"Am I supposed to be the little girl?"
I missed this the first time I watched Ted Lasso
The all new Drawn to Lead launches on August 8th. I will be announcing the first 3 books in the series next week! See what’s coming next.
I am rewatching Ted Lasso for the fourth(?) time and came across a storyline that I had completely missed in previous viewings. It’s an important leadership lesson that happens pretty early in the series that I somehow overlooked until now. Which is strange because it is the exact same lesson that has shaped my new direction for Drawn to Lead this fall.
If you don’t know anything about Ted Lasso, here is the shortest exposition I can give. Lasso, an American college football coach, is hired to coach a English football program (ie. soccer). He knows nothing about the sport and honestly gets the job because the current owner is trying to ruin the team. Nobody thinks Lasso will succeed. Not even him. He even admits to a local journalist that he doesn’t really care about winning. He just loves to coach and help other people. (I 100% aspire to be Ted Lasso btw.)
Ted’s coaching approach is unorthodox, to say the least, which doesn’t help initially to get the team behind him as their coach. He doesn’t come in with a heavy hand and force the team to bend to his will. Instead, he first seeks out the key players that are leading the team today. And, he finds two. Jamie, the best player who is also a conceited jerk. And Roy, the aging super star who is distant and angry, but also very influential. He starts to work on both of these guys because he knows if he can get them on board, the team will follow.
One day as the guys are coming back from practice, Lasso announces they all have presents in their lockers. Each player finds a package wrapped in brown paper. Once unwrapped, they find that they have all been gifted a different book and zero explanation why. Jamie immediately throws his in the trash while Roy looks at his book, A Wrinkle in Time, with a mix of frustration and distrust. Roy later confronts Lasso about the gift asking him what the book is even about. He’s told it is about ‘a charming girl that is wrestling with the weight of leadership on a journey through space.’ To which Roy responds, ‘Am I supposed to be the little girl?’ The scene ends without a response from Lasso.
That night Roy is reading the book to his niece and comes across the line by the main character who states ‘…it has to be me. Can’t be anyone else.’ And he immediately realizes, much to his chagrin, the reason why Lasso gave him this book. Much like the character in the story, if his team is going to win, it’s up to him to step up and lead. The funny thing is, he knew this is what needed to be done all along. He just didn’t want to. And it’s this simple realization that really kicks off Roy’s story arc and sets him on a path of redemption and leadership.
As I watched this episode with my son, I asked him why he thought Lasso gave him the book instead of just telling him. My son thought for a minute and then said, ‘he wanted him to be able to figure it out on his own.’ Bingo. The book was able to show Roy something that he wouldn’t have been able to hear if it had simply been told to him by Lasso. It’s one of the most powerful things that books can do…they can show us things about ourselves that for some reason we can’t hear no matter how many times we are told. Because there are just some things we have to discover on our own.
That’s why I am so excited to walk through these 12 books over the next season with you. Not that they have all the answers, but I truly believe they will be a conduit for you to see truths about yourself that you might not recognize if I just said them to you. Now, this reading list is not going to be the most orthodox ‘leadership list’. Some will be top sellers and some aren’t. But, I have hand selected each book because of the way it is able to illustrate foundational leadership principles. And as you read them for the first (or fifth) time, I hope that you see a new truth to help you in your journey.
More to come.
Kacy
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