In curling, players don’t assume the ice stays the same.
They watch carefully.
Early in the game, a certain path may curl predictably to the button. By the tenth end, subtle changes in temperature, wear, and pebble can alter how stones travel.
A line that worked before may now over-curl and miss the button. A weight that once held may now slide too far.*
Experienced teams don’t cling to the first read.
They reassess constantly.
The Risk of Familiarity
Professional experience is powerful.
You build:
- Templates
- Playbooks
- Standard responses
- Proven strategies
Those tools are earned.
But familiarity can quietly turn into autopilot.
You may:
- Reuse the same slide deck structure
- Default to the same negotiation style
- Apply last year’s solution to this year’s problem
- Communicate the way you always have
Not because it’s optimal, but because it once worked.
Situational Awareness vs. Habit
Situational awareness requires noticing:
- Has the audience changed?
- Has the market shifted?
- Has the team matured?
- Has the timeline compressed?
- Has the risk profile evolved?
If you don’t intentionally observe conditions, you will unconsciously repeat patterns.
Competence becomes rigidity.
The Leadership Evolution
Early career success often comes from mastering a repeatable formula.
Later, leadership requires knowing when to abandon it.
What built your credibility may not build your next level of influence.
The question shifts from: “What worked before?”
To: “What do these conditions require now?”
That’s executive judgment.
Templates Are Starting Points
There’s nothing wrong with frameworks.
They save time. They provide structure.
But they should be:
- Drafts, not defaults
- Adapted, not copied
- Reconsidered, not assumed
Before you reuse something, ask:
- What’s different this time?
- What assumptions am I carrying forward?
- What cues suggest adjustment?
Small Signals Matter
In curling, changes aren’t dramatic.
They’re subtle.
A little more curl. A touch more speed. A slightly different release point.
Situational awareness is built on noticing small signals early, before they become big misses.
The same is true in leadership:
- Tone shifts in meetings
- Reduced engagement
- Market hesitations
- Team fatigue
- Stakeholder resistance
Those are ice conditions changing.
As the Games continue…
This is the seventeenth in a 20-day Olympic curling series exploring leadership lessons hidden in the sport’s details.
Tomorrow’s lesson looks at calling the audible.
Until then:
Read the ice again.
What worked before may not work now. 🥌
* The more stones that travel over a specific path, the faster that path will be compared to a piece of ice that hasn’t been played on as much. During the pre-game practice, a lot of stones are thrown to the button, to identify the draw path. which becomes faster as a result. Similarly, the ice that players slide along to throw their stones (the slide path) will begin to behave differently later in the game than ice on the sides. Add to that – it is common for the Ice Technician team to clean the ice during the halfway break. They do this by pushing a soft dry mop over it once. While this action helps to minimize debris, it can also impact the ice speed – making it faster. Teams will try to anticipate the change in speed as they start the second half. They will throw the first stones with a little less effort than before, to stay as guards and not slide into the house.
** It is also common for the Ice Technician team to do maintenance on the stones during a week-long tournament. The surface of the stone that is in contact with the ice, can get worn down. So about midway through the tournament, the techs will texture that running surface, which usually involves applying some sand paper to the granite. They will announce when they’ve done this, so the players will know to anticipate that none of the paths they saw on previous days will behave the same way again!
For the golfers: consider how you adjust your putter speed during a round and during a multi-day tournament for how long ago the grass on the green was cut, had morning dew on it, was watered, was aerated, was baking in the sun, or endured a big rain storm. You might adjust through a round, but also from one day to the next.
