Leadership

Feb

2017

Super Bowl Leadership

Every year people gather around televisions in the United States to watch the Super Bowl. Some join in for an excuse to socialize. Some love watching the commercials. Some love football and some enjoy eating a bunch of unhealthy food. Oh yeah, some actually care about the outcome of the game.

Regardless of one’s motive, the reality is that coaches who get their teams to a championship level must know something about leadership . . . and acquiring talent. I have dug through my books and am going to highlight some of the leadership lessons successful college and professional football coaches have provided.

Former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz in his book Winning Every Day: The Game Plan for Success states: “the standards you establish for others must reflect the standards you set for yourself. No one will follow a hypocrite.” The Principle: Lead by example and do not expect of others what you would not do yourself. If I expect others to get up early and workout . . . I must be willing to do it to and be ready to go.
Former USC football coach and coach of the Seattle Seahawks Pete Carroll in his book Win Forever: Live, Work, and Play Like a Champion discusses the role of a coach as a teacher and how to get the best out of players. He states: “if you want to help someone be the best he can be, you have to learn as much as possible about what makes him tick . . . everything a player does is an opportunity for us to learn something about him.” The Principle: When you know the people you lead you will be able to teach, lead, and inspire them better. For me I can get quite lazy and not take the time to understand those I lead. As I get to know the people then I am able to lead better because I know what they desire and how that can align with what the team is trying to accomplish.
In the 1990’s Tom Osborne led the University of Nebraska to a national championship. In his book Faith in the Game: Lessons on Football, Work, and Life he states: “Working hard is important: having a clear vision of why one is working hard is even more important.” The Principle: When you have a clear vision or “why” for what you are doing the hard work does not seem as difficult. I exercise each day which is hard work, but my objective is to stay healthy for my family and avoid gravity. These two reasons help keep me motivated to work each day.
Legendary NFL coach Don Shula partnered with leadership expert Ken Blanchard and in the book Everyone’s a Coach: Five Business Secrets for High Performance Coaching they discuss communication as a leader. Shula discusses how people will test boundaries and try to see what they can get away with. He emphasizes the importance of being consistent, but also careful in confrontations: “you must be wise in your confrontations and flexible in the way you treat people at such times.” The Principle: Hold the line and communicate with individuals in the manner that is most appropriate during the confrontation. One person may respond best to an “earful” from you while another may need you to put their arm around them and encourage them while confronting them. If you are like me the second method is much more difficult, but the effort in the long run will help the team stay on track.
Former New York Giants coach Bill Parcels in his book Finding a Way to Win: The Principles of Leadership, Teamwork, and Motivation by Bill Parcells (1995-12-01) also addresses communication in leadership. He discusses the value of candor in the leadership relationship. A lack of candor creates confusion where the followers are uncertain what is expected and may assume the worst. Parcells provides a health definition of candor stating: “True candor is the measured telling of the truth, not the open venting of rage.” The Principle: A leader must be open, honest, calm, and clearly define expectations to those he or she leads in order to avoid confusion. When we communicate we need to pause and reflect on what needs to be said and not just react and vent our frustration. Often I find I vent when I am unclear on what I expect. Clarify and then calmly communicate with candor.
All of the above principles lead to creating a culture and Tony Dungy in his book The Mentor Leader: Secrets to Building People and Teams That Win Consistently states: “The culture you create permeates everything you touch.” The Principle: The leader creates the culture both intentionally and unintentionally. As a leader if the culture of the team or organization is toxic it may be time to look hard at yourself and see what part you have in creating that. What are you actively encouraging? What are you passively encouraging?

Six coaches. Six principles. Now the question is what area(s) do you need to grow in after learning from the example of these coaches? Do you need to improve your communication? Do you need to clarify why your team is doing all the hard work they are doing? Are you leading by example? Do you need to examine the culture you are creating? Keep growing and you too can lead a championship caliber team. Feel free to comment below and share with others if you found this helpful.

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Jan

2017

My Dad Fail . . . Learn from My Poor Leadership at Home

Those of you that are parents, have you ever done something foolish with your child? I’m talking about the kind of thing where you acted like a child instead being the adult. Not being silly and having fun with your five year old, but a dumb choice.

One day my son came downstairs and instead of being a mature adult I acted like a teenager. In the grand scheme of things it was nothing really big, but it was quite childish for someone of my age. Here was the problem, I laughed after I did it and he was not joining in the laughing.

Basically I acted like a bully in my behavior toward my son. I know, I am a horrible dad. His younger two brothers thought it was funny, but the son I did this to was deeply hurt. That is really when I realized I messed up badly.

The next moments were critical, what would I do? Would I say something like “toughen up and quit being a sissy, I was just messing around with you” or respond totally different.

I went up to his room since it was around bedtime that this happened and I said that I noticed what I did really bothered him. As I lay beside him in bed I first confessed that what I did was immature and childish. The act was not the main problem, my laughing was what really hurt him . . . deeply.

When I realized that, I knew I had to really humble myself. At that point in the conversation I was struck with how deep this wound could go. I did not want to be the source of an unintentional wound deep in my son’s heart. I said “son, I really messed up and what I did was childish. Please forgive me for doing that and for laughing about it.”

Fortunately he extended forgiveness to me and I think it reconciled the situation. Of course I want my child to be tough and be able to handle the mean people and problems of the world, BUT I should not be the one bringing those problems into his life. My wife and I should be sources of stability and calm in our home not unnecessary problems.

If I am to lead well at home then I must have the humility to admit when I mess up and the willingness to ask for forgiveness. This requires both self-awareness of my actions and other-awareness of those I love and how they respond when I react or act. The most important part of this experience is that I learn from it and do not repeat the same mistake. I am sure I will fail many times more as a Dad, but hopefully I will not have the same failure twice.

What about you? How have you learned how to lead better at home through your mistakes with your family? Feel free to share (it will encourage me to know I am not the only one making foolish mistakesJ). Keep learning and keep leading.

Jan

2017

Signs You Are a Leader

For much of my working life I have filled the role of a coach, but not a sport coach. My role has been to get athletes to do what they do not necessarily intrinsically want to do: strength train and condition in the off-season. This requires certain coaching skills to help the individual find their personal purpose.

In that position you have only as much “power” as the sport coach passes along to you. For example, if a player does not work hard but still gets to play this could present a greater motivational challenge. On the other hand, if I knew the coach would not play an athlete for poor performance in the weight room then I had more “tools” to use with the athlete.

Maybe you are in a position where you have little power. Does that mean you are not a leader? On the other hand, maybe you run the company, department, team, etc. Does that mean you are a leader? When I googled the definition of leadership it said 1. the action of leading a group of people or an organization or 2. the state or position of being a leader.¹ These are not very helpful definitions to know if you are a leader. At the end of the synonym list was one word which didn’t relate to power, supremacy, control, etc. . . . INFLUENCE.

Leadership expert John Maxwell regularly states “leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less.”² Look at the following list and decide if you are a leader:

You negotiate with people to help them reach a desired goal. (Hmmm, my wife does this constantly at meal time with our children.)
You try and persuade people to go somewhere you want to go. (That sounds like what I do when I want to eat at a specific restaurant.)
You can perform certain skills in a manner that others seek out your help. Maybe you can build with wood and your friends seek you out for help or you are a good cook or have a knack for certain business skills such as marketing.
When you are in a group and share your thoughts, people quiet down and listen.
People seek out your advice when they have important decisions to make.
People are drawn to you because you make good choices and have great character.

Maybe you look at that list, which is not exhaustive, and think “I don’t meet all those criteria so I am not a leader.” That is simply not true. A leader is a person who influences another in some manner. If you are a parent of one child, have one client, are in a relationship with any person you have the ability to influence and therefore the opportunity to lead.

What will you do with this opportunity? Do you need to grow as a leader? Pick one of the above areas and ask how can I grow in this area and add value to those around me? Start there and you are on the way to becoming a better leader. Leaders are learners. Keep learning, keep growing and see what great dreams you can fulfill.

https://www.google.com/#q=leadership+definition
Maxwell, John C. The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.

Jan

2017

Leading Everywhere

Leadership is influence . . . .

Do you believe you are a leader? As long as you are not trapped in solitary confinement you lead someone. Leadership is simply influence. Maybe you are a parent . . . you lead your children. You probably have a job of some sort, even if that is a full-time student . . . you are around people and therefore you influence them.

Did you get out of bed this morning? Well, you had to influence or lead yourself to get out of bed and begin working on your priorities for the day. Do you interact with people out in public? Most likely the answer is yes so you influence them with your attitude and what you say so you are leading them either in a positive or negative direction.

Hopefully you see that no matter what stage of life you are in, you are a leader. My hope is that anytime you connect with me on this blog you can grow a little as a leader in one of four areas:

Leading at Work – Many stresses come our way at work and multiple demands are placed on us. Sometimes we need encouragement to press on and at times we may need to learn from others. Hopefully I can help us in this part of the leadership journey.
Leading at Home – As a parent and father of three boys I realize being a parent and spouse are not easy roles to fulfill. At times it feels like you are speaking a different language than your spouse. Maybe you want to connect better with your children. Hopefully I can help encourage you in this area of your leadership development.
Leading Self – The most difficult person to lead at times can be the person looking back at us in the mirror. Leading ourselves requires certain habits and disciplines. Hopefully through learning from the wisdom of others we can get out of our own way when it comes to leading.
Leading others – We are constantly interacting with people and either leading them down a positive or negative path. Often that leading can be as simple as a smile at the grocery store or an encouraging word.

Leadership skills can be developed and many people have written how they have learned to lead others. Coaches, historians, educators, and more have shared their wisdom and hopefully we can learn from their experience to help us become better leaders.

As we interact through this blog I hope to provide valuable principles that will help you as you lead in multiple areas of your life. We all lead busy lives so I will introduce you to some thoughts from those who have written on leadership and shared valuable principles as well as principles I have drawn from personal experience. My hope is each post and any other program you engage in will help increase your awareness so you can grow as a leader.

So are you a leader?

Let’s grow together in this journey.

Lead well at work and home.