Leadership Goes Green

I don’t know what it is about golf that is so addictive for lots of people. Probably it is a number of things added together. For instance many courses are beautiful to look at with rolling green fairways (mowed by someone else), water-falls and relative quiet. Nobody ever wrote a blues song about a golf course.

Maybe it’s the sense of power you feel when a shot goes a long distance. It could be the “hardware store in a bag” thing: lots of shapely metal clubs, hi-tech graphite shafts, shiny name badges all in your own personalised golf bag, and so on.

Golf is also a kind of terrarium of life, life in miniature. When you are young, you step up to the tee box and everything seems far away, narrow and a little daunting. However, with youthful confidence, you pull out the big driver and aim the ball down the fairway, pretty sure you can keep it in play. Go for the big hit, and aim for the sky.

Its only when you go in search of the ball that you realise that the narrow fairway is a little wider than it appeared from the tee. That’s good. But up close it also becomes apparent that there are some hidden dangers to think about and things to avoid that you could not see from so far away.

This time, for your second shot, you are a little wiser and with a little more to lose. You leave the driver in the bag because you now realise strength is good but it isn’t everything. There is still some distance to cover so you take hold of your 6 iron, a middle distance club, and aim not for the sky but a spot closer to the target which is now clearly in view. And you hit.

The shot which was meant to go so straight goes a bit left and now you have to improvise a little to get back on track. You spend some time trying to find the ball, then stand back and try to imagine what can be done from behind all these trees and rocks. Do you play safe, or just “hit and hope”?

Depending on how you feel that day you might do either. Today it’s hit and hope. By a bit of a miracle you get the ball under the low branches, deflect off a sign about not driving the cart here and end up near the green. Not very elegant, but there is no place on the score-card to actually draw a picture of how good you looked doing it, so it doesn’t matter.

The power you needed at the start of the hole is now of little use. It’s all about finesse: the art of getting the ball over the little bit of rough surface and onto the smooth green with just enough energy to take it within a few feet of the hole. Really it is the art of doing two things with one decision. This is also a mind set change. It’s all about control not power, the ability to visualize what is about to happen and then make it so. Slow deep breaths, shake your hands out to get rid of the tension then do it.

The ball clears the bumpy grass, lands on the green, heads for the hole, then inexplicable turns right and rolls down a slope you didn’t even see. Time to exhale.

More carefully now, take into account the slope, the distance and the raised lip around the hole. Sing a little song in your head to stop the nerves building up, then tap the ball straight into the hole. Hold the ball up like Tiger does and act like you may get the phone call to go professional any day now, yet still appear humble.

Different parts of your life require a different approach.

Leadership sometimes requires
great strength and
a release of energy,
sometime a calculated decision,
sometimes a bit of “hit and hope”,
sometimes some visualization,
sometimes the ability to make a single decision that accomplishes more than one thing,
other times careful, almost surgical precision.

And you always need to be able to manage your own weaknesses and strengths.

It takes courage, the ability to come back from a mishap, and some humility when you succeed.

The key is to do the right things at the right time. As someone who has driven a ball three blocks from the fairway, hit golf balls from one sand bunker straight into another one, and putted a ball clear off the green I can attest that both skills and judgement are necessary.

Same in life and leadership. You do get better as you go along, but only if you apply the lessons as you learn them. If you pray first, think second and act last you give yourself a good shot at ending up in a great place.

One last thought: in golf there are out-of-bounds areas. Hit the ball there and you incur a penalty that puts you behind. They don’t throw you off the golf course because you mess up on one shot (unless perhaps you hit the hood on the Manager’s new deep blue BMW). Life has it’s out of bounds areas too, things about which the Bible clearly warns us. You do all you can to avoid life’s out of bounds areas. But there is forgiveness and restoration waiting for all those who can shake off their pride and confess that the ball in the members' swimming pool really is theirs.

We all mess things up at times. It only makes sense to admit our mistakes, change the stance or the grip, and pick up as near as possible to where we left off.

In the final analysis the score-card that seemed so all-important isn’t as big of a deal as we thought. Church is a team sport, our results all just kind of add in together and Jesus Christ is the team captain. Its better to finish the course on the winning team than to be the best looking or most famous player who quit after just nine holes, or decided not to play because “every else plays better than me”.

Leading is about persisting with integrity.

By the way, if I knew anything about cake decorating or woodwork, this would be a very different article. Sorry if you really don’t like golf. I promise I meant well.