In Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action published by Portfolio/The Penguin Group (2009), Simon Sinek introduces his reader to Ben Comen who is a runner. “As with any race, in a short period of time the stronger ones will pull ahead and the weaker ones will start to fall behind. But not Ben Comen. Ben was left behind as soon as the starter gun sounded. Ben’s not the fastest runner on the team. In fact, he’s the slowest. He has never won a single race the entire time he’s been on the Hanna High School cross-country track team. Ben, you see, has cerebral palsy.”

Now it gets very interesting. “Something amazing happens after about twenty-five minutes. When everyone else is done with their race, everyone comes back to run with Ben, Ben is the only runner who, when he falls, someone else will pick him up. Ben is the only runner who, when he finishes, has a hundred people running behind him.”

Now pay very close attention to what follows. “What Ben teaches us is special. When you compete against everyone else, no one wants to help you. But when you compete against yourself, everyone wants to help you. Olympic athletes don’t help each other. They’re competitors. Ben starts every race with a very clear sense of WHY he’s running. He’s not there to beat anyone but himself. Ben never loses sight of that. His sense of WHY he’s running gives him the strength to keep going. To keep pushing. To keep getting up. And to do it again and again and again. And every day he runs, the only time Bern sets out to beat is his own.”

I offer three brief points:

1. Ben Comer and John Wooden are kindred spirits.

2. Jack Dempsey was correct: “Champions get up when they can’t.” According to the criteria by which we measure character, Ben Comen is a “champion.”

3. In their recently published book, The Why of Work, Dave and Wendy Ulrich affirm the same values that Simon Sinek does in his book…and they are the same values that Ben Comen exemplifies.