Director of Performance / Head Strength Coach for football program. The article appeared the September 2013 issue of The Coaching and Leadership Journal Developing competitors has become a huge part of our program.--Marc Hill Prior to starting the offseason workouts, we select ten captains. Those ten captains then meet in a closed room and have a draft of "teams" They select their own team that will compete against other teams for the entire winter workout session and the summer workout session. To draft properly, they have to understand what gains them points and what costs them points. You often win or loss based off of how many mistakes you have in a game so a huge piece of this is that when a player misses class, misses a tutor, etc. he loses points for his team. So, the captains always start by taking the guys that will do it correctly first.  Points are

The Hedgehogs

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It was the coldest winter ever. Many animals died because of the cold. The hedgehogs, realizing the situation, decided to group together to keep warm. This way they covered and protected themselves; but the quills of each one wounded their closest companions. After awhile, they decided to distance themselves one from the other and they began to die, alone and frozen. So they had to make a choice: either accept the quills of their companions or disappear from the Earth.  Wisely, they decided to go back to being together. They learned to live with the little wounds caused by the close relationship with their companions in order to receive the heat that came from the others. This way they were able to survive. The best relationship is not the one that brings together perfect people, but when each individual learns to live with the imperfections of others and can admire the other person's good qualities. --From Leading Narratives by Dan Spainhour

Feeling Good

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Here is another story from our book A Leading Narratives by Dan Spainhour... A 60 year old woman is naked, jumping up and down on her bed laughing and singing. Her husband walks into the bedroom and sees her. He watches her awhile then says, “You look ridiculous, what on earth are you doing?” She says, “I just got my checkup and my doctor says I have the breasts of an eighteen-year-old.” She starts laughing and jumping again. He says, “Yeah, right. And what did he say about your 60 year-old ass?”  She says, “Well, your name never came up.” Moral? Off-handed remarks often come back at you.