I have written several times about the golf adventures of my youngest daughter and my reflections from serving as her caddie. It seems like years ago, but it was only February of this year, that I watched that kid struggle through a difficult round in cold blustery, wet conditions and saw myself struggling on how to provide guidance on a game that I have never been able to conquer. Well over the course of 6 one-day tournaments, we started to figure things out. Each week her scores improved and her confidence grew. She was able to learn from the mistakes and challenges from prior rounds and started getting a much better handle on the game. I was able to learn to know when to provide constructive criticism, when to give rosy over-optimistic encouragement and when to just shut up.
Her goal for this Spring was to shoot a tournament round of golf in the 40s for 9-holes. As she stepped onto the course for the final tournament of the local Spring tour, she had not met that goal. She had some challenges mid-way through the round including an errant tee shot that left her off to the right of the fairway and in a set of trees. As we approached that ball, she confidently said “just give me my 9-iron so I can punch it out there about 50 yards around this tree and set up a nice bump and run shot into the green.” In my mind, I was thinking, “wow, she is starting to understand this game, and when did she learn about bump and run shots?” Well she hit that 9-iron exactly as she planned and then hit a bump and run 3rd shot on to the green. I was impressed. She then proceeded to 6 putt (different story for a different blog) but even that did not rattle her for long.
As the round was nearing the end, my excitement for her was growing. With two holes left, it was apparent she had a chance to achieve her goal of shooting in the 40s and was also up by one stroke over the nearest player. I tried not to let on that she was in the lead nor that she was on pace for a 40 something score. While I am all for providing people with information on where they stand in business through the use of metrics, I figured that telling her where she stood in the round was not the best thing for her psyche at that exact moment. Much like you “shouldn’t count your money when you’re sitting at the table”, some golfers, especially young golfers, don’t need to be told they are hanging on to a slim 1-shot lead with two holes to play.
Well she did what she needed to do on hole 8 and when all she had left was a 6 inch tap-in on the final hole, I whispered to her that she was going to win her first tournament and that more importantly she, by one-stroke, was going to achieve her goal of shooting in the 40s. The hug and kiss after she finished that tap-in will be with me for a long time. While the LPGA is certainly not going to come knock on her door anytime soon and other players have posted lower winning scores on this tour, it was a sweet achievement for her.
There is a lesson in here for all of us. If you set a goal, focus yourself on achieving it, and trust in your ability to reach the goal, it can be done. You may very well experience set backs on your way to that goal, but those can be overcome.
This also reinforced that getting the best out of people takes different approaches – whether on the course, in the office or just in our everyday lives. There are situations that call for critical feedback – hopefully constructive in nature, because I think very few people respond well to negative feedback. And other situtations that call for that overly-optimistic (I call it the Mack Brown approach) encouragement. And even some situations where the best feedback is no feedback at all. It takes a mix of all three approaches to get the best out of people. As a manager, you have to learn how to use these different approaches based on the situation and the people involved.
So once again this golf thing is teaching me, and hopefully some of you, a lesson or two.
Robert Not Bob 