Five Qualities Of Greatness

Published by Wayne Goldsmith on

Sports Thoughts Podcast

Greatness is something most people involved in high performance sport aspire to: the ambition to achieve something remarkable and to become something more than they are.

However, greatness does not work like that.

You become great by thinking, saying and most importantly doing things that lead you to the achievement of success – and that means logically you are already “great”.

There is a wonderful line attributed to the outstanding New Zealand rugby coach Steve Hansen: “Becoming an All Black rugby player does not make you a great man. Being a great man will lead you to becoming an All Black rugby player”. 

Hansen is saying that it is not the achievement of success that defines greatness….it is your “greatness” – your inherent qualities, values and character traits – that will lead you to achieve success.

In fact, you already know most of what you need to know to get where you want to go! You just don’t realize it!

Five Qualities Of Greatness

There’s another phrase which goes: “You do not have to be great to start…but you have to start to become great“.

One of the biggest challenges people face on their journey to success is being reluctant to start until it’s “the right time” or when it’s “the right opportunity”.

It’s always the right time.

It’s always the right opportunity.

And you need to START – to actually “DO” – to shift from hoping, wishing and dreaming of becoming great – to taking decisive action and starting to do the things that will inevitably lead you to greatness.

Remember that “A Goal is a dream with a deadline”.

The reason so many people never realized their potential and don’t quite achieve the level of success they aspired to is that they didn’t really “DO” anything.

They talked about it.

They wrote about it.

They dreamed about it.

But when it came to training, to hard work, to getting better every day….they didn’t turn their words and their dreams into actions.

In this podcast I discuss the concept of greatness. I outline the five qualities of greatness that I’ve observed in athletes, coaches and other sporting achievers and I provide ideas for you to try and apply in your own search for success.

Wayne Goldsmith


Wayne Goldsmith

Wayne Goldsmith is a performance focused coaching professional with more than 25 years experience working with some of the world's leading athletes, coaches and teams. Wayne offers a wide range of coaching services for professional coaches, corporate executives and organizational leaders which are based on his experience delivering winning performances in high pressure sporting environments across the globe.

0 Comments

Leave a Reply

Avatar placeholder

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *