Be a player

April 2024

Her wisdom on leadership rolled of the tongue, I couldn’t stop listening. Claire Hughes Johnson was riffing on personal responsibility and mentioned Fred Kofman, in particular his victim vs. player mindset: does the world happen to you, or do you have agency? Are you a player? I liked the framing, and it felt familiar.

But of course I thought: the Stoics and “victimhood.” Alfred Adler took that further with his teleology, laying the foundation for Dale Carnegie and all the rest. It was Jim Rohn with his pithy wisdom that sparked me as a teen, and I liked his analogy of skippering a boat:

“It is the set of the sails, not the direction of the wind that determines which way we will go.” — Jim Rohn

Find your sphere of influence, and own it. Be a player.