MAHONEY’S MOMENTS
Jim has written regular leadership-related blog posts, along with other several other leaders, for Ohio University’s Voinovich Academy. On this page, you can read his monthly blog posts, Mahoney’s Moments. These moments are aimed at a variety of topics and the content is designed for the moment and intended to cause you to reflect, perhaps consider an approach, or entertain a new idea in your life or work. Enjoy!
October 2026: From Ballpark Energy to Workplace Wins
Last Saturday night I took my family to see The Cleveland Guardians win a fifth game against the Chicago White Sox to earn the opportunity to play now for the American League Championship. My oldest granddaughter, who loves baseball, remarked she had never seen so much excitement at a baseball game. We had only seen the Cincinnati Reds a couple times earlier in the year during lackluster performances. Now we were in a completely packed stadium where people stood throughout the game, sang “Jose Jose Jose” to honor their beloved player, Jose Ramirez, and screamed as Guardian pitchers struck out one Sox player after another.
ENERGY. We’ve all experienced that from perhaps a project we were working on with a team, a teacher who was leading class a certain way, or a leader who made us want to join an organization. It’s a combination of contagious enthusiasm coupled with rightful direction. It’s the secret sauce of motivation. You can’t fake that kind of energy, and you certainly can’t mandate it through a policy. Let me suggest three approaches you might do to create it, harness it, and translate it into results.
Align with Strengths. In that stadium, thirty thousand people weren’t chanting and standing because they were following an HR directive; they were energized because we were watching exceptional talent doing what it does best. Timely hitting. Great relief pitching. Mostly smart running (if you saw the game). In organizations, energy is naturally generated when we align people with their core strengths. When team members operate in their zone of natural talent, work stops feeling like a grind and starts generating its own momentum.
Harness through Climate. Energy is contagious. Just as the stadium pulsated with collective anticipation, a workplace absorbs the emotional climate set by its leaders. Ramirez with smiles, hustle, and dazzling plays contribute heavily to the climate. If we walk into our organizations scattered, defensive, or apathetic, we drain the room. When we protect our focus and anchor our interactions with trust and clarity, we become the thermostat that keeps the environment vibrant.
Translate to Results. Unfocused excitement usually fizzles out. The magic of leadership is taking that raw, collective energy and pointing it toward a clear, shared goal. When a team has high engagement and clarity on their top priorities, enthusiasm turns into execution. Our scarcest and most powerful resource isn’t time. It's energy.
Take a look at your team or organization. Where can you spark a little more life, align a little better with natural talents, and turn everyday work into something worth standing up and cheering for? And when that happens you can even get a lifelong Reds fan to say, GO GUARDS!