The personality traits I seek (and gravitate towards) in people are very much the same as those that I seek in athletes: class, dignity, and sportsmanship; gratitude, humility, and the ability to display confidence without showing arrogance. I very much like athletes who understand their place in the big picture, appreciate it and embrace it. I like athletes fighting back in the face in the face of adversity, I like scrappy.
Now of course there are athletes that are better than their peers by miles. The Michael Jordans, the Roger Federers, the Tiger Woods's, the Michael Schumachers, the Lance Armstrongs of the world. Superstars with laser-like focus on perfection, religious dedication to their craft, and supreme superhuman talent. In short, excellence and dominance beyond belief.
I recognize this kind of excellence, but only the very elite few will ever reach it. These are the people whom you expect will succeed, and win all the time. These are the people who set the example, who blaze the trail, who take the lead. But these are not the people that make up the bulk of your team.
Call me charitable, but I am a bigger supporter of the scrappy athlete, because the general population can relate more to him. And a victory seems to mean more to them than to the superstars (even though that might not be true), because they can only get so many opportunities to get one.
And in work and in life, I think it is the same. I know the people who are truly masters and zealots of their domain win more often than not, but I will never have a team consisting of only Steve Jobs's. These people are singular for a reason and therefore not hard to find. It's the dignified, quietly confident, humble, and scrappy people that you need in your team, but take the longest to find and the hardest to develop.
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