leadership lessons from baseball
Kristen here, sharing some recent leadership lessons from baseball:
What do you think is harder? Hitting a 98MPH fastball to sail 441 feet out of ballpark – or making everyone around you feel valued as a human?
For those of us that have the hand-eye coordination of giraffes, the first might seem so impossible that it’s a silly question. But I’ve been a human on this planet for a little over 40 years and I will tell you that for a lot of folks, the second one is harder.
After years of baseball fandom, I bought my first jersey last year. The name on the back was a no-brainer – Kyle Schwarber. Not only because he hits home runs that make angels cry, but because he is the glue of our clubhouse. The way his colleagues talk about him, the way his neighbors talk about him, the way the city does… anyway, I like the guy.
allow me to explain
I’ll let one of my fave sportswriters explain more.
“That is Schwarber. It’s hard to hit baseballs far against big-league pitchers. It’s hard to be an empathetic person when thousands and thousands of people expect you to be perfect every night. It’s hard to always see the best in people.
This is why anyone who enters his orbit feels it.” Matt Gelb, The Athletic, June 18, 2024.
(Gelb’s writing always gets me, but this paragraph really nailed it. The article is paywalled, but I’ve put the link below in case you subscribe to The Athletic.)
So here’s the question(s) of the week for you. Kyle talks about his hitting philosophy as waiting for the right pitch and then swinging as hard as he can. Still hard, still screws up (that batting average doesn’t lie), but that’s the goal with every single at bat. The goal for every single interaction with a human is to make them feel seen, even when entire cities are analyzing him. He’s been practicing both for a few decades now.
What’s the thing that you do even though it’s hard? Have you practiced it enough that it’s generally second nature? Is there something you wish was in that category – maybe listening better, or remembering to breathe instead of berate – that’s not quite there yet?
See ball, hit ball. See human, treat human as human.
Could it really be as simple as that?
(Yes.)
