As a high school and collegiate sports official, I’ve learned that there is one thing more important than all others in getting my calls on the field and on the court correct.
Angle––and the optimal angle is crucial in other aspects of life. Including the workplace.
It’s easy to explain angle to anyone who has seen televised replays of close calls. Take for example a football game where a player’s knee may or may not be down before he fumbles the ball. There are often three or more camera angles on the play. The first two angles may be inconclusive, or even make me certain of something that is flat-out false. Only when the best angle is shown is the truth revealed.
I once watched a slow-motion video of President George W. Bush shaking hands in a crowd. After shaking one man’s hand, the wristwatch the president was wearing on his right wrist disappeared. A second camera angle left me certain that the president’s watch had been stolen. Only a third camera angle revealed that President Bush removed his own watch and left-handed it backward to a Secret Service agent while continuing to shake hands with his right. Had that third angle not existed, an innocent man might have gone down as a presidential watch thief.
Good referees and umpires are always moving their feet to secure angle. Angle is more important than distance. Being close to a play is better than being afar, but one official can have his nose on the ball and get it wrong while another can get it right from forty yards away––with the right angle.
Poor angles in our business life leave us believing falsehoods. Or, as Mark Twain said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Twain must have lost a bar bet or two.
Surveys say that eighty percent of us think we are above-average drivers and 80 percent believe we are more moral than the average person. Many of us are obviously wrong. I’ve been certain of things that ain’t so. I’ve been in meetings with colleagues who see things from a different angle, a foreign angle to me, but often a better angle.
Sports officials say that the game slows down for them the more experience they gain. They begin to see more in the split second they have and make correct calls that beginners miss. For me, experience has helped slow down the game of leadership. It gives me the tools and experience to maneuver for better angles. Getting the perfect angle remains elusive. It won’t happen in my lifetime. Somebody once asked Chinese leader Zhou Enlai what he thought of the French Revolution. He said, “it’s too early to tell.” To obtain the right angle on history, or on one’s career, takes a very long time.
I believe that my higher power is in a dimension that gives Him a better angle. I live in a two-dimensional word of circles and squares, but my higher power lives where He sees cylinders and cubes that I can’t fathom. God has the right perspective, the angles that can make the right call. He helps me see past things that just ain’t so.
Del Leonard Jones, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, authored the historical novel, The Cremation of Sam McGee built upon the poem of Robert W. Service. The novel is set in the 1898 heyday of yellow journalism and travels from Cuba to the Yukon. The narrator is a fabricating newspaper reporter working for William Randolph Hearst during the Spanish-American War and Gold Rush. The first chapter is here.
Jones, a leadership expert, has also edited Advice from the Top: 1001 Bits of Business Wisdom. The book focuses on the leadership advice of Fortune 500 CEO's such as Fred Smith of FedEx, but also gets advice from athletes, coaches, entertainers and experts.
