It’s been almost exactly 8 months since I became the CEO of Treaty United FC.
My first few months on the job resembled fighting 3049 forest fires, with the odd earthquake. I am actually not sure how I got through it.
I have run big soccer showcase events for years. The week leading up to the event is always insanity. 18 hour days, where I wake up at some crazy, early hour that most sane people would see the clock and roll back asleep. But instead, knowing how much work I have to do and that I wouldn’t even be able to enjoy sleeping, I get out of bed at the crack of dawn, get on my computer and work until the sun goes down.
I then pass out and do it all again for 4 or 5 days until the event comes and goes.
Except with the first few months of Treaty, it was months of this life and not just days.
One of my good friends just had a baby. I joke with her that we’re having similar experiences. Except she birthed a child, and I birthed a soccer club. Similar experiences, except her child screams in the middle of the night, and mine scream on Twitter (just kidding, love ya Blue Army!)
What I can say, is that it’s been the most insane growth curve of my life.
I feel like I’m 17 and I’m in the Premiership. Every ball I give away, is a breakaway that usually ends up in the back of the net with a lot of people watching. And I keep grabbing the ball out of the back of net, learn as much as I can from every play and jump on the pitch and give it a go again. And it’s a conscious decision every time that I go to grab that ball out of the net, that I can fail or I can learn fast and be better next time. And the resilience and the kindness towards myself as I make mistakes, is what eventually will be the foundation in which the success will come.
(And is it just me, or a soccer player thing in general that every situation becomes some kind of soccer game metaphor in your head as you try and work it out).
So without further ado:
8 THINGS I’VE LEARNED IN 8 MONTHS OF BEING A CEO
- How You React To Your Mistakes Is More Important Than the Mistakes You Make
I learned this one, the day the takeover of the team was announced.
Well, the day before it was supposed to be announced.
We had a team of people from the media group in Limerick and also from Vancouver working together to put together a perfectly crafted message about the takeover. We went back and forth for days with edits, conversations on how we were going to announce it, with great care.
Late afternoon the day before the announcement was going to come out, I was sitting with Marie Curtin, the soon to be minted COO, doing some final prep for the news coming out the next day. We were sitting in a small Italian restaurant at the mall (because you always remember exactly where you were when there’s some kind of trauma).
I had spent years dealing with Canadian journalists on the sport abuse scandal back home and had developed a great rapport with many of them – to the point that I’d tip them off confidentially the day before a story broke just to give them a chance to know and get ahead of it if they had any interest in writing about it. They’d always kept everything confidential, and always appreciated it.
I had done many stories with a journalist in Ireland and gave him a similar heads up, with the ask to keep the news confidential but that it was coming out the next morning. Marie and I had just ordered our drinks when I shot him that message.
By the time our main course arrived, Marie’s phone beeped and her mouth dropped. She looked at me shocked “the 42.ie just put the story up.” As our phones started buzzing around us, with the news unintentionally broken by myself, 12 hours before our perfectly crafted message was supposed to catch everyone by surprise, I sat in a little Italian restaurant in a suburb of Limerick, about to throw up.
“Do you think they’ll know it was me?” I asked her.
Her phone buzzed instantaneously – it was our large WhatsApp media group, that was buzzing non stop trying to figure out where’d they’d gotten the news from. Someone wrote into the group, “They said that Ciara was the one that confirmed it.”
I was on the verge of a panic attack, but a calmness came over me. Maybe because I have had a lot of experience pulling balls out of the back of the net after a colossal mess up.
I sent everyone a message apologizing – told them honestly what happened and how stupid I felt – and just reiterated again how sorry I was for messing up.
And everyone was gracious enough to accept my apology, and even gave me kind words after about how much owning it so quickly, and honestly was something to be admired.
I’ve noticed leading other people now, how this truly is an A plus quality. I’ll often see my opinion of people grow, even if they do something not great, in the character, bravery and integrity they show in owning it (and it also says a lot of people who are able to have the humility, kindness and understanding to accept those mess ups).
2. Every Negative Quality You Have Will Come Flying In Your Face
I can be reactive, defensive, and my default is to send an email instead of picking up the phone.
These are all qualities, that I’ve learned quickly, that are not great, and I want to change.
If you want to do a quick inventory on every habitual action you take that doesn’t serve you, I highly recommend becoming a CEO.
Because, I promise you, you will get this list handed to you in the course of a week, as everything that doesn’t work, flies at you with intensity and an audience.
3. Support Is So Important
I struggled with this in the beginning. Luckily for me, I have the best investors on the planet behind me who quickly realized I was floundering and gave me outside support.
When I was in the “barely keeping my head above water phase” I also leaned on an amazing mentor who is also a CEO and who I completely trusted. He empathized. He listened. He challenged me.
I also had an amazing coach who strongly pointed things out to me – when I was doing the ol “oh I have no idea how I pulled this off,” she told me that I didn’t need to present myself like that, I could be proud and claim that I was capable (refer back to things you learn fast that aren’t how you want to be).
I also was given an amazing HR resource who is a minority woman – and I know that if I think I have it tough at times, I know my minority female friends have it far worse. I’m all ears for ways she suggests to handle situations that I find triggering.
I didn’t have any of these people in the beginning and I almost drowned. If you are leading having people you can lean on that you trust, respect and admire is so important (shout out Joe, Erin and Suman! Appreciate all of you!) along with finding partners who support you in finding them (shout out Tricor and GP!)
4. There Are No Women In The Room
I’ve had countless meetings over the last 8 months. The only place I’ve been that has had at least a small smattering of women has been our League of Ireland meetings (shout out to the LOI and clubs for recognizing the importance of different voices at the top).
Growing up as a sports loving girl, I’ve always loved and been comfortable hanging out with large groups of guys. But there has been so many times that I’ve sat in rooms and just marveled at how few women or diverse voices exist at tables where decisions are being made.
In some parts of this journey I can say that I’ve been subjected to some of the most insanely, blatant sexism I’ve ever experienced. My impression was that it was so normalized in these guys’ worlds that women didn’t exist at any decision making table, that they had to minimize my existence or even aggressively make a point of erasing it.
It also has made it clear to me that we make decisions off our own experience and connections. When we don’t have diverse experiences in those rooms of leadership, entire swaths of the population are forgotten.
It gives what I’m doing even more purpose to show what different faces of leadership can do.
And made it clear to me: we need more diversity at our decision making tables.
5. Therapy Is Important For Leaders
I’ve done a lot of therapy over the last few years and I marvel often at how my increased self understanding, makes me a better leader and makes me wonder how bad I would be without it.
I recognize that I set the culture and the environment, and if I’m leading with no awareness of myself, my traumas and my ego, then how can I expect where I am to be a positive place.
Perhaps now with a sharper understanding of myself, I look around and think how unchecked power and ego, coupled with negative trauma response and a lack of self awareness explain the state of the world we are living in. You only have to look at a smattering of leaders causing major harm in the world to know they’ve done little to go inwards.
On a micro level, I’ve learned in my own experience that I need to continue to work on myself as how I feel about myself is what I project into my reactions in situations around me.
The better, clearer and more positive and calm I feel, the better I can make decisions that will have a positive impact on those around me.
Working on myself is the best way I can become a better leader.
6. Integrity is Everything
A CEO has power. And I can see how in some cases this could be intoxicating and harmful to others. In fact, it’s well documented my experience of being on the other side of that power.
As a CEO there are many situations that you find yourself in, that you have absolute power, and the only person that is manning your behaviour is yourself.
I constantly remind myself that I don’t ask myself to be perfect, and if you ask anyone around me, I’ve been far from it these last 8 months.
But integrity is truly everything, and making decisions in a way that I am always coming from a good place, using my power for good and doing my best, is a space that I want to be in.
7. Wildly Long To Do Lists Are the Sign of Not Doing A Good Job
I sit here on the back side of a few days of having no voice and being really sick. In fact I know that these last few months I have probably been the most unbalanced I’ve ever been from a health perspective.
A coping method for me in life is always to work insanely hard. North American lifestyle meet every messaging I ever heard about becoming successful in sport. Work, work, work.
Yet the moment you become a CEO, and a CEO of a fledgling soccer club no less, you realize very quickly that there is a never ending list of things to do, going 24-7 if you don’t shut it off.
My approach the first few months was tackle the stupid long list day after day after day. But pretty quickly I realized that would be the quickest way to end up not being a CEO anymore because I’d be a patient in the hospital.
I’ve had to learn quickly:
a. Organization and delegation is key for survival
b. That everything won’t get done
c. That everything won’t be perfect
Old habits die hard and I constantly have to remind myself that no one is handing me a medal if I get through a list of 300 things in a day unless than medal is in the form of a hospital bed.
So instead of plowing through that list, my new challenge is, how relaxed can I be with tons of progress being made?
Trying to move yourself away from your old tendencies is constant work, but I know that is the nut I have to crack if I truly want to make Treaty United FC be the big success I know it can be and not land myself in the hospital, trying to get it there.
8. Enjoy It
And finally. I’ve learned how important it is to enjoy it. Who knows how long any of this ride is going to last whether its life or being a soccer club CEO.
I had the whole soccer stadium to myself last night as I came out of work and just took a moment to stare at it and appreciate it and soak it all in.
The best thing I’ve learned in my own personal growth these last few years is just to calm that anxious voice in my head that was always worrying about and wanting to control what was going to come next.
This has been a wild, hilarious ride. I spoke to another leader of a club this week who made me feel better about my own feelings, in describing himself feeling like a kid in this big job. I’m not going to lie, the first couple of months, I felt like I was in some crazy, surreal, live version of Ted Lasso, getting introduced to leaders of other clubs, only being a few months removed from being a player on the field myself.
But I’m proud of the work everyone’s done so far to get this club to where it is. I’m proud of the relationships that have been built. The mistakes, the fun, the stress, the laughs, the learnings.
It’s easy to take life too seriously sometimes. I remind myself often to appreciate how fun it is to build something and to lead.
And just like my good pal who’s a new Mom, I’ve learned how important to is to make sure I get my head up and appreciate and enjoy this hard phase of building something, because it’s not going to last forever and every day I get to have the privilege to do this, is a gift.
Essays on Life 