Five lessons on excellence, leadership, calling, resilience and becoming who you were created to be
Recently, my mentee through Leadership Atlanta and LEAD Atlanta, Elonte’ Porter, asked me five questions about leadership.
They were good questions. The kind that make you stop and examine not just what you believe, but how you became the person who believes it.
At 50 years old, I can look back on my life as a professional baseball player, coach, counselor, entrepreneur, nonprofit leader, husband, father and follower of Christ and recognize that some of my greatest lessons came from learning what not to do.
Here are five lessons I’ve learned.
- Excellence Does Not Mean Giving 110% to Everything
I define excellence as meeting expectations.
Extraordinary is going above and beyond expectations.
There is nothing wrong with being extraordinary. But extraordinary should be intentional, not automatic.
For much of my life, especially from my teenage years through my early 30s, I thought I had to go above and beyond in everything. I had been taught that doing more meant caring more, working harder and being better.
I don’t believe that anymore.
Today, when I enter a situation, one of my first questions is:
What is expected of me?
If the expectation is clear and I have the capacity, resources and tools to meet it, then my responsibility is to execute with excellence.
My desire to constantly be extraordinary can come from two dangerous places: ignorance or arrogance.
Ignorance means I don’t know what I don’t know. I may be giving more than necessary simply because I never understood what was actually required.
Arrogance is overconfidence. It tells me I always need to do more, prove more and carry more.
Both can leave you exhausted.
You can spend your life giving people things they never asked for while neglecting the people and purposes that actually require your best.
At 50, I want to live a long life. More importantly, I want to be alive.
There is a difference.
Living means I’m breathing. Being alive means I’m living on purpose.
- Legacy Is What You Leave in Others
I believe legacy is what you leave in others.
When my leadership journey is complete, I don’t want the primary measurement to be what I built, how much money I raised or how many titles I held.
I want to know: Who became better equipped to lead because I lived?
Here in Atlanta, I don’t believe we will truly become a world-class city until hundreds of thousands of Black people are living sustainable lives of significance.
That requires leaders.
I want to develop a legion of policymakers who can shape policies that create greater opportunities for people to thrive.
I want to develop a legion of financially successful people who understand how to turn their success into service and significance.
My personal brand statement is to:
Develop people through sports, leadership and service, turning their success into significance and their potential into purpose.
I’ve helped develop several leaders.
But several isn’t a legion.
So my work isn’t finished.
- Just Because You Can Do It Doesn’t Mean You’re Called to Do It
One of the hardest things to understand is the difference between something you’re capable of doing and something you’re called to do.
For me, professional baseball is one of the clearest examples.
Playing professional baseball was my childhood dream. I achieved it. I played in the Chicago Cubs organization.
At the time, I thought I loved baseball.
Looking back, I realized that much of what I loved was what I believed baseball could give me: recognition, fame and fortune.
I didn’t love the work enough.
When things became difficult, I wasn’t willing to consistently make the sacrifices required to become great.
Today, I see something completely different in myself.
I love coaching.
I love counseling.
I have become a marathon finisher, and after completing the Atlanta Marathon in 2026, I am training for the 2027 Boston Marathon.
For these things, I am willing to prepare. I’m willing to study. I’m willing to be disciplined. I’m willing to sacrifice.
That willingness teaches me something about calling.
As a follower of Christ, I also look for the evidence described in Galatians 5:22–23:
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
When those things are being produced in my life, I pay attention.
I’ve learned:
Ability tells me what I can do. Calling helps me understand what is mine to do.
- Resilience Doesn’t Always Mean Keep Going
Many of us are taught from an early age to keep going no matter what.
That’s especially true when you grow up in environments where survival requires toughness.
But I’ve learned that continuing isn’t always the healthiest or wisest response.
I distinguish between perseverance and resilience this way:
Perseverance is rebounding and overcoming stress and challenges. Resilience is the ability to keep going.
But before I keep going, I need to know whether I’m going in the right direction.
One exercise I use to understand my calling is answering four questions for at least 40 days:
- What do I worry about?
- What do I cry about?
- What do I dream about?
- What brings me joy?
Over time, patterns emerge.
I also use four lists:
Can Do.
Can’t Do.
Will Do.
Won’t Do.
Those four categories have become important because ability and responsibility are not the same thing.
Just because I can do something doesn’t mean I will do it.
And just because something is difficult doesn’t mean I’m supposed to quit.
There is another signal I pay close attention to:
Am I hurting people?
Hurting people hurt people.
When my stress, frustration, exhaustion or unresolved pain begins spilling onto others, that’s a signal that I may need to stop pushing and start dealing with what I’m carrying.
Sometimes strength is continuing.
Sometimes strength is stopping.
Wisdom is knowing the difference.
- Adaptability Is Different From Code-Switching
Building L.E.A.D. Center For Youth has required me to change.
When we started, our budget was around $60,000. We eventually grew into a multimillion-dollar organization, and now we’re preparing for an even larger capital campaign and the next chapter of our work.
But the biggest transformation hasn’t only been financial.
It has been personal.
Early in my leadership journey, my default was often code-switching.
Code-switching was a survival tactic.
Over time, I developed something different: adaptability.
Adaptability is knowing how to respond when there is uncertainty without abandoning who I am.
That distinction matters.
There is a difference between changing yourself so a room will accept you and developing the skills necessary to effectively lead in that room.
My Leadership Atlanta experience was transformational for me.
I entered the program in 2014 and graduated with the Class of 2015. It was one of the first environments where I truly became comfortable being an openly Black man in significant leadership spaces.
That experience changed how I lead.
Today, as we develop boys through baseball and girls through tennis at L.E.A.D., I want them prepared to enter the world with the skills to adapt without believing they have to surrender themselves to belong.
I define development as:
The deliberate effort to value and empower learners to obtain personal mastery and excellence through nurturing training.
That’s the work.
What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
L.E.A.D. started around $60,000 and has grown into a multimillion-dollar organization.
What got us here won’t get us there.
The same is true personally.
The survival tactics that helped you through one season may prevent you from thriving in the next.
The ambition that made you successful may eventually exhaust you.
The thing you’re good at may not be the thing you’re called to do.
The resilience that taught you to keep going may eventually need to mature into the wisdom to know when to stop.
And the version of excellence that required you to prove yourself may need to become the discipline of simply understanding the expectation and meeting it.
I’m still learning.
I’m still developing.
I’m still following Christ and trying to live according to the example He set through purpose, conviction, service and sacrifice.
But at 50, one thing has become increasingly clear:
I don’t want to spend the rest of my life simply proving that I can do more.
I want to do what I’m called to do.
I don’t just want success. I want significance.
I don’t just want to breathe.
I want to be alive.
Four Questions for You
For the next 40 days, ask yourself:
What do I worry about?
What do I cry about?
What do I dream about?
What brings me joy?
Don’t rush to answer them once.
Pay attention to the patterns.
They may tell you something about the life you’re capable of living — and the life you’re actually called to live.