This week I am participating in a three-week Facebook Group event called Impact Giveaway. Produced by the dynamic duo, Iman and Afrin Khan of Red Elephant, it features expert high performers in Business, Personal and Impact Development, speaking three times a day.
Each expert has also provided giveaways of white papers, consultations, videos and trainings in their areas of expertise.
I’m speaking on Leadership on Wednesday and so have been giving much thought to the subject.
It’s been helpful that two big examples of leadership are in the public eye right now – basketball GOAT Michael Jordan, featured in the 5-week television series, The Last Dance; and the release of the biography, Pelosi, on the life and career of the US Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.
Both command what I call the Trinity of Leadership, taking charge of their body, mind and spirit.
As spiritual beings having a human existence, our physical bodies are the vehicles as, in and through which we experience and express our lives.
Jordan’s understanding of the necessity to train and care for his physical body, whether nuanced for playing elite-level basketball or, for a brief time, baseball; his dedication to maintaining peak performance levels; and his fluidity between work and play, activity and rest were part of the underpinning of his phenomenal success.
Pelosi’s unflagging energy and relentless drive through thousands of miles of campaign travel, meetings and fundraisers as the representative of her San Francisco congressional district and leader of her political party, is renowned for putting aides, decades younger than she, to shame. “I don’t do downtime,” she has been noted to remark.
Yet she is a constant presence in the lives of her children and grandchildren.
Both found their passion and purpose early pursued them with the discipline of focus. With guidance from their parents, immersed in their respective fields in their supportive families and communities, they practiced continuous learning of their crafts.
They saw, from the inside, the necessity for meticulous attention to detail, commitment through long hours of work, mental toughness, and fortitude in the face of setbacks and defeats.
Jordan’s and Pelosi’s careers were dependent on leading teams, and knowing how to build up those around them to match their own high levels of achievement. Jordan’s singular focus on winning propelled him to bully his teammates, a highly questionable leadership tactic. (Most workplace bullies should not try this on the job.)
But Jordan led by example and never asked anyone to do anything he did not do himself, resulting in six NBA team championships in a mere eight years. To quote MJ, “Other teams can’t win until we quit.”
It is said that wrangling consensus from Congress is like herding cats. Yet we have the image of Nancy Pelosi not once but twice, holding the gavel as House Speaker, the first woman to do so. And who can forget the photo of her donning her designer sunglasses as she left a contentious meeting at the White House after cowing the Bully-in-
Chief.
You come for the Queen, you best not miss.
Both honed a mental shrewdness, allowing them to read situations (or in Jordan’s business, plays), and anticipate their opponents reactions.
Pelosi, a lifelong practicing Catholic, has her religious faith as one of the pillars of her character. But she also used her own moral compass to go against the Church’s stance on women’s reproductive freedom, to great political and personal opprobrium.
Jordan made the quest for excellence his spiritual pursuit by pushing to the limits of his abilities in order to honor his commitment to delivering his best to his teammates, owners, fans and the game of basketball.
Are they perfect people? Nope. Legions of people dislike or disagree with them. But they understood that their first obligation is to “me, myself, and I” – the foundational Trinity. Everything flows from this connection to Self. It is all we are born with, and being true to this Trinity is all each of us has.
At the end of their lives both can say that their adherence to mastering the Trinity of Leadership, with all of the costs they have endured, has ensured their legacy and made for a life of no regrets.
May we one day say the same as they.
Note:
For details on Red Elephant’s Impact Giveaway, click here.
