Description
Featuring a wealth of information, guidance, and motivation, Karen R. Blake’s Lessons from the Sidelines is a bite-sized guide to (noticeably) performing and excelling in both the personal and professional spheres. Starting from the hypothesis that “The main reason that adults want their children to participate in organize sports is to teach some of the lessons of character that they will carry with them into adulthood,” Blake leverages her experience as the mother of two boys who participated in organized sports throughout their childhood to provide tips and tricks for succeeding in all facets of life.
On the basis that most lessons in life are best learned through experience—“teamwork, self-sacrifice, working to achieve a goal, persistence, learning when to lead and when to follow, be prepared, and follow through”—Blake structures Lessons from the Sidelines around ten brief lessons that reflect the behaviors and mindsets most likely to help a person achieve their aims, whether at work, at home, or in the wider world. Drawn from her observations of the goals, challenges, and benefits encountered by her and her children during their sporting endeavors, these lessons have both theoretical and practical application.
For example, Lesson 7 is titled “Always do your best with no expectations. Do your best and when magic happens, buy the T-shirt.” The starting point here is that life has no guarantees, although certain behaviors and values are highly likely to bring about positive outcomes, meaning that a person who wants to succeed in life should implement such practices and habits to give themselves the greatest likelihood of favorable results. Blake emphasizes that living a good/positive life and faithfully pursuing all opportunities is the key, and the success that follows is just the icing on the cake.
This lesson is particularly valuable because it highlights the importance of effort, commitment, and motivation on the road to achieving goals. The idea is to be the best person it is possible to be, which will of course differ for different people, with the extrinsic rewards that follow being less valuable than the intrinsic benefits of doing the right thing and always following through on commitments. This lesson is also particularly useful because it includes a relatively lengthy example of the idea in practice in relation to a lacrosse team’s unexpected but highly appreciated/celebrated success.
Only a couple of other lessons similarly include examples, and they are much shorter than the example in Lesson 7. In the main, each lesson begins with a concise description of the teaching point that Blake wants to convey—whether maintaining perspective, following through with commitments, making the first move, etc.—and then offers suggestions for its real-world application in the business context. As the book is so short, it would have been good if all the lessons included a lengthy practical example, perhaps even examples or perspectives featuring other people.
Still, Lessons from the Sidelines packs in a host of easily digestible ideas and approaches for practical ways to leverage common sense lessons from daily life, particularly the arena of sports, to achieve success and contentment in working life. In particular, Blake strikes a good balance between means of ensuring success—or “winning” in business—and ways of becoming a well-rounded person, such as investigating all talents, volunteering to help however possible, and being a lifelong learner. Her friendly and accessible advice is applicable to all people and all walks of life.