Issue: #6 - January 30, 2022

Good morning, welcome to the weekly Lead It Cool newsletter to prepare your for the week ahead. (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.)

My favorite view of January is always in the rearview mirror, so looking forward to February starting this week.

--Matthew

In this week's Lead It Cool newsletter:

• 🇯🇲Cool Runnings and the stages of team formation
• 😬Brené Brown and the Great Awkward
• 🏈Tom Brady: Preparation meets opportunity
• 😎Cool links

Cool Runnings🇯🇲

The 2022 Winter Olympics start in Beijing this Friday, so to celebrate in the existential dread excitement, let's review the best Olympics' inspired movie of all time: Cool Runnings.

Cool Runnings is a movie about team-building, and all the forming, storming, norming and performing that it entails. In the movie, three lone-wolf track competitors and an outlier join forces to accomplish an impossible task: create a Jamaican bobsled team that qualifies for the winter Olympics.

1. 🤝They Form: The leader of the team creates a vision of a wild and crazy goal, and this attracts the other three to join in achieving his goal.
2. ⚡️They Storm: Each team member has their own vulnerabilities, demons, expectations and weaknesses that get exposed and creates conflict. They embrace and encourage this conflict, recognizing that honesty is the road to comradery.
3. ⏭They Norm: They begin to accept each others' strengths and weaknesses, and also forgive each other for any harm they may have caused. They also stick up for each other in a Calgary bar fight against the evil East German Josef Grool.
4. 🎯They Perform: They embrace their true identify, and complete their journey to the cross the line.

The greatest moment of the film (spoiler alert) is at the end when the team crashes their rusty, old bobsled on the track, but still get back up and carry their bobsled across the finish line, thus winning the approval of everyone who was previously cheering against them (including the mean East German Josef Grool).

There is a great quote by Phil Knight from Shoe Dog that best summarizes the story of the Jamaican Bobsled Team and every other underdog story:

🏈Tom Brady - Retire? Maybe? No? What?

​Lots of buzz yesterday about whether Tom Brady was retiring.

My favorite anecdote from Brady's incredible career is that it only materialized because of an injury to another teammate. In 2001, the starting Patriot's quarterback at the time, Drew Bledsoe, got injured. As a result of the injury, Tom Brady went into the game as the back-up. He then went on to win seven Super Bowls.

Tom Brady didn't sit on the bench depressed that he wasn't playing. He was working his ass off preparing for the opportunity to show everyone what he could do.

The lesson this story teaches is that amazing things can happen when preparation intersects with opportunity. Just because you’re on the bench, doesn’t mean you should stop improving. 👊

😬The Great Awkward

Brené Brown's most recent podcast is worth a listen. She dives into what she calls the "Great Awkward", which is what we're all going to experience in 2022 as many of us return to the office and try to return to normal life.

Here's some great takeaways from the podcast:

• The proclamation that "working 100% remotely was successful for my business” is only telling half the story. Sure it may have worked for the business, but what about the impact that it's had on individuals? This won't truly be understood for a few years.
• The importance of circling-back on people when you notice something is off. "I noticed you were uncomfortable with something, how are things going?"
• Approach the awkwardness of the new unspoken rules. Are we going to shake hands? Are we allowed to ask about vaccines? What about masks? Is it ok if I drink my coffee close to you? There are a whole bunch of new social unspoken rules that we'll need to figure out together.
• The creative, strategic and innovative tensions of an in person whiteboard session cannot be duplicated virtually. Find ways to meet in person.

😎Cool Links

0 to VP in three years... ya ok. 🤣 Some good advice in this Twitter thread though:

Zain Kahn @heykahn The first years of your career are brutal. You're on your own and you have no clue what you're doing. I wish I had a guide back then ― so I made my own. And I went from 0 to VP in 3 years. Here are 11 principles to accelerate your career now: January 25th 2022 138 Retweets 677 Likes

🐍Kobe and Kanye: More! The anniversary of Kobe Bryant's death was this past week. This video of him and Kanye West is still an all time classic motivator.

🧐Nine simple habits that will improve your emotional intelligence. To be honest, none of these habits seem to be very simple. Nevertheless, they are pretty important in today's workplace.

📈This is a great article about how to actually work effectively and some of the myths that need to be debunked. "If you see me working, I'm not doing my job."

🤪I'd like to speak to your Ikea Manager​