One of my favorite times of the year is right now – March Madness, and it started yesterday. Sixty-five, division-one college basketball teams enter into a single-elimination tournament. There are 31 automatic bids earned by winning either the conference or the conference tournament. There are 34 other teams picked from a group, seated into four different regions, ranked from 1 to 16.
Every year there are teams that are on what they call the “bubble” – meaning they could be in, or they could be out. There are pros and cons about each of these teams that make a good argument of why they should be in the tournament and why they shouldn’t.
Waves of criticism flow minutes after the posting, with people freely criticizing and listing reasons why it should or shouldn’t have happened this way. One huge reason – whoever gets “in” gets a huge paycheck, plus free PR being on TV, which makes a huge impact on recruiting players to their program. The implications of making or not making the tournament are huge!
I was thinking – that is leadership. Most of leadership is not about making the easy decisions that are very clear and cut. It’s been said that a sophomore in high school can basically make 95% of all decisions that are needed to be made, but real leadership is about making the other 5%! So, how does a leader do this? Be clear, even if you are not.
