It’s coming soon. Even now, the evenings are getting shorter. Pretty soon, the clocks will roll back. When my alarm goes off, it’ll be black outside. Dark in the house along with the sleepy streets of Germantown. 

Most mornings, I run alone. In the summer, that solitude feels like a gift. The air is warm and bright. But by the time November creeps up, it’s dark and cold (at least for a man from Tennessee). If I head out into the dark, log a few miles, and the world still sleeps around me…I’ll be honest, sometimes it feels like it doesn’t do me any good.

Not that I think someone has to see me. It’s more that the cool dark does less to wake me up, and being alone at that hour can feel more isolating than peaceful.

All over the country, runners who spend months stacking miles are crossing the finish line. At least for a few weeks, they're putting their racing shoes in the closet. They’re choosing something most busy professionals forget to do: resting on purpose.

Any good coach will tell you that the off-season is part of your training plan. After a long build-up to a hard race, your body needs a stretch of reduced load to repair muscles and replenish energy. You’re not doing nothing, and calculated rest makes you a better athlete and (I’d argue) a better professional, no matter what industry you’re in.

When you coach youth soccer, you quickly learn you’re not just coaching the kids; you're also coaching their parents. It’s a running joke at this point. The parents often care about the outcomes just as much (if not more) than you or any of the players do.

But the players on the field take direction from you. Their parents do not.

But you’re still asked to do it anyway. In business, the people who shape your success often sit beyond your chain of command. They’re not your team: they’re investors, board members, partners, or the heads of neighboring departments that all hold a stake in your work.

None of them report to you, though, and a good share of your results hinge on how well you work together.

Management writers call this stakeholder management. I think of it a lot like those parents on the sideline.

Every business has one. They’re not the boss or the manager, but they’re the one who gets it. You know the one—you hand them a problem, and it disappears. You don’t feel like you ever need to double-check their work because they’ve earned your trust a hundred times over.

Before you know it, you’re leaning on them and routing more and more of the business through them. 

On one hand, you feel you're identifying talent and giving it room to flourish. And I’ll never say that’s a bad thing.

It can, however, be dangerous. Because leaning on a handful of exceptional people isn’t the same thing as cultivating a strong team.