As young professionals working in the golf business, often times our focus is on developing the set of what I call “vocational skills” that are specific to our industry...the teaching, playing, merchandising and event administration skills, among many others that our jobs require from us.

But as our careers continue to evolve, success or failure can hinge on a new and different skill set.  Often referred to as soft skills, they should more properly be referred to as success skills.  These success skills include the ability to build and sustain relationships, developing emotional intelligence or EQ, learning how to lead and why that matters, becoming a mentor to your team, and many others.  I feel these are so important, it’s what motivated me to develop golfprofessionalgrowth.com to dig deeper into how to develop these skills.

Our guest in this episode has summarized these skills so well, I had to have him on to discuss this further.  Robert Sereci is the GM/COO at the renowned Medinah Country Club. You know Medinah from it’s storied history in major championship and Ryder Cup golf, but ironically Robert came to Medinah with little to no knowledge of that history.  And he’s used that to his advantage.  You’ll hear how being a “non-golf” guy has allowed him to view Medinah through a different lens that allows him to lead and strategize without any bias.  Robert is known as an intelligent businessman, a calculated risk taker and a mentor to many in our business.  The result for Medinah has been a thriving club atmosphere which is now a leader and innovator in the industry. 

In part one, Robert walks us through the first five of his “Top 10 Lessons They Didn’t Teach you in School”.  These lessons are universally applicable to golf professionals and general managers alike...and even if you’re not in a leadership or management position yet, you’ll want to take notes and know where you can begin to develop the critical success skills that will help you down the road.

Robert's Top 10 Lessons:

1. The difference between passion and purpose.
2. You don’t know what you don’t know
3. Understand that your success is determined by others.
4. How to manage and lead in a world of grey
5. Understand how your club keeps score
6. Understand that your success is determined by others
7. Your technical skills will become less important as you climb the ladder
8. Stop Coaching and start mentoring
9. Your club governance model is more important then you realize
10. It’s not about you. It never was.

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