Hang Time

October 12, 2015

In my younger days, I rode horses. I competed in “eventing,” a triathalon over multiple days with a single equine partner. The total points accumulated from all three elements of a competition determine the horse and rider’s placing.

The first element, dressage, is a graceful ride with a choreographed sequence of movements in an enclosed ring, similar to the compulsories in figure skating. The next two elements are all about jumping fences. Cross country requires horse and rider to be in excellent shape and have a bold attitude in tackling a course over a long outdoor circuit consisting of 15 to 20 solidly built natural obstacles including logs, stone walls, ditches, bank drops and water obstacles – all of which must be successfully completed within an optimum time.

Closing out the triathlon is stadium jumping. This element brings horse and rider back into an enclosed arena with 12 to 20 fences built with fall-away rails. Also timed, this element tests the technical jumping skills of both the horse and rider with tight turns and momentary adjustments required in the horse’s length of stride.

While some people spend their time on the golf course, skiing, playing tennis, running and all sorts of other outdoor activities, during that time in my life you could find me at the barn winter and summer training for these challenging competitions. In addition to becoming a pretty good rider, those years of training taught me some things about leading.

While many of the training hours spent were in fitness training and developing strong “on the ground” riding skills, my equine partner and I also jumped a lot of fences – tall ones, wide ones, coming into a fence off of a challenging turn, riding combinations of multiple fences in a row, landing and evaluating exactly how many strides before the next fence and adding water challenges and colorful rails to our practice jumps. As we competed, we would travel by car and trailer to different venues to remove the “newness” factor for the competitions. We also drafted friends to come and watch us train and be a noisy crowd so as to prepare for distractions that might occur during our competition rides.

Even with all that training, all those hours in the saddle working to get the fence jumping right — regardless of how many hours we put in, one thing out of my control was what happened in the air over the fence. During competition I had to rely on my equine partner remembering all we had practiced. All I could do was get my horse to the base of the fence – usually correcting him with a little leg pressure on the right side as he tended drift that direction. And once airborne, I relied on him during those seconds it took for him to get up and over and land on the other side. Hang time. Trust time. Sure, once landed I gathered up my reins and made the necessary adjustments before we arrived at the next fence. But then, there it was again, more hang time and more trust.

Successful managers often achieve their positions because of their ability to watch every detail in their operations and make the course corrections that are needed along the way. Leaders know that when you rely on colleagues, staff and contractors it’s not always you making the course corrections. There’s lots of hang time, lots of “letting go” time when others are moving the work forward – getting you and your organization to the other side of the fence. It’s all about how you prepare for that hang time – training, building trust between you and your colleagues and team, learning what strengths you can always rely on and where you might need to add a little extra support – a little extra right leg pressure.

I’m sure most of us experience lots of “hang time” in the work we do. How we prepare for for that moment of trust says a lot about our leadership.

Jama Rice is the Executive Director and CEO of MSA