My biggest leadership lesson this year
(republished with permission from the author)
One of the biggest leadership lessons I’ve seen this year didn’t happen in business.
It happened watching my 17-year-old son play cricket.
At the start of 2025 he set himself four big goals:
Make the Central Districts Under-17 cricket team
Be a Top 10 wicket taker in the local Premier competition
Prove he had real ability with the bat
Pass Year 12 with Merit endorsement
Big goals.
But the real story of the season wasn’t the goals.
It was the adversity.
For the past couple of seasons the environment around his club team has been challenging. Encouragement wasn’t always there and the culture at times made things difficult.
It would have been easy to lose confidence.
Easy to give up.
But something interesting happened instead.
Because he had clear goals, he stayed focused on what he could control.
He trained harder.
He kept performing week in and week out.
And when encouragement wasn’t coming from inside the environment, he looked elsewhere for support.
He found coaches and mentors who genuinely cared about helping him improve.
People who believed in him.
That decision made a huge difference.
There’s a mindset concept I love called OAR vs BED.
Great leaders live in OAR
Ownership
Accountability
Responsibility
Poor leadership lives in BED
Blame
Excuses
Denial
The environments that succeed - in sport or business - are the ones where leaders operate above the line.
Then something really interesting happened.
When he was selected for the Central Districts Under-17 representative team, everything changed.
The culture was completely different.
Players supported each other. Coaches encouraged development. The team had genuine unity.
You could see the difference immediately.
Confidence grew. Enjoyment returned. Performance lifted.
It was a powerful reminder of something we see in business every day:
Environment matters.
Culture matters.
Leadership matters.
When people feel supported, believed in and guided in the right direction, they perform at a completely different level.
This is exactly what we try to do for business owners at Go Accounting here in Nelson.
Through business planning, profit improvement meetings, and business coaching, we work alongside business owners to help them set clear goals, stay accountable and build stronger businesses.
Sometimes what business owners need most isn’t just numbers.
They need someone positive in their corner.
Someone who believes in them.
Someone who challenges them.
Someone who helps them stay focused on the goals they set.
Just like good coaches do in sport.
Sometimes success isn’t about having the perfect environment.
Sometimes it’s about having the resilience to keep going until you find the right one.
As a dad, I couldn’t be prouder of the resilience he showed this season.
A great reminder for all of us:
Set clear goals.
Stay above the line.
Find the right people in your corner.
Great things can happen from there.