On May 26, 1993, Jose Canseco was playing rightfield for the Texas Rangers when another homerun left the field. Jose was a power hitting star for the Oakland Athletics when he broke into the major leagues in 1985.
Jose won rookie of the year in 1986, he became the first 40/40 player in major league history. 40 home runs and 40 stolen bases in the same season. Jose won Most Valuable Player award in 1988 leading the league with 42 home runs and 124 runs batted in. Jose was a masher. He was a character as well. Perhaps characticure is more appropriate.
Regardless, on May 26, 1993 Jose was playing right field when another homerun left the park. Carlos Martinez, of the Cleveland Indians, lifted a lazy fly ball to right field. Jose camped under the fly just inside the warning track, about 380 feet from home plate. Jose went to make the catch but missed entirely. The ball, however, did not miss him. The ball plunked Jose on the top of his head and ricocheted into the stands for a home run? The ball bounced off Jose’s noggin into the visitor’s bullpen for the most unusual homerun I have ever seen.
The visiting team’s bullpen was in uproarious laughter. How can you not laugh? The Bad News Bears didn’t script a ball off the head homerun in their antics. Maybe no one ever thought of it.
The only though that crossed my mind was – if a guy can bat for average, power and has speed like Jose and played defense like that, why would he even own a glove?
Welcome to Swimming in the Flood; a podcast where we develop the resilient leader’s mindset by navigating difficult currents in business. My name is Trent Theroux.
My 6th grade teacher, Miss Wood, would gather her students in a circle at the beginning of each day to read a story. My favorite that year was Watership Down, a story about a band of rabbits moving across a large farm to find a safer place to live. It’s a lively adventure told through the eyes of a rabbit.
In the evenings, the rabbits tell stories to pass the times mostly about the folk hero of rabbits El-ahrairah who is the ultimate trickster. In one story El-ahrairah is bragging to God about how rabbits are the most important creature because they trim all the grass and make many babies to worship him. God did not like the snarky response and wanted to subtly punish El-ahrairah. God told all the creatures in the world that he was going to bestow a unique strength to each creature. Rather than tell them all at once, he would speak with different groups at different times.
El-ahrairah was on his way to meet God when a crow flew overhead. The crow crowed that the rabbit was in trouble. God gave the weasels and foxes great hunting strengths and a taste for rabbit meat. El-ahrairah felt as good as dead. He scampered about and started digging a hole to escape the weasels and foxes. Shortly after, God came by calling, “El-ahrairah? El-ahrairah? Where are you?” “There’s no El-ahrairah here.” Replied the rabbit. God looked down and saw the tiny rabbit half buried in the hole with his bottom sticking out. God said, “You will have a thousand enemies. But I have a gift for you.” With that, God blessed his bottom with a bigger, stronger legs. “My gift to you is that your enemies will have to catch you first.”
For anyone who has watched a rabbit you can see their strengths. At the slightest sense of danger, rabbits can rapidly accelerate and hop away from trouble. It’s a great strength that they use to their advantage. Now, this may be a very simple concept. Rabbits run away from trouble. They use the gift they are given to survive.
Gifts come in many forms. Are you might be surprised at how many people do not use their gifts. They squander their gifts. We all can probably tell horror stories about those folks. But what about the people who do not know what their gifts are? How can we achieve in we don’t know our gifts, or the gifts in our teammates? How can we maximize our talents.
I am now going to give you my unscientific, non-peer reviewed, resilient leader theory on Talent Philosophy. Are you ready? Got your pencils out? Here’s it is. Succeed With Strengths. You heard it. Succeed With Strengths.
Marc Effron, of the Talent Strategy Group, writes. The foundation of successful talent management doesn’t lie with your strategy, practices, or technology. It’s created when your executive team agrees on how best to manage talent to achieve your business strategy.
Effron is saying that before we get down to strategy, we need to put the right players in the right place. And right field is not the right place for Jose Canseco. We are misusing his talents by having him play defense.
The challenge we face in putting players in the right spot is understanding what their strengths are. Fortunately, there are a plethora of tools that can help with this assessment; Gallup’s Clifton Strengths assessment, the Herrmann HBDI assessment, and the DiSC model, to name a few.
The assessments ask you a series of questions that hone in on certain personality traits. As you provide more responses the assessment fine tunes its questions to home in on your particular strengths…and weaknesses.
I took the DiSC assessment in September 2021 and the results were relatively close to my expectations. Here are some quotes: “Trent, you probably enjoy relating to other people.” Check mark. “When communicating you tend to be expressive and may dial up your volume and gestures to get people’s attention.” Double check mark. “At times, your somewhat talkative nature may cause you to monopolize conversations, particularly with those who are softer spoken.” Sad check mark. “You maintain your enthusiasm and drive under time pressure.” Super big check mark.
The power of the tool is learning about how individuals interact with the strengths of others. I am classified as Influence. The other three are classified as Dominance, Steadiness and Conscientiousness. The names aren’t as important as their strengths. Don’t go thinking “I want to be dominance” like when you’re playing Monopoly, “I want to be the battleship.” You are what you are.
Here is what’s interesting to me about these assessments. My management team took these as well. And, my three most senior managers are…can you guess? Are they Dominance, Steadiness or Conscientiousness? The answer is that I have one of each on my team. One registers as Dominance, one as Steadiness and one as Conscientiousness. The results of the assessment validated what I kinda knew about my team. We mesh well together because we each encompass strengths that the others lack.
The value of the assessments for Developing Resilient Leaders is knowing your strengths and then you can create teams that support you. I’m going to give you this small homework assignment. Find and take one of these strengths’ tests. It will cost you a few dollars. Make the investment in yourself. Take one of the assessments and see if you think it’s accurate. David Liddell, the proctor for our assessment learning, said, “If you don’t think the assessment is right, take it home to your spouse. They will validate that it’s right.”
Then use your strengths to succeed with teams. Build your teams to supplement characteristics that are not natural for you. Succeed by knowing what your team needs to win.
If I was the general manager of the Texas Rangers in the 1990s I would have assessed Jose Canseco’s strengths and told him not to bring a glove to the game. You are our new designated hitter.
Folks, thank you for listening to Swimming in the Flood. Resilient leaders face challenging currents, and it is tough navigating, but with one tack or another we can get there together.