
SPECTATOR VS. SPORT
I’ve given a bit of thought to the idea of “Spectator Sports”. This colloquial terminology has been used for decades to describe a host of popular sport genres. Whether you’re talking about football, soccer, baseball or even boxing — spectatorship (if there exist such a thing) seems to characterize the relevance of the sport by virtue of it’s audiences’ willingness to pay attention.
But this phenomenon has a deeper implication in relationship to “Leadership Development”. Simply put, ‘Spectators are NOT on the roster.’ Watching the sport, cheering the players, buying the tickets and over-sized foam fingers — IS NOT playing. Sure we like to hear the homage of humility by athletes when they exercise self deprecation in recognizing the fans. But this action — DOES NOT truly impact the outcome of the competition. Fans don’t WIN, players do. And this is important for Leaders to understand in the development of their teams.
While it may feel good to ‘hear the cheers’, sign out-of-bound balls, and rally together alongside fans for souvenir pics — leaders must remember the importance of developing players on the roster. We must make sure to recruit performers — and unless your job is to lead the “cheerleaders”, this means you must utilize metrics and measure to identify the players.
