It's not the critic who counts...
but at a given point the inner critic must kick in!
In Paris at the Sorbonne on April 23, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech entitled “Citizenship in a Republic.” This speech contains a famous paragraph popularly known as “The Man in the Arena.”
The metaphor of 'The man in the arena' finds itself woven into different contexts, serving as inspiration for anyone embarking on the pursuit of noble endeavors. The powerful metaphor serves as a tough reminder that the path to success is paved with hard work, resilience in the face of adversity, and an unwavering commitment to pressing forward, even when confronted with failures, frustrations and setbacks. It unequivocally affirms that this steadfast dedication is not just one way to approach work, but it’s the very essence of doing things right. It’s YOU FIGHTING in the arena who counts, not being a commentator of someone else’s struggles on the side.
We are all in our own arena
In our own leadership journey, we will encounter many challenges that test our spirit. However, it lies within our capacity to confront these trials with determination, courage, and tenacity.
Courage: There is always the temptation to remain on the periphery and criticize from afar, yet true courage is found in embracing vulnerability, acknowledging mistakes, and fearlessly stepping into the arena to take the heat and test our resolve.
Perseverance: When confronted with obstacles and setbacks, it is natural to consider giving up. Yet, leadership demands resilience to persist in the face of adversity, demonstrating a strength that sets a leader apart, not in title but in attitude.
Focus: The outside noise can be loud, the myriad of external influences and opinions can be very distracting, diverting precious attention from our purpose. The epitome of leadership lies in maintaining an unwavering focus on the chosen path focusing all energy in what’s within our control.
Resilience / Anti-fragility: Dealing with setbacks is an inherent part of life which leads to growth. To emerge stronger, one must embrace these experiences, not only adapting and bouncing back with determination, but to learn to gain from the chaos to evolve.
However, amidst these ideals, there is an important realization: we need not exhaust ourselves in the wrong arena. While movies and sports analogies are captivating, and help with visualizations and metaphors, the path to success doesn’t need to resemble a grueling gladiator fight or a bloody bullfight. If we find ourselves in a field not meant for our conquest, we need to be wise and take a step back, get out, switch arenas or decide to observe from the sidelines if that is what will contribute to our growth. Whatever we decide, we own it. We can’t be victims of, or find excuses after.
What we cannot compromised is our inner compass.
External voices will attempt to undermine our resolve but it’s our job to differentiate between the constructive and the critical. We can chose to persist in our endeavors or recognize our limitations, learn and evolve accordingly. The choice is ours. But there has to be a conscious choice.
Because in the end it’s not about being, it’s about becoming.
But what happens when we “become”?
Complacency, the silent killer
In the original speech, the sentence that followed the famous paragraph “the man in the arena,” adds another and very important dimension to this journey:
“Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world.”
Hard-fought success comes with great rewards but also with a hidden very high fee to pay: complacency. You may have conquered the arena, but don’t let the now conquered arena, conquer your will. The journey is never over.
When teams or individuals get comfortable with today’s success and high level of performance, they risk losing ‘the edge’. They risk not being able to sustain that high performance, setting them already behind for the new challenges that undoubtedly will present itself ahead of the road.
Overconfidence, when one has lost the edge and doesn’t even know it, precludes failure.
This is why when I’m asked “what is strategy?”, I like to answer that Strategy is the ability to create and sustain competitive advantage.
Building greatness surely is difficult, but to sustain it is much harder. The context naturally now has less components of the initial heroic fight and more of the subtle elements of an art. It requires sophistication of skills, competencies and behaviors that if missed can meet derailment just around the corner.
Complacent high performers will develop serious blind spots, go on auto-pilot and become less critical of the little things that are essential to superior performance. Attention to details weakens and even ‘the basics’ may start to fall through the cracks, missing subtle emerging patterns, new trends or bad team habits.
“Complacency is the last hurdle standing between any team and it’s greatness.” Pat Riley, NBA coach
Good leadership makes you feel safe and confident, empowers you, but also helps you understand that you can never feel too comfortable.
Jump in the arena and conquer your fears. But watch out for complacency, destroy it before it destroys you.
P.S. Before I go, here you have “The Treat,” where I share some of the music that kept me company while writing … Enjoy as you bid farewell to this post
Lead yourself, Learn to live. Lead others, Learn to Build.
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Dear Oksana, thank you as always for your engagement and your perspectives.
I will share my experience as well as my evolving thinking...
1. it is not easy to apply a perfect formula, because believe it or not this can happen to high performing senior executive teams even at the highest levels and with all the resources at their disposal.
2. there are a few things that in my experience work in order not to lose the edge:
a. very solid chartering of your team refreshed every year anchoring on purpose, culture and behaviors before anything else. take the time for good quality off-site annually to ensure that culture and expectations on behaviors are rock solid. If this suffers everything will crumble
b. spend enough time to be clear on priorities and precise on goals, as well as on establishing a simple yet powerful operational excellence model. The better you do this and the more aligned with enterprise priorities your team is, the "easier" it will be for the most important things to get done well, building momentum (high team morale) and creating capacity (freeing resources) to work on THE EDGE
c. the edge is nothing more than working on projects for continuous process improvement, on initiatives that raise the bar of what is possible and on dedicating time and resources to work on innovation. Sometimes it can be as simple as refining your governance, just to be clear on how important it is to pay attention to the smallest of things. An improved governance can yield more agility, and that can be all that is needed for your team not to burn out.
All I am trying to say is that in order not to lose the edge the first thing is to make sure that the basics NEVER go wrong! Getting the basics right over and over again is probably more important than big innovative ideas. Then, it is critical to create capacity, space, time and direction for the teams to deliver on what matters and explore the new frontiers. Both at the same time. This is what works. The executive literature calls is "Exploit and Explore"
Great post about an important aspect quite often forgotten! I loved the definition of complacency as a silent killer; it is so true. It brings me back to thinking that within a team there always should be one person who plays the role of the exterior critic. That person doesn’t have to be necessarily a leader, but someone who has enough insight to counterpoint the popular narrative within a team. I’ve been in teams where such persons were disliked because they pushed others to think a bit more, and eventually the team had fallen into a trap of complacency. According to your opinion, Sebastian, what does a leader need to do and how do they need to structure their team in order to prevent the team from growing into the complacency mindset? I’m curious to hear from your experiences...