Swing All the Way Through

From time to time, I’ve written about a situation involving one of my kids, and after observing something recently, it’s a huge metaphor for what every one of us does in our busy lives.

Emily plays softball, and it’s easy to see she loves it. Defensively, her glove meets the ball hit at nearly any angle in the outfield and she can come up with some great catches. Offensively, she’s fast. She’s a lefty and was taught to slap last year, so has added some nice things to her hitting repertoire. She’s somewhat short and is solid. Because of this, opposing teams don’t see her speed until they’ve just picked up the ball and she’s already at first base. It’s a fun thing to watch.

The past couple of weeks, she’s struggled with her hitting. The first good pitch gets fouled hard to the left side fence. So does the second. Then she jams up, gets nervous, and has been striking out. I see the quick motion and ball smashing into the fence. Her coach sees that she’s not swinging through, and is putting herself into her own tough situation. Every player knows they’re supposed to swing through, but it takes drills and repetition in many cases to make this action second-nature. It seems so obvious, but it takes someone else to call out the issue and help the player get things on track.

As professionals (outside of the sports arena), we are sometimes guilty of not swinging through. It could rob us of a better opportunity personally. Other times we’re letting our entire team down (our customers, our colleagues, our business partners, our families). It’s something that we all know how to do—and all feel we should do—but we can get caught in the habit of not doing so, and it can hold us back from better things.