LEADERSHIP QUOTE:

"Success is usually the culmination of controlling failures."Sylvester Stallone

A LITTLE BIT DEEPER:

I'm going to continue some quotes from Sylvester Stallone this month simply as a way to prompt some deeper thinking.

I shared about his book I just read, The Steps, and I shared about how at the age of 12 years old, this movie had a profound impact on my life. It's been fun to revisit it a little bit and I look forward to Stallone's new movie coming out in November, "I Play Rocky", which is his story.

You can read my past few posts on Rocky HERE.

Thanks for letting dive into this for a few weeks. It's been fun and inspirational to camp here a little bit.

The quote above really summarizes Stallone's perspective on life, and it's really a story of resilience. In his book, he talks a lot about his failure. He talks about ideas he had, opportunities he messed up, dreams that died, risks he took in life and in reading his book, I realized that his journey was not a jump to success quickly. What we saw and heard was a long-shot movie idea that caught the attention of the world and won an Oscar. What we didn't see was the journey it took for him to get there, to write that screenplay, to pitch the idea, to fight for it, to have it almost thrown away over and over again.

He talks about his failure.

I'm not sure we talk about that enough. I know for me, I want to "manage the narrative" around my failure so that it doesn't sound so bad or so that I can spin it into the positive.

Here's the reality: Failure is Hard.

I used to say to leaders, "If you fail, then....." I'd give them some canned advice or some inspirational quote.

Some years ago, I switched to, "When you fail, then....".

WE ALL FAIL. We don't all get it right all the time. We make mistakes, we say the wrong thing, we make the wrong move, a decision backfires, we hurt peoples feelings, we invest in the wrong person or the wrong company, we miss the communication and we do this over and over again.

I like these 2 words from Stallone's quote:

First he says CULMINATION. I think what he's saying is that success or victory usually comes at the end of a long series of events. Very seldom does something just work great the first time. It's usually the result of a lot of hard work, many failures and pivots, and then as we gain perspective, we find our way, which might lead to a win. It's a process.

The second word he uses is CONTROLLING. I think he's telling us that how we respond to these failures, how we navigate through them, around them and beyond them is really important. We can't avoid failure, but we can control how we respond and react to failure. This is true for our own failure and that of those on our teams.

If you have experienced failure, WELCOME! You are not Alone! Now what are you going to do with what you've learned?

Are you able to talk about your failure freely or are you embarrassed by it?

LEADERSHIP QUOTE:

"I believe any success in life is made by going into an area with a blind, furious optimism." Sylvester Stallone

A LITTLE BIT DEEPER:

I'm going to continue some quotes from Sylvester Stallone this month simply as a way to prompt some deeper thinking.

I finished his book The Steps this past week. It's his early story of growing up, and it ends with him winning the Oscar for Best Picture in 1977 for Rocky. The journey to get there was long, somewhat dark, but a true story of perseverance!

In this quote, he focuses on three words, and I think there's something there for us. "Blind - Furious - Optimism". This is what this says to me:

BLIND:

Stallone says over and over, "don't let the odds stop you", even when things look bleak, don't focus on your chance of failure, don't be "blind" to the opportunities around you, don't be careless. Stallone worked for years and years writing, re-writing, learning and failing before he wrote the screenplay for Rocky in just 3 days. He worked hard to get to this point, especially as everyone around him told him he'd never succeed.

FURIOUS:

This idea from Stallone is about intensity. He would say you have to bring an aggressive effort to everything you do, willing to work hard, willing to fight for what you believe in. This isn't a passive hope that things will work out, but a relentless pursuit of something you believe in.

OPTIMISM:

Stallone defines this as "believing in the outcome before there's evidence for it." Belief comes first, the results follow.

I don't know about you, but these three words are really challenging to me today. I'm doing a little self-audit to see how these words are currently playing out in my life and I'm challenged, but I'm also inspired.

Stallone's personal story and journey describe what these words meant to him, and I guess I need to determine what they mean to me.

It seems at times that I am OK simply rolling through life, through work, through relationships, through challenges with a lack of intensity, a lack of focus and I can easily get lulled to just "cruise" by the steady state of the calendar that just keeps moving forward, one project, one event at a time.

That's not what I want or how I want to live.

What would my life reflect if I was a little more BLIND to the obstacles facing me, and I saw a vision of what could be?

What would my next project look like if I applied some FURIOUS energy to it, putting all my effort into it instead of just a little bit?

How would I lead if instead of a general toxic sense of OPTIMISM, I truly believed in the vision and purpose before it actually became a reaility?

Cue the Rocky theme HERE.

Do you find yourself drifting to sleep at a time when you should be fully engaged, completely focused and excited about what you're doing and who your called to be?

LEADERSHIP QUOTE:

"It ain't about how hard you hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward." Sylvester Stallone

A LITTLE BIT DEEPER:

We just finished a month long look at The Five Dysfunctions of a Team that you can read on the blog. I hope that during these weeks, it's triggered some things in you and your leadership. Again, one of my all-time favorite books.

I'm going to make a slight turn here, well, maybe a radical turn.

In 1976 a movie came out that my dad took me to. It was Rocky.

I had never seen a movie like that before but I remember it like it was yesterday. The movie was dark, it was about boxing (which I know nothing about), but it was inspiring! So inspiring that the morning after seeing that film as a 12 year-old, I ate my 5 raw eggs and committed to doing one-handed pushups every day. Of course that lasted about 2 days, but the impact was real.

Before I go on, some of you might be wondering why my dad would take a 12-year old to see that movie? Well, my dad and I are both easily inspired by sports dramas, we love the fight for survival, and we love a story that seems impossible but always turns out in the end. We suckers for that emotional ride, and I was hooked.

Rocky was a story of determination and someone overcoming impossible obstacles.

The reason this has come to mind is because Sylvester Stallone just published an autobiography called The Steps. It's basically his story of growing up and it leads up to his writing and pitching his film, Rocky. I started reading the book last week, then I switched to the AUDIBLE version because I wanted to hear his voice tell his story.

It's a rough story, but I'm learning that what was shared on the screen in his film Rocky was based on the challenges and hardships he faced growing up and trying to make it in the film business.

I'm not eating raw eggs again, but I'd love to spend some time talking about how determination is so important to our leadership. Yes, there are some prompts from the Rocky story, but what engaging with this story does for me is simply to remind me of why determination is so important to my leadership, to anyones leadership!

Back in 2001, my dad and I wrote a little book called The ABC's of Global Leadership. It's a simple curriculum going through 26 Qualities of a Leader using the ABC's. We've shared it in the Leader Mundial Communities and it's been translated into 9 different languages.

When we wrote this, we chose DETERMINED as a quality that every leader needs to have and continue to develop. We wrote these words...

"When we're not determined, we wonder.

When we're not determined, we get distracted.

When we're not determined, we don't finish well.

When we're not determined, we tire easily.

When we're not determined, we can't see clearly.

When we're not determined, we forget."

I believe these words are still true for us all.

Can you remember a time that sheer determination helped you get through a difficult time or season? What was that like to go through?