As part of the Diverse Executives Leading in Public Health curriculum, ASTHO and our partners at Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine invite public health professionals to attend an interactive class centered around managing effective team dynamics.
Jerry ThompSon III, master trainer of the Simon Sinek Optimism Company, will guide participants through engaging conversation exploring Sinek’s concept of the Infinite Game and how business is not a finite game of “win-lose;” but instead is infinite with known and unknown players, changeable rules, and no end. The objective is not to win, but to keep playing.
Public health leaders taking this course will gain an understanding of how to lead in the infinite game:
As a leader, having an infinite mindset means that you put aside your ego. They know that they are a part of something bigger and constantly seek ways to grow and leave a legacy. For a leader with an infinite mindset, the goal is never to “be the best”, but rather to be better every day.
A leader with a finite mindset views situations in life as either wins or losses, regarding their opponents as competition. A leader with an infinite mindset works toward the common good and knows that the only person they are trying to improve upon is themselves.
Key takeaways include:
- See that we are all players in both finite and infinite games and be able to distinguish the difference between the two
- Learn the five practices that are required to lead in an infinite game
- Explore a new way of looking at your leadership, your organization, and the environment in which it operates
- Explore the characteristics of a Just Cause and relate it to your organization
- Examine the practices that are building trust and those that may be breaking trust, and how to maintain and rebuild trust
- Define and study your Worthy Rivals to identify areas of strength and areas to improve
- Gain a deeper understanding of Existential Flexibility, explore case studies and evaluate your current capacity for Existential Flexibility
- Learn how to build stronger relationships, which is the basis of The Courage to Lead
A promo teaser from the Optimism Company:
We can't choose the game. We can't choose the rules. We can only choose how we play.
With finite games, like football or chess, the players are known, the rules are fixed, and the endpoint is clear. The winners and losers are easily identified. Infinite games, like business or politics or life itself, the players come and go, the rules are changeable, and there is no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers in an infinite game; there is only ahead and behind. The more we begin to understand the difference between finite and infinite games, the more we can see that infinite games are all around us. We will realize that many of the struggles that organizations face exist because their leaders are playing an infinite game with a finite mindset. These organizations tend to lag in innovation, effort, morale, and overall performance. In stark contrast, the leaders who embrace an infinite mindset build stronger, more innovative, more inspiring organizations. Their people trust each other and their leaders. With an infinite mindset, leaders have the resilience to thrive in an ever-changing world while their competitors fall by the wayside. Ultimately, they are the ones who lead the rest of us into the future.