Highlight Reel

I recently got to sit in the front row at a Thunder game, right next to the bench. Someone’s generosity put me close enough to hear everything the players and coaches were saying, and honestly, it was incredible. During those highlight-reel moments when the crowd went absolutely wild, I could hear the players calling out plays and reminding each other of things they’d obviously worked on a thousand times in practice.

The spectacular moment everyone saw wasn’t spontaneous brilliance at all. It was the result of countless repetitions nobody was there to watch.

We love the highlight reel—the game-winning shot, the fourth-quarter comeback, the dramatic boardroom decision. We watch these moments over and over, dissecting what made them work. But the highlight reel doesn’t show the ten thousand practice shots in an empty gym, the hundreds of hours studying film, the unglamorous, repetitive work that built the foundation.

Real life and real leadership are not highlight reels.

We tend to remember the big moments: the crisis that got navigated, the difficult conversation that had to happen. Sure, those moments matter, but what makes a leader great is showing up every single day and doing the basic things really, really well.

Showing up on time. Putting your phone down when someone is talking. Following through on what you said you’d do. Listening more than you talk. Saying thank you. Admitting when you’re wrong. Being consistent in how you treat people.

None of this is sexy. It won’t make the highlight reel. But it’s what builds trust—and trust is the foundation of everything else.

The problem is, we get this backwards. We think we can coast through the daily stuff and then just rise to the occasion when it matters. But you don’t suddenly become trustworthy in a crisis if you’ve been flaky for the past three years. You don’t suddenly develop good judgment under pressure if you’ve been making careless decisions when the stakes were low.

John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach, spent the first practice of every season teaching his players how to put on their socks properly. Socks! I love this. His reasoning? If you get the fundamentals right, everything else follows. But if you skip past the basics because you want to get to the exciting stuff, you’ll end up with blisters that keep you from performing when it counts.

Think about the compounding effect. When you’re reliable in small things day after day, you’re making deposits in people’s emotional bank accounts. Those deposits add up. They create a reserve of trust you can draw on when you really need it. But if you’re constantly withdrawing more than you’re depositing, then when the crisis comes, the account is overdrawn.

Our founder, Garman Kimmell, would walk down the front of the building to pick up a piece of trash he’d seen when coming in. That wasn’t a highlight-reel moment. Nobody was filming. But people noticed the consistency, and they followed his example.

That’s the thing about doing the basics well—it spreads. When leaders are consistently excellent in small things, it sets a standard. It gives permission for everyone else to care about details too, to understand that how we do anything is how we do everything.

So, what are the basics that matter most? Communication—saying what you mean and meaning what you say. Follow-through—doing what you said you’d do. Presence—being where you are, giving people your full attention. Respect—treating everyone like they matter. And consistency—being the same person on Monday as you are on Friday.

None of these will make the highlight reel. You won’t get awards for consistently showing up on time. But over the course of years, these are the things that build a culture and earn you the right to lead people through difficult moments.

The irony is that when you get the fundamentals right day after day, those highlight-reel moments tend to take care of themselves. The crisis gets navigated more smoothly because trust is already there. The team performs at a higher level because the foundation is solid.

Sitting there at that Thunder game, watching those players execute plays they’d practiced until they became instinct, I kept thinking about this. Real leadership isn’t about the highlights; it’s about the habits. It’s about showing up and doing the unsexy, unglamorous, repetitive work of being trustworthy, being present, and being consistent.

Because the moments that matter most aren’t the ones that make the highlight reel. They’re the thousand moments nobody saw that built the foundation for everything else—the Bison Way.