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Runners Don’t Need Leadership Courses
Ten leadership lessons from running daily
Last year, I ran every day of the year.
Yes, I did.
In my country, there are two seasons.
There is the rainy season when fat droplets of rain pelt the earth maliciously until the roads are full and homes flooded.
I ran on those days.
There is also the dry season when the sun grins with an intensity that borders on vengance. I ran on those days.
So, during those 365 days of blistering heat and sometimes blinding rain, I learned specific lessons that I realise runners like me globally have known from time immemorial.
Lessons which, when applied to one’s daily life, can make one successful at self-leadership and people leadership. Without taking a leadership course.
1. Waking Up Early
If you want to run in a busy community like mine, especially with a schedule of a freelancer with several side gigs like mine, you must learn to wake up early.
Waking up helps me start my day right and right on time. As an individual or leader, waking up early gives you ample time to be more productive.
2. Build Positive Habits
Something unconscious happens when you run daily for a year: habit forming. Our lives, success, and failure, differ because of our habits. Any successful leader knows the importance of forming the right habits. The time to form habits varies according to research. There is the 21-day rule, there is the 66-day rule.
But all agree that habits are formed between 18–260 days. Running daily helps you form a running habit. Imagine what habit you could form if you did something else daily.
3. Ignore Pain and Focus on the Goal
When you run daily, you will have, first, a hate relationship with pain. First, it comes with a serpent’s subtilty — a hurt toe, a strained muscle. Then it comes with the arrogance of a lion — waist pain, knee pains. But because I ran every day, I had to choose what I wanted: my goal or the pain. Of course, I chose my goal. You will face pain or disappointment as a leader, and if you run daily, you will know how to ignore the pain and focus on the process.
4. Self-Motivation
When you run daily and alone, you will learn self-motivation. You will need it to get out of bed when your body hurts, when the shower does help to chase away the drowsiness. You will need it on the days the roofs are pounding with the pouring rain, or the sun is having the time of its life. As a long-distance runner, you will need it even more. Running daily taught me self-motivation. So, I learned to take each race one step at a time. Leadership requires such motivation, especially on the days when the going is no longer good.
5. Effective Planning
If you want to run daily, you will understand the ado surrounding planning your day the night before. I failed at it before until I realised that planning saved me from the dash and confusion of early morning rushes. As soon as I understood it, I began to set my running kits by my bedside. As leaders, you can learn to plan effectively by running daily.
6. Paying Attention to Your Health
I run daily, but I haven’t killed my golden goose (which is my body). Midway into the year, I realised the things that affected my health. Alcohol became a no-no. Sleeping late became an anathema. Dehydration and poor nutrition became things of the past. Aches and pains were addressed and attended to. Daily runners who are great leaders know that sacrificing their health to achieve their goals is killing the golden goose because of a golden egg.
7. Time Consciousness
When you run daily, you will grow accustomed to being conscious of time — its quasi-slowness when you’re in the middle of a long race and its seemingly speed when you wake up late. But time is neither fast nor slow. It is constant. As a daily runner, I became more conscious of time. That’s one of the things daily running will teach you.
8. Practicing Delayed Gratification
Whenever I run, I don’t drink water or any fluid until a particular time to avoid bloatedness and the discomfort of a filled bladder. I learned to exist in that space between hydration and delayed gratification. Running daily teaches you how to delay rewards, resist temptation, and focus on a hopeful future.
9. Focus
When I ran daily, I learned to Face One Course Until Success — at least this is how someone described focus. When my goal was 5km, I faced it until I was done. I did the same for 10km, 21km, and even my first marathon. The world around me during running is filled with distractions, but my goal has always been to run, and it is what I do. Running will teach you that, and what leader doesn’t need focus to fructify their goals?
10. Discipline
It takes discipline to plan the night before, wake up early the next morning, and come out every morning in every weather for 365 days. Running daily made me very disciplined. I realized I didn’t have to stop running because a variable in my day changed. And with that, I was successful as a daily runner 365 times. As a daily runner, you will learn the unbelievable power of discipline, learning it and becoming it.
With these qualities forged and formed in the crucibles of daily running, I have seen the effect in my life, physically and mentally.
I can confidenly tell you that if you have them, you don’t need external motivation or even leadership school.
Yes, I said what I said.
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