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5-11-09

 

“I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams,

and endeavors to live the life he has imagined,

he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

Henry David Thoreau

 

Blindsided

 

It takes courage to follow your dream.  But it can take even more courage to reshape one.

 

My son, Ryan, grew up dreaming about playing football for Syracuse University which is just 15 miles from our house.  Shortly after his mom died, when he was 9 years old, the idea of someday making the SU football team became a passion for Ryan, something positive that he focused on, something good that made him forget at least for a little while his grief.  He wore SU colors, we went to games in the Dome, watched SU on TV and I would cheer in the yard as he pretended to make the big game-winning play in front of his hometown fans.  Ryan dreamed in orange.

 

The shape of that dream came in his sophomore year, in a JV football game.  With 17 seconds left and trailing by one point, Ryan made a 27 yard field goal – his first attempt ever in a game – to give his Marcellus Mustangs the win.  His teammates mobbed him and later at dinner he declared that he wanted to be a place kicker and play for Syracuse when he graduated.  The dream was on.

 

In the years that followed, Ryan worked hard for that dream.  He poured himself into it year-round.  At first, it was a self-taught passion with kicks into the catalpa tree in our backyard but later it was under the mentorship of one of the best kicking coaches in the country, Paul Woodside, who would take his skill to new heights.  On varsity, he made 7 field goals, including 2 game-winners, one of which, ironically, was a 38 yard kick in the Syracuse Carrier Dome.  Ryan earned all-league and all-star honors and finished his senior season ranked # 26 in the country by ESPN.  Colleges courted him, some offered him but in the end he wanted to go only one place – Syracuse.

 

Ryan’s commitment paid off.  Head Coach Greg Robinson welcomed Ryan to the Orange football team as a walk-on in September 2007.  He proudly wore jersey # 38.  Playing behind an upperclassman, Ryan learned the college game, trained, practiced and used the past two years to hone his skill and condition his body.  He excelled, posting the 3^rd highest GPA on the team, Dean’s List every semester and earned a coveted orange jersey for exceptional off-season work ethic.  He was primed to compete this year, knowing SU had graduated their senior kicker.  His dream was in view and he was ready.

 

But then change swept in.  A new head coach and a new special teams coach would combine to unravel his dream.  Ryan dominated his position on day-one of spring practice this past March.  On a bone-chilling day, with temps in the teens and winds gusting to 20 knots, Ryan out-performed the team’s other two place kickers by nailing 19 of 23 field goals; more than doubling the success of the other kickers.  His kicks impressed two Syracuse assistant coaches who both congratulated him on a very good job in tough conditions – praise which made the following day’s events seem surreal.  A sudden text message to meet with the head coach, a five minute exchange and the dream was over; Ryan was cut from the roster and left wondering what madness he had just been swept up in.

 

But he left with class, despite coaches who ignored his top day-one performance, disparaged his talent and revealed an agenda to cut all the current place kickers regardless of their skill so they could recruit their own.  Ryan left stunned and disappointed but with his head up; already realizing that his dream was bigger than that campus and if it wasn’t at Syracuse, he could find it somewhere else.  He was right.

 

Forty eight hours after his official release, Clemson University called Ryan to see if he would come south this fall.  He had been recommended to the Tigers by an NFL kicker Ryan had worked out with who heard what happened to him at Syracuse.  Interest from Stanford University followed.  Within two weeks, more than a dozen Division 1 teams jumped at the chance to have him on their roster.  What caught their eye, aside from his Dean’s List grades, was a brief highlight video on YouTube that showcased Ryan’s skill (click on the “Go Now” link to watch it) – there’s always a market for the determined!

 

 

His dream has been reborn.  Ryan has a new direction and a new twist that paints his dream not in Syracuse orange but in Temple cherry.  He accepted an invitation to join Temple University’s football team and play for the Owls in his remaining 3 years of eligibility.  Temple’s coaching staff is superb, the academics are excellent, the program is rising and the campus is just 4 hours from home.  Opportunity is where you make it and Ryan is excited as ever to make it on this new stage!

 

 

LESSONS FOR LEADERS:

 

For Ryan, the dream was finished but the dreamer was not.  What a powerful lesson for us as leaders that despite our best efforts and preparation in pursuit of a worthy objective we can be derailed by forces outside our control.  Some dreams die, some are assassinated.  Regardless, leadership requires us to move past the “why” and find the “how” – how to move forward, how to create new opportunity, how to remain masters of our own destiny and not victims of someone else’s mistake.

 

Ryan knows that life is not fair.  It’s one of the truths he had to face with the death of his mother; it’s one of the principles he’s heard his dad teach over and over in my “Conquering Adversity” message.  But while I teach it, he lives it.  There is no logic in what happened to Ryan at Syracuse; no fairness in having his life’s dream blindsided without a chance to compete for it.  Ryan could have been forgiven for becoming bitter or angry but he did not.

 

Instead, Ryan just took the truth and left the room; buoyed by the knowledge that there was nothing he could do in this situation; he had done everything that was asked of him but if he was not going to get a chance to compete, not going to be judged on his performance, then his dream no longer existed there.  Ryan found the courage to reshape his dream to fit a new and unanticipated reality.

 

Being a leader means not letting disappointment paralyze our actions, not accepting the irrational as truth, not letting someone else dictate our goals or our life.  Being a leader means not languishing in the injustice of an act; not debating the incompetent or incoherent.  Leaders know you can lose a battle and still win the war.  Leaders do not fixate on what other people do to them; they focus on what they can do to move beyond the madness of the moment.  Action, not anger, is the leader’s secret.

 

By recognizing that this was a circumstance out of his control and beyond the reach of logical discourse, Ryan was able to move past it quickly, take actions to establish a new direction, and channel his energy, emotion and behaviors into constructive, positive steps that eventually resulted in a situation that is as good, perhaps better, than the one before.  That’s self-leadership at its best – an example of how leaders should respond when decisions are made from above that disappoint or derail them. 

 

We face these moments all the time as leaders, tough to swallow, bitter pills that come down to us without warning.  How many times do we labor for a goal, work long hours, accomplish extraordinary milestones only to have that goal dismissed by a new boss, a new policy, a new plan.  How often do we see our efforts – our dreams – become collateral damage to circumstances we can neither anticipate nor control?  It happens all the time.  How we react to that loss says a lot about who we are and sets an example for those we lead.  We can all take a lesson from a 20 year-old kicker who is an expert in navigating the unseen gale – get over it quickly, don’t make their poor judgment yours.  One door closes but another opens – you just have to go find it. 

 

The dream does not make the man, the man makes the dream.

 

 

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Christopher Novak is an author, international speaker and leadership coach whose signature book and keynote, Conquering Adversity, has inspired tens of thousands of people.  To learn more about his speaking services or to sign-up to receive more inspirational emails (if you were lucky enough to have someone forward this to you), visit his website, www.ConqueringAdversity-speaker.com.

 

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