Joy in leading

I try to be frugal. I'm not a big fan of spending money. Today, however, I splurged.

I bought three books today on two of my favorite topics - leadership and sports.

• Russell Rules: 11 Lessons on Leadership From the Twentieth Century's Greatest Winner by Bill Russell
• The Winner Within: A Life Plan for Team Players by Pat Riley
• Winning the NFL Way: Leadership Lessons from Football's Top Head Coaches by Bob LaMonte with Robert L. Shook

I'm really excited to get these books and I'm looking forward to reading them. I'm sure I'll share some of the insights I pick up while studying these books here on the blog.
Let's start with something from the intro to Bill Russell's book. Here's something he wrote about joy:

To me, the most important part of winning is joy. You can with without joy, but winning that's joyless is like eating in a four-star restaurant when you're not hungry. Joy is a current of energy in your body like chlorophyll or sunlight, that fills you up and makes you naturally want to do your best.

Now I know Russell is talking about winning and specifically winning basketball games. But part of the reason he wrote the book is because the principles he writes about can be applied to other things. It becomes increasingly clear to me that our careers can involve joy and when they do, we enjoy our jobs that much more and take more pride in what we're doing. When work becomes a place you don't enjoy being, then clearly productivity suffers.
Reading more and more about leadership, this becomes incredibly clear. But I don't think it's rocket science. It's basic human psychology.