Lasso on Leadership: Living Your Principles
We’re all excited for Ted Lasso Season 3. It’s a relentlessly feel-good journey courtesy of the wonderful mind of Jason Sudeikis.
We’re all excited for Ted Lasso Season 3. It’s a relentlessly feel-good journey courtesy of the wonderful mind of Jason Sudeikis.
The teaser is, well, not that teasing. Everyone gets “Believe”, right?
But, think back to Season 1, when Ted introduced “Believe” to the team.
They hated it. It was irrelevant to their lives. They didn’t understand its meaning; and nor did they trust the messenger.
But Ted kept articulating his principle. Over and again. And with time; and joint success; and evolving trust; he brought his team up to where he was.
It’s easy to create a focus group and come up with a slogan. Or even have a set of Values on your web site.
What matters though, is that you live your principles every day; and visibly lead by example.
It’s not easy though: first you must know what your principles are.
Speaking for myself: my first principle is to solve the right problem. It’s tempting to focus on the most technically interesting issue; or the one the customer is complaining about most loudly; or even the ones with which you’re most familiar.
But, if you’re not solving the right problem, you’re focusing on symptomatic resolution. And that might not solve the unreported issues.
So: Solve the right problem. More on that in another post.
Side note for job seekers. When you’re interviewing with a company that publishes their values, ask each person this question: “Tell me about a time when you appealed to your company’s values in order to resolve a disagreement or dispute”.
The answers to that question make for an instructive conversation and help you gauge how well the different people in that company embrace those values.
Lack of answers to that should be a very compelling signal to you.
Thank you to Rajvi Bhatt for her kind suggestions during this article’s formulation.
Want to chat about this? Hit me up or email: lassoOnleadership@dhk.io