I recently read the article by executive search consultant James M. Citrin The Dynamic Pathwhich promises “access [to] the champions’ secrets to achieving greatness through mental toughness, inspired leadership, and personal transformation.” In summary, the book examines the paths followed by numerous sports champions to find the common thread that allowed them to progress through the four stages of success that Citrin has identified: individual, champion, leader, and legacy.

Citrin’s first lesson is as follows:

Talent and hard work are a good start… To achieve greatness requires something more, something subtle. It demands the acquisition and application common to those who excel in sports, business, or any other activity: mental strength and the ability to remain calm and collected in great moments.

Citrin argues that developing an individual into the champion, leader, and legacy stages of the Dynamic Path requires skills that peak at certain points on that path: natural talent/intelligence, work ethic/dedication, and mental toughness/question-solving. problems peak at the Champion. level, for those at the height of their individual achievements. Leadership of people, which has developed along the way, reaches its peak in the Leader stage, along with the development of moral/spiritual leadership, so that the individual seeks collective achievement for collective results: excellence. of the group. Moral/spiritual leadership continues to grow until it reaches its culmination in the Legacy phase, in which collective achievement creates lasting results that will have lasting impact.

Examples of those who have achieved Legacy status include Bill Bradley, who has achieved numerous athletic victories as well as intellectual success as a Rhodes Scholar, complemented by the lasting achievements of his service as a Senator. Citrin also highlights Arnold Palmer (the golfer who used his individual success to establish health care complexes, create the PGA Tour, and develop the Golf Channel), Arthur Ashe (the tennis player who became the first African-American man to win the US Open and winning a Grand Slam among numerous other titles, then co-founded the US National Junior Tennis League and worked to end racism and poverty before his untimely death from HIV he contracted during a blood transfusion), and Lance Armstrong (the cancer survivor and seven-time Tour de France winner who now seeks to eradicate cancer). Citrin provides stories of many other individuals, well known and less, who illustrate the path he describes.

I enjoyed reading this book because it distinguishes what makes a good leader, one for a season, from what allows a good leader to create a legacy, one for a time. The book is an easy read, and it’s interesting (at least for this sports fan) to learn a bit more about what some sports figures have achieved after their sports careers. The book is an interesting, sometimes a bit jarring mix of personal sketches and attempts to show how sports lessons can be translated into personal lessons. Citrin inserts his own perspective throughout the book, which at times reads more like a journal than a teach-in.

One conclusion that remains with me is that the rise of team sports for boys, and especially girls, is likely to be of significant benefit to new generations of aspiring leaders. Citrin has made an excellent case for the lessons sports can deliver, and is a good reminder that all those hours of soccer practice can pay off in later years, though it would be a stretch to say that The Dynamic Path it will provide a roadmap for transforming those lessons into business leadership skills.