Golf: Life's Classroom (And Then Some)
What is it about golf and leadership and life? Why are they all so intertwined?
As a golfer, you will know the all-too-common feeling of anticipation—that excitement muddled with trepidation, the fear of failing to meet your own lofty (and likely unrealistic) expectations for what will transpire in the next four to five hours.
It's a game of focus more than fortitude. A game of pace more than exertion. A game of inches and angles more than strength and force. A game with wave-like emotions rising and falling like the ebb and flow of the tide. A game you can never predict or plan. A game where each part of your mind, body, and soul are stretched in their own way.
It's a game of endless learning, an infinite game... and so too is life.
“Golf is the closest game to the game we call life. You get bad breaks from good shots; you get good breaks from bad shots – But you have to play the ball where it lies.” — Bobby Jones
Golf & Life
Golf, like most sports, is an arena that uniquely teaches us about life. Here are a sampling of the ways golf does this:
Golf is an individual sport, yet the best performances result from the contribution of others.
While golf is known predominantly as an individual sport, I would argue that the best golfers in the world earned that title largely due to the contributions of others. One of the most important people in a professional golfer's success is their caddy: a partner to help bring out the best performance the player is capable of. Beyond the caddy, there are swing coaches, mental coaches, fitness coaches, managers, agents, and on and on the list goes. For your average amateur golfer, there are resources such as golf coaches, lessons, articles, club fitters, and other organizations designed to help you grow as a golfer.
This is true in life. While we are solely responsible for the decisions and actions we take, we cannot walk through this life on our own. We have been designed and wired as relational beings; the relationships we share with others are largely what gives meaning to our lives. Not only does it give purpose to life, other people also elevate our individual capacity, sharing each others skills and talents to help us each level up. You may be an individual first, but you are never outside of the collective humanity and the instinctual need for human relationships and collaboration.
In golf, you control very little outside of your mind and your focus.
It is easy to see how little control we have over any aspect of our golf game. From possessing zero influence over the wind and how hard or soft it tends to blow, to having no control over how the ball will bounce depending on what surface it lands on, what stray branch it may hit, or some tiny pebble that bounces it offline; there really is no limit to the extent of how uncontrollable golf is. Yet there's always one thing that we have full control over... our mind and where we place our attention—our focus. Since our mind is all we can fully control, this is the most important aspect to develop because it directly impacts the results produced.
This is equally true in life. In our western world we are fooled into thinking we control most aspects of our lives. This belief rings true up until the point where chaos begins to take over and none of our days go according to plan. We are constantly riding a roller-coaster on the pendulum between chaos and control, and in reality there are very few things actually under our control... very few things except for our mind, that is. By controlling our mind and what we focus on, we keep the energy and effort on what we can manage well, while not wasting energy worrying about perfectly steering all other aspects of our lives.
In golf, there is never a destination of “greatness” you arrive at, only the constant journey towards “better.”
Every single day on the golf course is different. Some days your swing feels great, while others it seems like the first time you've held this foreign club in your hands. Some days your putter is working well, while others it may be your driver. Even after years and years of practicing, improving, learning, growing, there are still slumps and seasons when you can't seem to post a good score to save your life. Golf teaches us over and over again that we will never fully arrive, so we had better embrace the process.
This lesson cannot be learned enough in life. There are thousands of articles on the journey vs. the destination (I've got one too), and for good reason! We need this reminder daily, because we all long for that arrival. By remembering that the journey is just as beautiful as the arrival (if not more!) we can better live in the present with joy and gratitude for our current place in the process. A much better reality than the endless discontent of not being where we want to be.
In golf, you can't force things to happen, you have to let them.
Unlike other sports, you can't just “try harder” with golf. You can't muscle your way to better results. You can't use anger and emotion to fuel your performance to higher heights. More times than not, you must process what happened and then move on to what's next without the last shot negatively affecting your current outlook and the shot at hand. The second we try to force golf's hand, we usually get knocked off our rocker. In a game as uncontrollable as golf, we have to let go of the results and allow them to happen.
Life also provides a chance to experience this phenomenon. So often we hear the cultural messaging of “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps” and becoming a “self-made man,” yet these narratives are not a formula that produce a consistent outcome. Forcing things to happen by sheer willpower is as unhelpful for us as it is for those on the other side of us. It's an unsustainable pursuit that puts more emphasis and faith in our own efforts while failing to recognize how little control we have over the outcomes we are striving to produce, all usually at the cost of someone else. For healthy, sustainable results we must let them happen, not forcing life's hand.
Golf reminds us: it's just complicated.
Golf is infinitely complex. From the different types of clubs, to the different types of shots with each club, to the different types of grass, to the different styles of courses, to the different strategies and techniques, it's simply complicated. The second we think we have it figured out, it puts us back in our place and reminds us how little we know.
Life shares this complexity (and then some). There is still so much we don't know about our world, our bodies, our environment, our inventions, our origins, and beyond. Similarly, our temptation is to rest in the posture of “having it all figured out,” which inevitably shows our own ignorance more than anything else. Holding the tension between what we do know and what we don't while not pretending to be something more could be summed up as the task of life. It is a movement from simplicity, to complexity, and back to that far-side simplicity often coined as mastery. (See From Here To There for more on this).
Golf & Leadership
Beyond the parallels of golf and life, there are a host of ways we learn about leadership through the game as well. Here are a few that stand out to me:
In golf as in leadership, you must take full ownership of all results, both the successes and (especially) the failures.
Taking ownership of the outcome is a non-negotiable for becoming a better golfer as well as becoming a better leader. In failing to do so, we create a habit of making excuses and passing blame for the scores we shoot, never viewing these experiences as learning opportunities but rather seeing them as results to forget. This is a waste of experience and often produces more of the same.
As leaders, when we fail to take ownership, passing off blame, we create cultures that reproduce this at all levels of the organization. To become leaders worth following we must take full ownership for both the successes and the failures produced under our leadership, knowing that long-term growth is fueled by capitalizing on these experiences through honest owning of responsibility.
In both golf and leadership, we must choose to never settle for giving less than we are capable of.
When your score is dependent on every single shot you hit, there is not an option to take a few shots off. The margin between winning and losing, between success and failure is too microscopic for you to have the luxury of not giving each shot your best.
Similarly, in leadership, when others are dependent on your direction, decisions, and actions for their very livelihood, there is no room for lackadaisical efforts. Being responsible in leadership requires that the leader commit to giving their best each step of the way, never settling for anything less.
Golf and leadership are dynamic arenas always providing new things to learn and new layers to discover.
The game of golf and how we play it is always changing. It is a dynamic environment and there will always be new layers of depth to be discovered. That is the beauty of it: we can always keep learning! It doesn't matter how long you've played the game, the game can be brand new each time you step on the first tee.
Likewise, leadership is endlessly dynamic because it involves the infinite complexity of other human beings! No two individuals are the same, and as a result, leading individuals will always be changing and taking on new or different forms. There are abundant lessons to be learned given the dynamism of not only humans but also of situations, environments, and experiences. Maintaining a posture that strives to be a life-long learner helps us embrace this reality in both leadership and golf.
Non-Linear Thinking & Silo-Free Learning
Moving to the vein of how we learn and develop as humans, there are several discoveries from my personal experiences that have led to an increase in my learning capacity. These discoveries are the ideas of 1) non-linear thinking and 2) silo-free learning.
A basic definition of non-linear thinking is: non-sequential learning; or learning in an unstructured fashion. It is thinking that draws connections and makes inferences from disparate ideas and unrelated concepts. It finds a chord of unison in what would otherwise be considered different. This is also understood as lateral thinking. It involves being able to come up with solutions to problems in an unconventional way through creativity, reasoning, and thinking “outside the box.” It's less of a traditional step-by-step approach and more of an abstract process of trying to discover and see what isn't immediately obvious.
A basic definition of silo-free learning is: connecting different fields of study to help increase the effectiveness of learning in the other (as well as additional fields). It is integrating what you learned in one discipline by applying the underlying principles to help you in learning another discipline. The essence of this idea is the formation of mental models that increase the efficacy of our learning as a whole, as we connect more and more “case-studies” from the experiences in our life to inform the knowledge we learn and retain.
In combining these two ideas of non-linear thinking and silo-free learning, we see the beauty of what happens in combining both golf and leadership within the same experience. By participating in a sport such as golf, we are focusing on the mental models and frameworks that can help us be successful in shooting as low of a score as possible. As we pursue this goal, we can use the lessons we've learned in life and in leadership to help us lead ourselves well in the realm of golf. And as the inverse goes, we can use the lessons learned on the golf course to better see and grow in our role of leadership beyond the links.
The Leadership Majors
This is the premise and foundation for The Leadership Majors, an organization formed at the intersection of golf and leadership. A vision with the goal of increasing the effectiveness of what we learn on the golf course by applying those lessons laterally to our life. A mission of integrating our lives to move past the silos of learning, knowing that these disparate connections between fields are often more powerful than prescribed processes for growth.
Through this brief depiction of the parallel worlds where golf and leadership reside, I hope you see the beauty I have grown to love in the importance of the intersection of the game of golf and personal leadership.
If you do see and believe in their beauty, I invite you to consider attending the 2021 Leadership Cup, taking place September 16-19 in Kohler, WI. This weekend retreat offers leadership development from a renowned expert alongside a Ryder-Cup style competition at an epic golf destination. This is an experience that will be unforgettable in more ways than one, and I'd love to share it alongside you.
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For more information on upcoming Leadership Majors, visit: theleadershipmajors.com.
