A thought for leaders then a current story that has me musing on what we choose to pay attention to.
Leadership is about people, end of story
Almost all businesses these days are predominantly about people and leaders get the importance of recognising those who succeed. My encouragement is to remember to recognise not those who excel visibly, but also those who excel invisibly. Assuming you have a culture that is about growth and learning, each of the people in your business will be on their own journey, so the more time you can spend in the business and with your people, the more acknowledgement and encouragement you give, the more they will all feel supported and seen. They won’t be “Excelling Invisibly”.
My story today, then, is about the young man in the picture above, someone who is excelling (almost) invisibly.
The World Swimming Championships were held last week in Fukuoka, Japan. Most of the commentators on live streams were either from the USA or Australia. Australia had a stellar meet, so (quite understandably) the Aussie commentators could barely bring themselves to pay attention to anything other than Aussie win after Aussie win. Meanwhile, the USA commentators were so much in denial about how poorly the USA did that they even rejigged their medal table displays to show it by total medals (rather than by the number of gold medals) as that made the USA results look better.
As a Caymanian though, I focussed primarily on the swimmer above, someone who got virtually zero mention by any of the commentators. Who is he? Well, he is the reigning world champion over the “short course” (25-metre pool) in the Men’s 50-metre Freestyle, Jordan Crooks of the Cayman Islands.
This meet, though, was over the Long Course, or Olympic Distance, the 50-metre long pool. The sprint swims (50m and 100m distances) are a very different undertaking when you have to swim 50m rather than 25m before each deep breath and flip turn, so to transition from being a 25m pool specialist (as Jordan had been up until now) to success in the long pool was a huge gap to attempt to bridge.
As I watched Jordan swim in first the 100m and then the 50m events, I was stunned by his progress in the longer pool and the level of success he achieved. As much as that, though, it occurred to me that he was “Excelling Invisibly“, as only the cognoscenti were at all aware of the massive achievements he made in improving his personal record times in both events. He sliced huge chunks off both his 100m and 50 personal record times, making the finals of both events (which far surpassed expectations of perhaps anyone by Jordan himself!) and booked himself a place in the Paris Olympics with “A” (automatic) qualifying times in both events.
Oh, and Jordan is only 21, when typically sprint swimmers get better and better through their 20s (the greatest female sprint swimmer in history is still swimming, As an example, Sarah Sjöström of Sweden, who broke any number of records at that meet last week and turns 30 next month. Watch Jordan, his “excelling invisibly” may be much more visible by the time Paris 2024 comes around, though have no doubt, this will be no “overnight success”. His success now dates back to swimming as a tiny child in the tiny pools in Cayman and it has taken a village to support him in his endeavours!