Leading When the Soul is Crushed

Dear Reader,

This is my last blog for a few weeks as I create a bit more space for my Coaching and Consulting work as well as some summertime fun!  You may see a few shorter posts popping up here and there on social media.

Major League Baseball has its annual All Star Break next week, marking the approximate mid-way point of the 162 game regular season odyssey.  

Which segues me right into this week’s blog about Leading in soul crushing times!  

Back in April, when the crocuses bloomed and the baseball season began afresh, prognosticators predicted the New York Mets would contend for a Championship come autumn.

Baseball cognoscenti saw a pre-season roster filled with an abundance of experienced talent, managed by a Yoda-like baseball lifer, Buck Showalter.

Additional evidence supported a sublime outcome for these Mets: 

• Stephen A. Cohen, a gazillionaire Hedge Fund Wizard and Master of the Universe, bought the team in 2020.

• Mr. Cohen is committed to winning, spending like a fiend ever since, to upgrade the Mets roster.

• His team soared close to glory in 2022 with 101 wins (a very good regular season), only to crater ignobly in the first round of the playoffs.

• A little more investment would surely put them over the top, Right?

• So, out came the money truck to lock in key players and add new talent for 2023 (summing to the largest payroll in baseball!!).

But alas for Mets fans, money can buy neither love nor Championships (speaking of love & Championships, my Kansas City Royals beat the Mets in the 2015 World Series.  I’m not wishing to compound the current edition of Met Fan misery with this flashback, I’m just saying . . . ).

With all that dough and talent, what could possibly go wrong?

Turns out everything.  As of this writing, the woebegone Mets are abysmal, inexplicably having lost 8 games more than they have won.   And in their Division, they are 19 games behind the perennially formidable first place Atlanta Braves, a distant 4th place in a 5 horse race and likely a bridge too far when hoping to reach this year’s playoffs. 

The people with the answers do not seem to work there.  It is unfathomable.

But amidst this smoldering pile of money and bitter disappointment lie a series of Leadership Nuggets for consideration

Mr. Cohen recently called a news conference to talk about his team’s dreadfulness.  

Twitter was all a-twitter:  What would this Titan say? Would he hurl lightning bolts from Olympus? Stomp his feet? Would heads roll?

Nope.  None of that.  

To wit, instead: 

1.He calmly told the truth, acknowledging what everyone knows: his talented team was inexplicably awful. No sugar coating, just cold, uncomfortable facts.

Leadership Nugget:  Effective leadership communication does not gaslight. Don’t insult people’s intelligence, setting afire your own credibility, by trying to persuade them against an obvious truth.   

2. He took accountability: "There's plenty [of blame] to go around. . . I'll take responsibility.  I'm the owner."

Leadership Nugget:  Accountability starts at the top: an effective leader is humble, owns the bad outcomes while crediting the team for good ones.  Credit Mr. Cohen for embracing the suck with his team, acknowledging he’s a part of the aforementioned suckiness.

3. He was also clear on roles & responsibilities:  “It’s on the players . . . They’re veterans. They’ve been there before . . . and we’ll see if they can get their act together . . . I can’t pitch and I can’t hit.”

Leadership Nugget: a talented leader can add a lot but cannot do the team’s work. It's the leader's job to be strategic, building a culture of performance and accountability which makes winning possible.  Then the leader gets out of the way.  The team must execute.

4. He’s playing the long game by not overreacting.  Mr. Cohen announced his key lieutenants (Manager & General Manager, i.e. Yoda & Yoda’s Boss) would stay in place at least through season’s end.  

He said, “I’m a patient guy, OK?  . . . [E]verybody wants a headline. Everybody says: Fire this person, fire that person. But I don’t see that as a way to operate.

If you want to attract good people to this organization, the worst thing you can do is be impulsive . . . . You’re not attracting the best talent . . . Listen, I know fans, they want something to happen. I get it. But sometimes, you can’t do it because you have long-term objectives.”

Leadership Nugget:   Firing everybody might make outside critics applaud but their approval is irrelevant (they will noisily criticize something new tomorrow).  The Leader has to ensure he or she is not destroying tomorrow’s franchise value while remedying today’s troubles.

We’ll get ‘em next time

There’s unlikely to be championship joy in Metville in 2023.  But, Mr. Cohen’s even tempered response to a disappointing set of facts can be a catalyst in creating new possibilities for the Met faithful when winter turns again to spring and a new season begins.

Time will tell.

As for my Royals, it feels like a long time since the glorious, thrilling days of 2015.  They have lost 34 more games than they have won (not encouraging) and are 18 games behind the Division Leading Minnesota Twins.  Sigh.

It’s not a great year.

But, that’s the wonderful thing about baseball and so much of life: time does its work, occasionally wiping our slates clean and we begin anew; the promise of next year arrives, carrying with it hope for better days and greater things to come.

While I’m stepping away from the writing for a few weeks, my Coaching and Consulting work continues apace.  So, if you’d like to set up a no obligation Exploration Session with me, please click HERE or on the link below.

And, if you’re not already receiving this blog, you can register to receive it directly in your mailbox by filling in the information below.

Happy Summer People!