Courage, truth and brav­ery. Striv­ing to be re­al, not per­fect. Choos­ing to be vo­cal about your be­lief even if not every­one will agree. It's not be­ing in­tim­i­dat­ed by the lack of sup­port from your peers. Speak­ing up and not be­ing afraid to ruf­fle feath­ers. Fac­ing your fears with un­yield­ing faith.

One ben­e­fit of my long years of in­volve­ment in sport is a de­vel­oped un­der­stand­ing of hu­man be­hav­iour. Win­ning brings you to­geth­er but it al­so can tear you apart. Ei­ther be­cause of hubris, self-sat­is­fac­tion or com­pla­cen­cy, the jour­ney to vic­to­ry can be a uni­fy­ing force, es­pe­cial­ly if it's a mat­ter of de­fy­ing the odds or go­ing against the odds, turn­ing pain in­to pur­pose.

By tak­ing the road less trav­elled, you can find your­self and your true pur­pose in un­ex­pect­ed places. In­volve­ment in sports can build the abil­i­ty to con­nect with peo­ple on a deep­er lev­el. You learn to en­gage with peo­ple around you, stay in a state of cu­rios­i­ty, learn every­thing you can, see the big pic­ture and the roles of peo­ple. But it's im­por­tant not to lose con­nec­tion with your pur­pose. Em­brace the op­por­tu­ni­ty.

As a leader - even a leader of a team of one - how will you be your ab­solute best? How will you show up and ex­cel? How do you at­tain your full po­ten­tial? How do you avoid hubris?

What sparked these thoughts? A few things. The 2023 Rug­by World Cup quar­ter­fi­nals, Trinidad and To­ba­go's 3-2 win over Guatemala, Dis­ney's em­brace of sport gam­bling via ES­PN and my du­ties as a mem­ber of the Pan Am Sports Tech­ni­cal Com­mis­sion at the Pan Am Games San­ti­a­go 2023 in Chile.

An­gus Eve has faced sig­nif­i­cant crit­i­cism dur­ing his tenure as na­tion­al coach but he has backed his vi­sion, con­vic­tions and phi­los­o­phy. The same can be said for the win­ning teams and coach­es who made it to the Rug­by World Cup semi­fi­nals in Paris, France. Who would have ever thought that Dis­ney's whole­some fam­i­ly en­ter­tain­ment brand po­si­tion­ing would have one day em­braced sport bet­ting? That de­ci­sion sure­ly de­fies the odds re­gard­less of what you may think of Dis­ney's de­ci­sion.

The de­ci­sion made by the Chile Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee to bid to host the Games and the de­ci­sion of Pan Am Sports to award San­ti­a­go the Games is a leap of faith. It's nev­er an easy chal­lenge host­ing a mul­ti-sport Games. In the ab­sence of clar­i­ty of pur­pose and a vi­sion for the big pic­ture suc­cess is un­like­ly, how­ev­er, one may choose to de­fine suc­cess.

Sport is like that, you can't hide, giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty an in­di­vid­ual, team or or­gan­i­sa­tion can ei­ther be a place hold­er who fails to over­come the chal­lenges of the mo­ment or rise to the oc­ca­sion. It's a process of growth in striv­ing to be the best ver­sion of your­self as an in­di­vid­ual and a col­lec­tive. It's about com­mit­ting to some­thing, mak­ing a plan and stick­ing with it, ex­e­cut­ing and fol­low­ing through. Every­one has to do the right thing all the time. Every­one has to give, and every­one has to know what's ex­pect­ed and what they can ex­pect.

The old par­a­digm of lead­er­ship, good gov­er­nance, trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty is no longer fit for pur­pose. Re­cent de­vel­op­ments have clear­ly sig­nalled that the Olympic and Com­mon­wealth sports move­ments are at a cross­roads be­cause of the old lead­er­ship par­a­digm. What's need­ed is a new par­a­digm of pur­pose-dri­ven and con­scious lead­ers and lead­er­ship with a fo­cus on what tru­ly mat­ters. Those who have ad­vo­cat­ed for the new lead­er­ship par­a­digm must not re­lent. There is no turn­ing back.

With mon­ey and pow­er comes cor­rup­tion - Patrick Nal­ly