Rarely do I hear a statement anymore from a professional athlete that really resonates with me. Too often it's just a series of clichés. However, a few months ago, Tiger Woods said something during his streak of five consecutive wins that really stood out for me. He said,

"You have to own your swing."

He was talking about his golf swing. He had hired a swing coach, Hank Haney, to improve his swing, and they had worked for a long time to improve his approach to various situations on the golf course. What Tiger meant by this statement is you have to be extremely confident in your approach to different golfing situations. You can't just go up there and swing away without knowing what you're going to do. You have to know how you're going to swing under different circumstances. And you have to know that so well that you feel like you own that swing.

That's great advice for our careers.

We have to know the approach we're going to use in different situations before the situations confront us. We have to be so confident in our style and in our approach to other people that we feel we own that approach. And here's a key point: there's no one right approach, no one right career swing.

I've seen extremely effective leaders who swear in every sentence and others who never swear but use a barrage of words so big I have to carry a pocket dictionary with me just to have a clue what they're saying. I've seen some highly effective leaders who barely raise their voice and others who could rival Martin Luther King, Jr. for their inspirational qualities. Some great leaders speak so calmly and with such a folksy humor they are like modern day Abraham Lincolns, and others speak with such an emphasis on technical areas that you need a Harvard MBA to decipher their messages.

However, the one common denominator of all great leaders that I've seen is they all own their swing.

Every truly great influencer I have ever seen or studied was extremely confident in their approach to influencing others. That confidence generates more confidence in the people around them. And these contagious environments of confidence allow these leaders to press forward and generate extraordinary results. Sometimes it takes a long time for the results to happen, but the underlying key is an exceptionally high level of confidence in their approach to situations.

What is your leadership swing? What is your approach to influencing others that you can rely on over and over again?

Give these questions some consideration. By thinking about them ahead of time, you can begin to craft your approach and then you can refine it over time through practice in real-life situations. And then, like Tiger Woods, you can one day own your swing. You can approach every situation with great confidence in the approach that you are going to use.

Republishing Articles

Each month my e-newsletter gets republished in approximately 20 blogs, on-line publications, and internal publications for businesses, universities, and not-for-profit organizations. If you would like to republish all or part of my monthly articles, please send me an e-mail at dan@thecoughlincompany.com with "Republishing Article" in the subject heading. I will send you the article in a word document. All I ask is that you include my name as the author of the article and a short paragraph at the end of the article about me with a link to my website.

Take care and have a great month!

Dan Coughlin

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