Alum to speak about athlete leadership

Lauren Sutherland Staff Writer

As sports stars are indicted with troubling frequency for gambling scandals, steroid use and unsportsmanlike conduct, fewer people are willing to call athletes professional and social role models.

Vassar alumnus and Trustee Jim Citrin ’81 disagrees. Citrin argues numerous examples—a whole book’s worth—of athletes that not only redeem the professional sports industry, but provide models to be followed.

“There a probably more examples in the news of [athletes] who have had run-ins with the law, been greedy with contract negotiations, and who are negative role models. So many do crash and burn” said Citrin. “Time and time again, athletes have turned leaders; sports has become a metaphor for setting up what’s important in life, for picking something meaningful and trying to make an impact on the world for the better.”

The Dynamic Path, Citrin’s book that was released in September 2007, discusses these exceptional examples. In the book, Citrin draws from the stories of famous athletes, entertainers, political figures and other high-achievers to chart a universally applicable “dynamic path” to achieving lasting success.

Citrin, who joined the College’s Board of Trustees in 1999, will deliver a talk based on his book, sponsored by the Athletics Department, on Tuesday, Dec. 11 at 6:30 p.m. in the Kenyon Hall club room.

“The book lends itself to speaking to young people because it gives a framework for thinking about your lives on a professional level, as well as on a fundamental ‘what is important in life’ level,” said Citrin, who competed on the varsity soccer, squash and tennis teams while at Vassar.

In addition to The Dynamic Path, Citrin has published four other professional how-to guides, two of which have been Wall Street Journal and Business Week bestsellers. He has also made guest appearances on The Today Show, the CBS Early Show, and Good Morning America, and has produced and hosted leadership series on CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight and CNBC’s Squawk Box.

As Senior Director of the global executive search firm Spencer Stuart, Citrin is familiar with the qualities of effective leadership. “Leaders in the sports world have a sense of something beyond them, of something worth working for,” he said.

In the book, he plots progression from sports virtuoso to role model in three stages: the Champion, or individual achiever; the Leader, who is able to direct the collective to success; and finally the Legacy, who is able to effect change and inspire others beyond the span of his or her career.

“The path is sequential in the sense that I’ve observed a progression from individual champion to leader, and leader to legacy builder,” Citrin said. “But if you’re not Tiger Woods or Mia Hamm and you just want to start living your life in the best way—whether you want to be the best student, or get the best job—you can also start thinking about the larger impact you’re making, and start working on the stages simultaneously. The model is sequential, but it doesn’t have to be lived sequentially.”

The concept of the “dynamic path” was borne from a series of professional meetings between Citrin and several famous athletes. He had just appointed basketball great and former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley to the board of the Eastman Kodak company, when Bradley referred him to Dallas Cowboys star Roger Staubach. The meeting with Staubach led to an introduction to three-time Superbowl champion Emmitt Smith and a fortuitous conversation about the nature of success in professional sports.

“Instead of me interviewing [Smith], we turned the tables, and I was giving him advice about how careers work using examples of other athletes I knew,” said Citrin. “Then it dawned on me that sports champions are like you or me...Then the book started to take shape.”

Professional athletes’ experiences, said Citrin, are not far removed from everyday life that students and college athletes cannot hope to learn from their examples. What distinguishes these individuals, beyond a formidable serve or successive Tour de France titles, is a humanity that impels them to implement their specific talents into broader social change.

“On a tactical level, the book [applies to] starting a career, and what it means to be a champion” said Citrin. “But students understand that being successful in the traditional sense is important, but that it isn’t the end goal. A means for something else that will have an impact on others.”