Leadership Lessons from Tiger Woods

December 10, 2009 by JoAnn Corley  
Filed under Management Training

First let me say, my heart is very sadden by the public display of the dismantling of a public image and there in is the reason why I decided to write this post.  There are many lessons  here for professional success, professional credibility and leadership and management success. The grace of it?….we are learning from someone’s mistake, other than our own. I invite the readers of this post to do so humbly.

Usually I don’t use this blog to discuss sensationlized news, yet I felt compelled to comment on this particular occurrence and even more so after reading a thought-filled blog post that I found very instructive.  You can read the entire post from the other blog, Orin Woodward Leadership Team,  provided at the end of this post.  What I want to do is submit my thoughts in light of that post.

My Thoughts:

One of the guiding themes of my practice and any coaching and training I do is leading, managing, living from the inside out.  Who we are on the inside dictates the kind of person we’ll be on the outside. This truth proves itself out, time and time again.

That’s why it’s so important to work on our insides more than any other area.  There are many managers and leaders who want to fix the people around them rather than consider, “what about me has allowed these circumstances to occur.”

I do carry the belief that people of great talent, those in high levels of leadership and influence need to be especially attentive to what’s going on on the inside and have someone in their life they deeply trust to help them effectively deal with their own inner activity no matter how unpleasant it might be.

To stay grounded and truthful with the good and the bad about ourselves is essential to a successful life and complete health.

It’s very common to talk to a leader of an organization and discover they feel isolated and that there is no one in their life that they can talk with about deeply intimate issues, that in some cases they are embarrassed about.

Perhaps that was true in Tiger’s case.  Perhaps he has struggled with sexual addiction (if this is true) from an early age or it surfaced after his father’s death to fill a emotional hole left with his Dad’s profound absence.  These are all assumptions of course.

What is not…we all need to continually practice internal honesty as the first source of living a meaningful, productive, successful life. How we do that will be reflected in every activity and relationship we have in every context.

This post serves as my summary of the following points from the post referenced above…truly profound and worth a read.

Key Points:

I. Leaders need to build their lives upon the solid foundation of good character and morals, not on gifts and abilities.

II. Leaders must understand that having great career success does not cause us to experience or feel internal significance and satisfaction

III. Leaders need to develop good coping skills so they can courageously confront reality instead of escaping from it.

IV. Leaders must not feed an ego-driven lifestyle.

VI. Leaders must understand that money, material possessions and a beautiful spouse cannot fill the vast empty space of an unhealthy emotional soul.

VII. Leaders need to understand the underlining motivation behind what drives them.

VIII. Leaders often equate performance with acceptance.

View Article Eight Lessons Leaders Can Learn from Tiger Wood’s Life

Please pass on to colleagues and friends.  To our personal and professional success! JoAnn

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