Leadership lessons from a Cricket Match

The last match of the one day series is just over and the result of this match was not what I thought it would be. India lost the match. They lost the match by 5 runs. A close encounter. A great game of cricket. I just switched off my television set in pain of India losing the match. Sometimes I feel that I get hurt with India’s loss in a match more that the players who play the match. Anyway, I am not writing this to document how much of pain I am going through. I am doing this to see what are those things that stand out, certain things that we can learn and implement in our lives.

That moment in the match when Dhoni got out, I said to myself, like thousands of other Indians watching this match, its over for us in this game. The target is huge and we have lost all the batsmen who could have helped us cross the line. No one would have thought that we would get the match so close and lose by a margin of just 5 runs and give England a run for their money especially the way we started off the last over.

There is a beautiful lesson here for leaders. Too often, we give up on our goals, on our dreams midway because things are not working out as planned and we don’t see ourselves achieving anything; especially with our current circumstances in mind. But true leaders don’t forget that the match is not won or lost till the last ball is bowled.

Kohli got out, Yuvraj got out, Dhoni got out.

People who got us closer to the target were Hardik and Kedar. There is something interesting that I want to bring to your notice here.

Sometimes as leaders, we get caught up with achieving targets, goals etc so much that we just focus only on those people who have been doing it for us in the past, people who have been delivering for us. What we forget or miss out on is that we need to focus on the average performers as well and work out a plan to take them to the next level.

During the presentation ceremony, Kohli said that there are lot of positives out of this match and the series.

Brings me back to certain basics, in life; you win some and you lose some. As a leader what is important is you learn continuously. From everything. From your losses, from your victories, from people around you. It is very difficult to find positives in the face of a loss but remember, you will find whatever you search for.

To sum it up, though we lost the match today, we gained some good insights from it. Reminds me of one of my favourite quotes, “when the student is ready, the teacher appears.”

Are you ready?

Ready to learn lessons; lessons from everything around us and explore all the possible learning opportunities!!!

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