Balloons or golf balls: An analogy for leaders

I love balloons.

Fill them with water and you have a weapon. Fill them with helium and you have an aircraft. Rub them on your head and you have a science experiment…or at least hair that stands on end!

Balloons are incredibly versatile, and generally easy to control. Fill one up with air, and no matter how hard you hit it, it’s easy to keep right in front of you. You can easily walk down a hallway bouncing a balloon between hands. Even if you bounce it a little to the left or right, you can make mid-course corrections with ease….the balloon just never gets very far from you.

Golf balls are decidedly less versatile. There are probably uses for them outside of golf, but in general, they are what they are…hard, white spheres meant to be hit with authority to a great distance. Somewhere on the box of golf balls you’ll probably see the word “control”, but anyone who plays the game knows this is a lie.

Some people I work with are like balloons. While they may be colorful and amusing, they generally stay pretty close. No matter how hard I try, they rarely get far from me….even if I want them to. When I set them off on a task, they are generally easy to reorient if they get slightly off to the side.

Others I work with are like golf balls. When I set them off on a task, I may never see them again. When I play golf, my ball often looks pretty good coming off the club face, but just as often I soon realize that a shot hit 1/16th of an inch offline at impact may end up in the woods or out of bounds when it stops rolling. So it is with these people.

Leading well requires that I know my people. Some need constant direction, and others need very clear direction at the start. It’s probably not a big deal when I’m leading balloons, but when I’m leading golf balls, I’d be wise to make sure I am skillfully setting them in the proper direction and trajectory to get the most out of their gifts, abilities and time. Doing so will keep me from losing them and having to find yet another new one.

Does this make sense to anyone but me??