The Ride of a Lifetime - Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

KNOW WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW (AND TRUST IN WHAT YOU DO) 

Iger, throughout this Chapter, wants to emphasise that self-awareness is key to leadership. He would sometimes put pressure on himself that the management of the company would expect a lot from him and his inexperience for the position couldn't be an excuse for not delivering. Nonetheless, as he makes clear: “The first rule is not to fake anything. You have to be humble, and you can’t pretend to be someone you’re not or to know something you don’t. You’re also in a position of leadership, though, so you can’t let humility prevent you from leading. It’s a fine line” and hence, a leader must find the right balance between the two.  Again, he also puts it best in the following passage: “You have to ask the questions you need to ask, admit without apology what you don’t understand, and do the work to learn what you need to learn as quickly as you can.” A team will ultimately be demotivated when their leader is faking knowledge he/she does not have. Respect and admiration to the leader comes when the leader is genuinely himself/herself at all times. 

Subsequently, the author also points out that the right balance must also be achieved when the leader deals with a creative project, since he/she must allow his/hers subordinates to exercise their creativity without the project implementing financial severity. Empathy and respect, therefore, are vital in such circumstances. 

Finally, Iger rightly emphasises that during his professional career, he would always prefer trying something and failing, rather than not trying at all. Accordingly, he continued to assert that he didn’t regret trying anything , since he “didn’t want to be in the business of playing it safe.” Iger “wanted to be in the business of creating possibilities for greatness." As he makes crystal clear: "Of all the lessons I learned in that first year running prime time, the need to be comfortable with failure was the most profound. Not with lack of effort but with the unavoidable truth that if you want innovation—and you should, always—you need to give permission to fail.”

As one of the greatest hockey players of all time, Wayne Gretzky, pointed out: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”