You Can’t Be A Great Leader Without This
In 2015, soccer’s all-time leading scorer stepped aside to “lead from the bench.”
Abby Wambach, co-captain of the U.S. Women’s National Team, made the tough decision with her coach that she should no longer be a starter on the World Cup team. She had aged and lost some of the speed that made her so dominant earlier in her career. She’d now be coming off the bench.
As Abby describes it in her new book Wolfpack:
“I had a choice between pouting and making this moment about me or swallowing my pride and making it about our team.”
Guess which one she chose? Guess which one every great leader chooses?
She chose humility — the keystone trait of strong leadership.
Abby cheered for her team on the bench — so loudly, in fact, that her coach moved her to the far side of the bench. She began preparing water for the starters so they could refuel when they came off the field.
Yes, you read that right. The top scorer of all time willingly turned herself into a water girl whenever that was best for the team. Holy shit.
I don’t know about you, but when I stepped into my first leadership role, I was thinking about prestige and status — not serving water to my team. I hadn’t yet figured out the defining aspect of leadership: humility.
Abby credits this latter period of her career as the time when she learned the most about leadership.
“If you’re not a leader on the bench, don’t call yourself a leader on the field. You’re either a leader everywhere or nowhere.” -Abby Wambach
Hollywood, TV shows, and magazine covers teach us that the leader is the person who scores the points, tells others what to do, and gets the big paychecks.
We get so tied up in the external, glamorized portrayal of leadership that we forget about the internal, servant-based reality of authentic leadership.
Leadership is bringing out the best in others. That’s it.
Leadership is sharing a kind word with a colleague who is having a rough day.
Leadership is helping the office secretary clean up after the board meeting.
Leadership is inviting the unpopular co-worker out for happy hour drinks.
Leadership is the stuff you do that never shows up on a performance eval.
True leadership often means doing the thing that least jives with our Hollywood-ized version of leadership. This is one of the reasons why James McGregor Burns says, “Leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth.”
It’s tough for us to wrap our brains around the idea of someone willingly subjugating themselves to another. And yet, that is true leadership.
Leadership and humility are inextricably linked.
“Leadership, it turns out, is not about being in charge. Leadership is about taking care of those in your charge.” -Simon Sinek
Now, we must turn inward.
Does leadership now sound more or less appealing?
How often do we embody this servant-based form of leadership?
When is the last time we took a back seat to someone else, cheered from the bench, or grabbed water for the team?
