“Getting skunked” is a term used in fishing. It’s the result of a full day of fishing, with zero catching! It’s not an angler’s best day at the office.
Getting Skunked
We just returned from Spring Break in Panama City Beach, Florida. It was a much needed week of rest and relaxation. For Grant and I, part of the relaxation process is fishing.
Our arrival was around midnight on Saturday. Sunday served as a throw away day. Rain and cooler temperatures called for a workout, initial grocery store run, napping, eating out, and organizing fishing equipment.
Monday called or fishing. It was still fairly cool out, so the beach wasn’t overly desirable that day. Therefore, I decided to take Grant and his buddy Drew to one of my favorite fishing spots, the jetty at St. Andrews State Park. If we were going to catch fish in the conditions that day, it would be there or nowhere.
Here are three leadership lessons from our fishing experience this past week:
Face the Music
The worst question someone can ask you on a day you get skunked, “How did you do today?” Any fisherman who has been skunked avoids this question like the plague. The problem is, it’s unavoidable.
Not only have I been skunked as a fisherman, I have been skunked as a competitor, coach, and leader. Somedays what I am casting just isn’t connecting with what is on the other end of the line. Despite my best efforts, all I can answer the dreaded question with is, “nothing.”
In life and leadership, there are days where we do a lot more fishing than catching. It feels like nothing goes our way and we just come up short. Sometimes we just have to face to music, despite our best efforts, it wasn’t our best day.
Keep the Line in the Water
There is a phrase that I have told Grant since he was a young boy, “You can’t catch fish without your line in the water.”
For those who don’t know what a jetty is, it is a large, man-made formation of huge rocks that stretch out into the ocean.
I have always had success there with live shrimp, which requires a weight that carries it to the bottom where the fish are. The weight frequently gets stuck between the rocks. This requires us to cut the line, which then requires us to tie a new rig, which keeps our lines out of the water. Remember…no line in the water, no fish.
In fact, I didn’t even bring a pole for myself. I intended to just bait their hooks and replace their lines when they got hung up.
In life and leadership, a few consecutive days of getting skunked can lead to discouragement. In those moments, we just want to pack up our tacklebox and call it a day. It’s completely understandable.
Just remember…keep the line in the water. Eventually, the effort will make sense.
Adapt to the Conditions
I really wanted the boys to have a good experience. Fishing is way more fun when you are catching! But, we were getting skunked.
My discouragement quickly grew to frustration. Luckily envy crept in! I got sick and tired of watching the guy a few rocks down catching fish one cast after another. So I peeked over at what he was using.
He was using an artificial lure, not live bait. From the shine of the lure, I could tell it was a silver spoon. Thankfully, I have a well-stocked arsenal of lures in my fishing backpack. The conditions had changed, I needed to adapt. Quickly, I switched the boys over to artificials.
There is another technical phrase in the world of fishing. It’s the best answer to the question a fisherman avoids when they get skunked. The phrase, “We wore them out!”
Well…we wore them out for the next two hours. The fishing was so good that one of the fish broke Drew’s pole. Just like lures, back at the truck I have a healthy supply of rods and reels. I ran back to the truck and got him one…and me too!
Cast after cast, we kept catching.
In life and leadership, one of the most underrated attributes of a successful person is one’s ability to adapt. General Eric Shinseki once said, “If you don’t like change, you will like irrelevance even less.” Irrelevance is not an aspiration goal.
Sometimes conditions change and we must adapt.
Conclusion
We came back the next day, three casts, three fish. Right off the bat. Then…nothing!
The rest of the week was a struggle. We got skunked on our next few attempts.
Here is the moral of the story. In life and leadership, there are going to be bad moments. Keeping our lines in the water helps us make sure that bad moments, don’t turn into bad days. It ensures bad days, don’t turn into bad weeks, and so on.
Sometimes it just takes adapting to the conditions to have a change of luck. Maybe it’s just a matter of changing perspective.
In the end, Grant and Drew won’t remember the days we got skunked. They won’t even remember that hour of struggle before we starting catching fish. The boys will remember, “Wearing them out.”
When we get skunked…we learn, but we never forget memories of catching.
