Leadership Lessons Learned

The USATF describes Cross country running as a sport in which teams and individuals run races on outdoor courses over natural terrain.  Although the picture shows the four harriers in our family from a different natural terrain race, I’ve had the great pleasure of watching each bring home their fair share of individual awards at various levels at the described sport. 

However, one of my favorite memories was at the team level from a middle school race that our two youngest were grouped together in.  In a meet filled with over 100 racers from great local teams and a few esteemed out of state programs, the competition was significant to say the least.  Over mixed terrain and a few steep climbs until coming to the ending with a switchback separating two 100-yard chutes, our middle daughter hit the chutes side by side for 3^rd and won the race for 3^rd by a nose.  Our youngest daughter then hit the chutes side by side for 5^th and won by a nose.  We then saw one of our other runners in the same dog fight for 7^th with the same result.  Another of our young women did the same for 11^th and then to all of our surprise, our 5^th runner to be scored came barreling down the chutes in a dog fight for 18^th.  She probably shouldn’t have been in the top 30 on this day based on usual times but the four previous finishers and all parents went bonkers as the race for 18^th ended with the same result!  As points were added up, we realized our team had actually won the team competition by a total of 5 points that day!  Every single race to the line in each respective dogfight mattered.  Even more so, the 18^th finisher going so many places above expectation, truly secured the win…as much as the 3^rd, 5^th, 7^th, and 11^th hard chargers did.

The application of this is as simple as it seems at face value in my opinion.  Every battle needs to be fought to the absolute line, because winning by even just a nose matters.  Every single position matters.  Every team member matters.  Encouragement of all in their individual battles leads to the team winning the overall battle.  Individual victories or accomplishments certainly still matter, but winning together matters a little bit more.