“I think we might have found a way to justify playing 18 holes of golf!”, said Chris Brown, President and owner of Wiedenbach Brown, a lighting distribution company at their annual golf event at the Wykagyl Golf Club in New Rochelle, NY.

When Chris heard about our new book, “What’s your lie? Honest leadership from the game of golf”, he was excited at the possibilities of using the book and its concepts of drawing parallels of business and golf practices with his company and clients. Due out in January, ‘What’s your lie? Honest Leadership from the game of golf’ looks at the similarities of what great golfers do on the golf course and what great leaders and managers do in the office. For him, it was a way for his sales force, vendors and customers to come together and have fun playing golf and, have the opportunity to work on their leadership skills!

Each year Wiedenbach Brown, one of MetaSystem’s family of clients, brings its family of employees, vendors and customers to meet each other in person, and enjoy a day of golf. This year participants were given the opportunity to look at their golf game from a different perspective. While playing their regular game, they were asked to consider such things as:

• Forecasting — How did you come up with your forecast score? Is this a priority for you or simply on your to do list?
• Tee shot — What do you really aim at? Do you just get out and do it?
• Course management — Do you have a strategy for the entire game? What are your criteria? The best or easiest? Or do you just play each shot as it comes?
• How do you play your short game? — Do you have a plan here, or do you just rush toward the end without taking the time to evaluate the necessary steps to be fully successful?
• Bad shot management—How do you problem solve? Just get rid of it? Or do you stop and consider the best option, even if that means going back out the way you came in!
• Collaboration—Although this was not a team event, there were individual and team forecasted scores. Therefore, players were asked to consider if they played only for themselves or for their foursome, too.

After considering the points above, participants shared how their approach to the game might be similar to how they do business — perhaps the most unusual perspective to their golf game of all! A good time was had by all during the discussions at the clubhouse after the game. Although it was a new concept for most, they embraced it with open arms. People were fascinated by the accuracy of some of the parallels for them.

So what will these folks do with this new insight? Because this was an informal event and not a leadership workshop, there were no next steps and progress assessments set for the future. We will have to rely on Chris Brown to keep us informed. However, Chris and MetaSystem are now looking at how to incorporate golf and leadership in the development of Weidenbach Brown, and its sales initiatives in the future. We will keep you informed. See you on the green!