Our local AYSO soccer league designates one game each season as Silent Saturday, where they ask the parents and the coaches not to shout at the players during the game.

No instructions about what play to run. No encouragement when they excel or coaching when we perceive that they fail.

For that one Saturday, the kids just get to play their game. They learn to trust their own skills and encourage one another without any help from the sidelines. Without the cheers or groans from the crowd they get to evaluate their own performance.

Who’s shouting at you from the sidelines?

Leaders in any field often have a lot of “voices from the sidelines.”

Those voices could be one’s we’ve welcomed; paid advisors, mentors, or friends. They could be smart people we met on the internet, whose emails we signed up for 😉

It’s worth asking, are these voices from the sidelines making it easier for you to make decisions? Is your vision for where you are going more clear with all that input?

What would it be like to turn it all off for a while? Don’t read any emails or look at LinkedIn or Twitter.

What would that do for your confidence and clarity?