Chris Chataway with the Sports Personality of the Year Award.
Sir Christopher Chataway, who died last month, may not have been a household name, but had many achievements in the fields of business, broadcasting, politics and athletics. Together with Robin Day he was the first newsreader on ITN, and he was the first person to win the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award. He was a Company Director, public servant and Chair of development charity ActionAid.
Chataway was also an accomplished runner, competing in the 1952 and 1956 Olympics and winning a gold medal in the 1954 Commonwealth Games and a silver in the European Championships. Yet one of his most significant achievements was running in a race he didn’t win, and never intended to win. In 1954 Chataway was one of the two pacesetters for Roger Bannister, when Bannister became the first person to run a mile in less than four minutes.
My friend Bob, the Vice-Principal of Springdale College, mentioned to me recently that in a seminar when his students attempted to define leadership, one of them chose the word pacesetter. I think it fits well. The pacesetter helps others win. He initially keeps up a good pace to ensure momentum while helping his followers not to tire too soon. He has the wisdom to know when to move aside and let others take over the running. He has the humility to let them finish well while he ends up possibly not even finishing the race. He has exhausted himself so that others can achieve their best.
It seems so obvious that this analogy also applies to a leader that the point hardly needs to be made. The leader is not there to take the glory but to help others to do better. She serves them, not the other way round. She may be completely forgotten by history while her followers go on to become famous, but if that is what God has called her to do, she has done well. Jesus, of course, the greatest leader, clearly did that. He came not to be served but to serve. He laid down his life for others. We are all beneficiaries of his sacrifice.
If you are a leader, please take the opportunity to ask yourself how good a pacesetter you are. Are you committed to helping your followers achieve, or are you competing with them? Are you sacrificing yourself so that they can do what God is calling them to do? And do you know when it’s time to move over and let them run their own race?
In a delicious piece of historical irony, the year in which Bannister broke the four minute mile was also the year in which Chataway won Sports Personality of the Year. Bannister came second.
