“Now when we fought you had the eye of the tiger man, the edge.  And now you gotta get it back, and the way to get it back is to go back to the beginning – you know what I mean?”

“The worst thing happened to you that could happen to any fighter – you got civilized.”

“See that look in their eyes Rock?  Eye of the tiger Rock, we gotta get it back.  C’mon man…”

“Balboa was a fine champion, but his time is passed.”

“You wake up after a few years thinking you’re a winner, but you’re not.”

“It’s Rocky’s greatest challenge: to save his honor, his manhood and his marriage.”

I just watched Rocky III again.  Wow, what a great lesson in leadership.  Here’s the basic premise of the movie:  Rocky has been champion for a number of years.  He’s beloved.  He’s a winner.  He’s wealthy.  He’s comfortable.  He’s “civilized”.

Things start to go drastically wrong after he’s hit by two life-altering events:  his beloved manager/trainer/mentor “Micky” dies right before a match, and he loses to Clubber Lang played by the infamous “Mr. T”.

These weren’t knock out blows, but he’s down for the count.

He has lost his hunger; he’s lost his passion; he’s lost his courage; he’s lost his willingness to take risks.  All of which can be summed up by this,

He lost the “eye of the tiger”.

The eye of the tiger as depicted in the movie, and delivered in an aggressive, electric guitar-charged rock theme song by the band Survivor, is described as,

“…the thrill of the fight.  Rising up to the challenge of our rivals.”

Every great leader has the eye of the tiger.  They have a fire in their belly; a passion to move forward in the face of opposition.

Business is a fight.  Every single day we are up against a host of opponents who want to push us back, put us down and knock us out.  Fears, insecurities, market conditions, technology advances, government regulations, competition, supplier failures, people problems and shortages of cash are just a sampling of the myriad forces that can intimidate us and knock us down.

They conspire to knock the eye of the tiger out of us.

In a subsequent movie when Rocky has retired from boxing he passes on sage advice to his son,

“It’s not about how hard you can hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward – that’s how winning is done.”

We keep moving forward as we maintain the eye of the tiger, as we maintain our willingness to take risks, as we refuse to cave into fear, as we continue to stoke the fires of passion in our hearts.

Have you lost the eye of the tiger?  Have you lost that fire in your belly to fight that which opposes you?  Have you lost the willingness to take risks?  Have you lost the thrill of the fight?  Have you become civilized?

If you have, 2 options lay before you:  1. Retire.  2. Get the eye of the tiger back.

I would argue, that even if you are at the stage of your career where retirement is a viable option, you still need to get the eye of the tiger back unless you want to simply die a slow painful death of uselessness.

To get the eye of the tiger back you need to be around others who have it.  We resemble the company we keep.  That may mean joining a leadership group like The Executive Committee/Vistage that harnesses the power of peers and the input of thought leaders to fuel your fires.

Get the input of others: go to conferences, read some books, watch videos, listen to pod casts, read articles, and hire a coach.  In other words, start training again.

Take a purposeful break of whatever duration you can arrange.  Let your heart breathe so you can discover and develop some core desires deep inside you.   Then, step into those desires – take a risk.

You can get back the eye of the tiger, if you are willing to fight for it.  And, it’s definitely worth fighting for.  You can’t win without it.