One of the key stats that are reported after a basketball game is rebounding. Some NBA stars have amassed great wealth all because they have the ability to rebound better than others. Rebounding requires grit, determination, strength, and agility. For those on the court, the ability to rebound is key to a team’s or an individual’s success. Let’s take a moment, though, and look past the statistic and focus on the motivator of the rebound. A rebound happens because the intended-to-swish shot missed the basket. Pure and simple, rebounding takes place because of the failure to hit an objective. When the ball clunks off the rim, there is a mad scramble to get control of the ball so that another shot can be attempted, or simply to keep the opposing team from taking a shot themselves. There isn’t time to bemoan the fact that the ball missed the target, or for a task force to be formed to study the root cause of the individual’s failure. There is only time to react and get the ball back. Rebounding is a crucial part of winning basketball games, and, I suggest, winning as a leader in our organizations, homes, and personal lives.
In the book How to Be Like Walt, Pat Williams quotes Walt Disney as saying, “I think it’s good to have a good hard failure when you’re young.” Walt is remembered for his monumental successes and the tremendous mark he had on entertainment, and without a doubt, virtually all forms of contemporary entertainment for families have been influenced by him. However, what isn’t spoken of is that Walt had a string of failures throughout his life. Partially due to his visionary and unconventional approach to things, as well as trouble with financing and occasional bad luck, Walt had to start over many times; he had to learn how to rebound.
As we get things rolling in this New Year, we, too, have to learn to rebound when our shots miss the basket. Perhaps it was an open shot that we just froze up and missed. Maybe we were showing off and let our ego get the best of us, and the ball rims out. It could be that we lost focus and we throw an air ball. Regardless of how we fail, we must rebound. We can’t slow down to think about what caused the failure, or feel sorry for ourselves. We have to react quickly and get the ball back in our hands so that we can take another shot. Not even the elite basketball pros make every shot, and it’s the same for us as leaders of people. Sometimes we will shoot the lights out to the cheers of our team. However, sometimes we’ll have an off game and miss more shots than we make. Either way, we can’t let the times we miss keep us from taking the next shot, and most importantly, we have to rebound from our failures and stay in the game.
Lead well.