March Mastery

Our executive coach guru, Scott Eblin, is at it again. In his latest post, "From March Madness to March Mastery: A Leader’s Guide to Managing Energy When the Pressure is On," Scott discusses how the concept of "March Madness" -- the single-elimination basketball tournaments that lead to crowing the best collegiate teams in the US -- can be seen by leaders as a means to create better teams. Scott calls it "March Mastery."

He starts by discussing how March is the month where it finally, actually feels like we're done with winter -- for example, the winter of '25-'26 was the third-snowiest on record in the Boston area -- and now the year can blossom. He continues (quoting at length):

Here’s what I’ve learned in 25 years of coaching executives: the leaders who navigate March successfully aren’t the ones who grind the hardest. They’re the ones who manage their energy – personal, team, and organizational – intentionally so that they can lead for both results and relationships.

Energy, not time, is the true scarce commodity of leadership. You can’t manage time; everybody gets 168 hours a week. But you can manage the energy you bring to the time you have.

There are three energy areas that you can manage as a leader: personal energy, team energy, and organization energy. 

Scott discusses implications regarding personal energy this way: "If your preparation has been consistent, you get good outcomes. If it’s been sporadic under the weight of the opening months of 2026, March Madness will expose that. So, the question isn’t if your energy and focus can rise to the occasion. The question is how can you raise the level of your training?"

In terms of team energy, Scott makes these observations: "Managing your own energy is necessary but not sufficient. Right now, the energy and focus of some of your best people may be dipping." To take care of that, he suggests you (1) protect your team, (2) push your team, and (3) promote your team as ways to keep them engage with your leadership and to keep you engaged with their performance.

At the organizational energy level, "Organizational energy makes possible the cross-functional effort that pulls in the same direction instead of siloed efforts working at cross purposes. The latter is what often starts happening during March Madness. As the pressure builds, leaders start over indexing on their functional responsibilities. Cross-functional collaboration slows down because everyone’s focusing on their own plans." Scott's next observation is truly masterful:

The most successful senior executives approach their work with a business first, function second mindset. That’s the essence of what’s called being on the first team. If you’re a designated leader, your first team isn’t the function you lead. It’s the leadership team you sit on. First team leaders do a few things that are especially important during high-pressure stretches like March Madness. They start with the question, “What are we trying to accomplish as a business?” and reverse engineer back from there.

Mastery takes effort. It's a way to demonstrate your talent. 

Game's on. Are you ready to win?

Ask us how you can dunk on pressure to create mastery.

(image credit: cottonbro studio)