The second practice level

MY Celtics exited the playoffs earlier than expected this year and all of it was self inflicted where they decided to ignore the value of regular season games and wait to “turn it on” in the playoffs. I love watching basketball but with this team my interest in watching them was generally mirroring their interest in playing the game - close to nonexistent.

I’ve never believed in the “turn it on” concept as I haven’t seen anyone do it repeatedly, I don’t have the data of how successful the “turn it on”  concept is but it really can’t be over 50%.   Naturally it was time for me to dig deeper into my thoughts and rationalize the WHY “turn it on” is a bad approach and of course map it to a leadership lesson - specifically “Practice to Lead”.

Most coaching is provided in an offsite or some random meeting with your manager or some coach assigned to you.  These coaching sessions always happen when everyone is very busy and hardly able to focus.
In the sports world, this is similar to training camp and the few practices in between games.  Similar to how our mind are busy during leadership coaching, sports players might be suffering from physical injuries during the training session, and their physical presence is equally important in this case.

I am hoping “Practice to Lead” will bring to leaders what the regular season brings to professional athletes, a platform to practice at another level.  We won’t provide a trophy for the winner because there is no finals in leadership training, it is an ongoing battle of improvement.

Back to the Celtics for a bit - Kyrie was the one who kept saying the playoffs will be different and it was, it was different in a really bad way - he had multiple bad performances in a row.  Likely because he wasn’t ready mentally or physically for the pressure of the playoffs.  Do I need to remind you that he was a finals MVP on the same team with Lebron James?  So he is able to perform at that level but the lack of consistent practice lead to him being unprepared.

It could take years and tons of practices and mistakes before a habit is changed, don’t wait until the day that counts the most before trying to change it.   Practicing often will make it easier to perform under hard circumstances.

Finally, I love reading leadership books and they are not different than a playbook, a lot of strategies that may or may not work for you.  A play relies on understanding the strength of weakness of the different players on the floor and our leadership style depends on our strength and weakness.   No athlete ever joins a team, read their playbook and start performing at the highest level possible.  It takes a lot of practice time and a lot of working with the team to get to the highest level possible.   Any skill set you want to work on needs the practice time before becoming a natural part of your leadership style.

After Finally - I am not a big fan of what Kashi Leonard did to San Antonio but I hope he will be able to bring a championship to Toronto just like Lebron did in Cleveland a few years back.  GO RAPTORS!!

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