Last Monday's class (2/21) we also discussed an article from Sports Illustrated about Scott Pioli, the new general manager and team president of the Kansas City Chiefs. Pioli made a name for himself with the Patriots where he won three Super Bowls with the team as their director of player personnel. He was overshadowed by Bill Belichick's prowess but is now molding the Kansas City Chiefs with many of the techniques used in New England. Last year the Chiefs drafted the most college captains out of all of the NFL teams. It's a philosophy that goes along with his belief that it's more important to find the right people than the individuals with the best stats or 40 yard dashes (sounds like the leadership idea of getting the right people off the bus and the right people on the bus). In 2010, the Chiefs won more games than in '08 and '09 combined and made the playoffs for the first time in a while. Pioli's philosophy is obviously paying dividends for the Chiefs' franchise. Here's the great article showcasing Pioli from Sports Illustrated: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1179410/index.htm
Steve Hauser, an aspiring NFL coach and student in the forum, had some interesting points to make concerning the article and his experience as captain of the Wesleyan Tennis team:
As a newly appointed captain for the Wesleyan Men’s Tennis team, I am attempting to “model the way” for my teammates. After reading these accounts and listening to the discussion in our forum, I decided to gather the team and we created a mission statement. Like Pioli, we found keywords that harkened back to the origins of our beliefs and these words were effort, aggressiveness, and teamwork (a.k.a EAT). With a catchy mnemonic and a basic creed, our team now has concrete aims.
Sustainable success, however, is not simply granted upon the creation of a mission statement; it must be earned through action. With our goals now concretely formulated and proudly shown on a large banner, these words must continually resonate and be religiously practiced. It is my responsibility, as a captain, to make sure we continually move forward in line with these virtues. Hopefully, once the power of this model is seen it can become a process the team carries on in the future, providing internal disciple and sustainable success for years to come.
Last Monday's class we finished studying the Five Practices of Exemplary Student Leadership by Kouzes and Posner. We discussed that Enabling Others to Act is the ability for leaders to foster collaboration through trust and empowering the people they are working with. That means creating an environment of cohesiveness and togetherness that allows the group to function better. The leader needs to strengthen others through encouraging, motivating, and engaging their constituents. Doing this allows followers to achieve above average status, maybe not the best - but better than before. It gives people the drive to strive for excellence and to approach the extraordinary when they otherwise wouldn't have tried without the encouragement of the leader. Leaders build a trust between the people involved to make everyone feel strong (mentally), capable, informed, and connected. The trust allows everyone more discretion to choose, gives them their own authority and more willingness to take risk. Without risk there can be no progress.
Encouraging the Heart is about recognizing everyone's contributions and creating an environment of celebration. During the climb to achieving goals there will be bumps along the way, people will get tired, frustrated and disenchanted. The leader always shows the followers care, carries an upbeat mentality, keeps the spirit of the group up, and keeps the group moving forward. I gave the example of a family story that is often told by my grandparents and dad about my great grandmother, Grandma DeGregorio (who I never had the chance to meet). During the Depression as a young women she told her family: "don't look back, just look forward." I thought this is a great example of encouraging the heart, in a time that really beats up the mind and soul, she had the convictions to let her family know that everything would be just fine as long as we did not hold on to the past.
I mentioned that leaders create a climate of celebration to congratulate jobs well done. My high school baseball coach, Mario Diez (who is one of my personal mentors), did things like this with Player of the Week t-shirts and he also started the Big Time Play Club, which notarized a big play of the game that influenced the outcome of a win. This built a climate of excellence that everyone fed off of, because everyone wanted to be the Player of the Week. This form of public celebration is great because he always said: "We're all in this together," or during a team breakdown he would say: "Stay together." It created a cohesiveness that I never experienced before, and it's one of the main reasons we were so successful year in and year out. We were celebrating the values and vision he set out for us: public celebration created a form of team spirit that sustained people's focus throughout the season.
I also talked about having a collective identity as a team and organization. Something that is sincere, thought out, and from the heart. I recently went on an interview to Suffolk Construction in Boston, MA and on the back of every employee's business card reads:
Passion
Integrity
Hard Work
Professionalism
On my first interview they actually asked about all four of their chief principles and what it meant to me. Organizations work very hard at developing business values that their employees work through and maybe that's why Suffolk produced $1.7 billion in revenue last year...
Another example I brought in was again from my high school baseball program. We were called the Hustlin' Warriors (see picture of the back of our hats at right). It became an identity for us that we bought into by running hard down the first baseline on a pop up or ground ball out, sprinting on and off the field, or hustling out of the batter's box after a strikeout. It gave us a sense of togetherness that other teams didn't have.
Three state championships later:
We embodied the vision, believed in it, we won and succeeded just like Suffolk does.
Finally, we discussed the Learning to Lead section. In the first class I exclaimed that I was going to find everyone's inner leader, because in my opinion everyone is a leader. Kouzes and Posner would agree as they say leadership is not a gene but an observable and learnable set of practices. A couple of the students disagreed and compared certain hypothetical individuals that you can think of by yourself. Leading is hard to do and that's why not everyone is one - no doubt about it. Leadership is not a perfect science (something also Coach Diez used to say about baseball) and there are no clear answers. That's what makes this student forum so powerful and interesting - and liberal artsy (sooooo Wesleyan). We can only hypothesize and continue to develop rough answers to questions we pose and topics we consider. It's a form of critical thinking that the forum's discussion creates that allows our minds to run wild.
Often we go through these authors or look at leadership in the context of sports, politics, business, or personal experiences and we continually run over the same issues. The only differences are that it is said in a different way. No one trait makes great leaders. Not a certain personality. Not a certain experience. However, I do think that some of the best leaders are the people who are willing to learn certain traits, learn from positive and negative experiences, but be themselves (being yourself is the tricky part and is what makes leadership so hard!!). That is in no way a final thesis, just a thought, this is a blog after all.
Elvin Lim will be coming in and discussing Presidents as Kings and that will give us a whole different definition of what makes a great leader (in the context of political leadership). That leader is different from a coach, CEO, father, Priest or Rabbi - or is it? We will soon find out later in the semester..
Coach Mike Whalen - the head football coach at Wesleyan - will be visiting class on Monday night, our last class before Spring Break, and it's going to be another great learning experience for us all.
Derrick Rose, Charles Woodson, and Mike McCarthy. What do they all have in common? The easy answer is they're all leaders in their own respect. Rick Reilly writes about Derrick Rose, the star guard of the Chicago Bulls, how he's playing in his home town and how he's carried the Bulls during a period where they've been hit with certain injuries to key players. I always thought Derrick Rose was self-centered and arrogant like many other athletes (I know a few come to mind). Despite Derrick's allegations at Memphis I really have a new found respect for the way he speaks: "maam, sir, thanks for coming out to the game tonight, and I appreciate you wearing my jersey." You don't get that in this money crazy era of professional sports. Reilly then asks him:
"Who's your vote for MVP?"
Derrick Rose: "Can I vote for myself?"
Reilly: "Sure"
Derrick Rose: "Me"
I felt that this wasn't an example of arrogance; Derrick goes on to explain himself saying he's worked so hard for this. All of the great leaders have that little cockiness about them (their convictions perhaps) that propel them to be their best. I loved that.
Then we looked at Charles Woodson's post game Super Bowl speech:
A true leader grips the heart of the people he's involved with. Woodson is that type of person - revealing a vision for his teammates to grab on to: "To the White House" (the place where all championship teams in American professional sports go to). Woodson is the type of person that his teammates wanted to play for and his coaches wanted to coach for. In the end, the passion he displayed allowed his teammates to play with that same passion, which made them into champions. Many times the followers don't want to be outworked by the best players on the team so it gets everyone to have a great work ethic and achieve their goals. Tim Duncan and Tom Brady are like this. A great story.
Finally, Mike McCarthy's (Green Bay Packers Super Bowl Winning Coach) motivational technique the night before the Super Bowl was to fit his players for their Super Bowl rings - obviously before they even won. We realized that McCarthy was literally giving his players something to hold onto, a vision of his that was now theirs. A championship was out there for them to grab - and they took it. However, we also said that Mike Tomlin of the Steelers couldn't use this technique because it wasn't the first time many of the Steelers players would be putting on a Super Bowl ring in their careers. Whatever it was, it made the Packers hungrier than the Steelers and I loved the cockiness. Similar to Derrick Rose - the Packers also believed that they were the best because they worked so hard to get to that point.
Looking at iconic sports figures is not all we do in this class. We tackled an article by James Kouzes and Barry Posner who are both established speakers and writers on leadership from UC-Santa Clara: The Five Practices of Exemplary Student Leadership.
We discussed three of the practices: modeling the way, inspiring a shared vision, and challenging the process. We decided that modeling the way is forming the identity of your organization. It's about changing the identity of an organization if it's one that needs to be reworked. So for example, a great coach who comes into a losing program implements a philosophy of winning - This is the way we do things around herefrom here on out. It's about setting goals, knowing what you want as the leader, and deciding what's best for the group. Modeling the way is knowing your values and setting the example with those values.
Kouzes and Posner demonstrate that when inspiring a shared vision the leader needs to envision the future by imagining exciting and better possibilities. The leader's vision needs to become the shared vision of the people he/she is leading. We watched one of President Obama's campaign speeches as an example (skip to about 8:05):
Whether you're a supporter of Obama or not I don't think you can argue against his speaking prowess. He captured the hearts and minds of several generations when he campaigned in 2008. Inspiring the vision is helping people to imagine exciting goals, and making my (your) vision OUR vision.
"Tonight belongs to you"
"Nothing can stand in our way"
"There's going to be a challenge, but this is how we're going to overcome it: With Hope."
He gives his followers purpose and motivation; his use of the word hope is almost religious.
"People are going to tell us 'we shouldn't try to change' or 'we can't.'"
He lets his followers know that there is going to be a challenge, but "What was America built on?" "The citizens of America are not about giving up, it's not how this country was built." Giving people a sense of nostalgia like this makes them feel that this election is as important as the Revolutionary War. "We Americans are going to take back America!"
"Yes WE can, Yes WE Can, Yes WE Can..."
Over and over the chanting gave me chills. (Can you imagine thousands of people believing in you like that and chanting your vision?)
Obama's vision became his voters' vision.
"This is the destiny of our nation."
"They said no to the slaves and abolitionists, immigrants, MLK" - he's talking about all different kinds of people here and giving people so much imagery. The steelworker in Pittsburgh, the farmer in South Carolina - and you think to yourself: Oh that's me!
"One people, one nation." He's giving his listeners something to hold on to. He's giving them ownership and possession of their dreams. It's the same tactic McCarthy used by having his players get fitted for their Super Bowl rings.
Whether it be with the Super Bowl Trophy or in Obama's case - Change, these things are right out there for the taking - and McCarthy and Obama are exclaiming to their followers: what will you do with it? Inspiring to say the least.
Finally, leaders challenge the process. They don't respect the status quo, leaders are innovative - they seek change and want the situation they're involved in to improve. Leaders will fail because they're not afraid to experiment and make mistakes, but the great leaders learn from those mishaps along the way.
I ended class with a person I've come to know over the past few years. Jason Ferruggia is one of the world's most renowned strength and conditioning coaches and I've had the opportunity to train with him at his gym in New Jersey when I'm home over winter and summer breaks. He not only has had a significant impact on my athleticism and health, but he's also a great motivator. I brought in an article he recently wrote on his blog about his sudden move to California (he hated the cold winters in Jersey - I can't blame him). Jay practices what he preaches, is a hardcore Vegan, is very strong, and just knows what he's talking about. He's been in the strength game since '94. Here's the article for you to read: Californication.
The point I wanted everyone to understand is what Jay articulated via Henry Rollins. Jay created this Renegade brand. Being a renegade is something every leader needs to be. They need to "Challenge the Process", rip apart whatever mundane situation they are apart of, grip it by the horns and go full steam ahead with your vision. Jay talks about taking control of your life and being a renegade, well in terms of leadership we're talking about being your own person, innovating, believing in your set of convictions and not taking no for an answer. My dad always used to say don't be a follower. Be different. And I loved him for that, maybe that's what makes Wesleyan such a great fit for me.
"Don't let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game." Renegades aren't afraid to take risk and neither are leaders.
"Don't regret the things you didn't do more than the things you did do." Jay is right. Be your own person, live your own life, live in the moment, and be your own leader. Take control and reach for whatever it is that you want to grab and don't be another statistic in this world that's filled with them.
I asked the students to embark on these ideas in a response to recap the first two classes:
Write about something that you've learned and really come to appreciate in our first two classes where we've attempted to define whatleadershipis - what's effective leadership to you (as of right now) and expand on it. What quality would you implement into your ideals as a leader and what would be something that you'd want to pass on to a teammate, classmate, or whoever you're leading? Think of it as a keynote speech that you're giving to a graduating class and what important quality for successful leadership you'd pass on to them.
There were some great responses and I chose to Jon Sheehan's, a Wesleyan baseball captain and executive leader at his fraternity, so here's what he said:
I don’t like John Boehner one bit, but I respect him and listen to what he says.I do this because he swept floors to pay for college, and when he was quite disillusioned with the world, he ran for the Ohio statehouse.Today, as Speaker of the House, while it may be easy to find flaws in his politics, one must respect the way he ascended the ranks of both politics, and life.Throughout the first two classes, the theme of working one’s way up the ranks has been hit on multiple times.Whether it was Eric Mangini or Bill Belichick being the towel boy or Todd Keats discussing his father’s ascension up to the top of the family business, working one’s way up in my opinion is critical to being a good leader.
John Wooden said that you must “earn it, and deserve it.”That fits in with working your way up to the top.Paying your dues isn’t enough.If you begin as a coffee boy, you better be the best coffee getter there is.Taking responsibility seriously, and doing any task to the best of your ability, is invaluable.Kendrick Meek, the former Congressman and failed Florida senatorial candidate, began his career as a security officer.He worked so hard, and was so good at this seemingly menial job, that he was promoted to be on President Clinton’s detail during a campaign stop in the state.Meek impressed the President so much, that when he decided to run for Congress, Clinton was the first to endorse Meek, and campaigned multiple times for him.
While certainly lacking the sexy title, power, or benefits of high end jobs, I believe the best leaders start from the bottom.Boehner, Meek, Mangini, Mr. Keats, and Belichick know what it is like to be at the bottom, and are better leaders for being there.Wooden also wrote that it is important to be careful who you follow; I’d recommend following the people who have worked their way up, and earned their stripes the hard way.
Sorry for the lapse in posts, been a little busy with everything going on. We had an interesting class the other night and welcomed in Wesleyan's own Mark Woodworth who is also an alum of Wes.
He can appreciate a class like Strategies of Leadership and how interesting it can get because it's student run. We began the class and finished our discussion from the week before on John Wooden:
Leadership is more than X's and O's - the ability to teach and motivate is more important in the bigger picture.
Coach Wooden learned that when coaching he was not handling players, but instead working with them. This allowed for the creation of an environment where people wanted to work and improve, because they knew that Coach Wooden was working with them - that he was not necessarily above his players.
The best leaders must follow before they can lead - the best leaders in this world had to learn from experience in order to build up convictions and values that they lead their life with in order to rub off on others.
Finally - choose your leaders wisely, being careful of who you follow is important - choosing your friends, coaches, and mentors make a big difference. Although sometimes you are thrown into situations, it's important to pick and choose the right people to associate with and learn from.
Coach Woodworth then came in and for those of you who don't know - the Wesleyan baseball team won 19 games two years ago and last year broke the 20 win barrier with 22 wins. They've made the NESCAC playoffs two years in a row and are looking to take it to the promised land this season. Coach's philosophies are catching on with his players and they're ultimately buying in. He's been an influential figure in my own life and playing career here at Wes and I'm looking forward to learning even more this season. Coach is the type of person that you could sit in an office for hours with and be captivated by his ideas. He's big on the mental side of baseball and we could spend days discussing that.
One of coach's most interesting tactics is his use of the plan. It's a plan for what we envision doing this season as an individual and we do it for the team too. We state a goal - and that goal can be anything from striking out less to throwing more strikes as a pitcher. And he'll ask how we're going to achieve that. It really gets you to think about what you have to do in order to achieve a goal. It's about what you'll work on mechanically and mentally in order to believe that you'll accomplish a goal. It's a vision statement and in many ways he's teaching us to be our own, individual leader. We're establishing a vision for what we want to be and we're setting out to accomplish this vision in the off-season and during the season - the journey if you will.
Coach then introduced his idea that a leader or coach is a CEO. What does a CEO do - they oversee and manage a company. Coaches need to be CEOs and CEOs need to be coaches - it's about getting people to do what they need to do. It's as simple as that. The CEO implements a vision, has a set of convictions and morals that guide an organization. A coach implements a vision for his team, has a set of convictions and morals that guide his/her players. It's an interesting concept and something that we talked for a long time about.
Coach then introduced some really interesting people including Frosty Westering and John Gagliardi . Coach Woodworth wanted to introduce some people we never heard of that have some interesting philosophies. Frosty Westering became famous as the head football coach of Pacific Lutheran. His teams were known as some of the nicest football teams ever, but who were very successful. Frosty instituted the After Glow, in which he would gather the team in front of fans and family to celebrate something that someone did good in the game today whether it was a win or loss. He created a culture that was extremely positive and it's one of the many reasons his teams won. John Gagliardi, whom the Division 3 version of the Heisman Trophy is named after, is the head football coach at Saint John's University in Minnesota. They are perennial powers, but they never practice in pads, don't do sprints, they practice for only 90 minutes, they don't do any drills in practice and instead just run plays 11 vs. 11. These are two unconventional methods that coach wanted us to look at, he even introduced a coach named George Davis who had his players vote on the starting lineups.
I think that what's great about having guest speakers in class is that you can learn so much from people who've been through it and who are real world leaders. The key word is learning - learning something new every day is what makes life so beautiful. I think that being open minded and willing to learn is in fact one of the keys to making people great leaders.
Our classmate, hockey captain and a Treasurer of his fraternity Tom Salah '12 (who is not enrolled in the class but is following on the blog) makes some interesting comments to me in an e-mail last week, so I wanted to share them with you (keep in mind I'm interested in other outsiders making guest posts!):
"I enjoyed your links between leaders throughout social scenes and various interactions. I had an interview this past week for an internship at a bank in Boston and I answered many of the woman's questions by relating them to sports. Is that the right thing to do, who knows, but for me it felt right. I think your tie between a firm, team, parish, and family is right on. This was the direction I headed in my interview. Good leaders are a dime a dozen. I would have to say that leaders of all different groups should value many of the same things. This unfortunately isn't the case.
As for Rex Ryan, I certainly believe he has a unique way of coaching, but I also believe that it works for him. The problem I see is that his style isn't built for the long term. He put so much emphasis on winning a Super Bowl in that Hard Knocks show and obviously didn't get it done. I thought he made a good move in coming out after the Pittsburgh loss by saying that their goals aren't going to change next year, but if he doesn't get a ring in the next few years then he probably won't get one for a while, unless of course he falls into a perfect situation which usually doesn't happen. I think that because there is always less meaning on ideas the second time around and meaning is everything. Which is why Lombardi would pat a guy on the back after him out and got his point across. This world is full of personalities and great leaders are the ones who can adopt those different ways to make their players perform at the highest level. Sure, Bill Belichick has had unbelievable talent during his tenure with the Pats, but the credit is due for the job he did when he didn't have the Pro Bowlers. I know I may seem biased, but Belichick is one of a kind and all leaders should model his way."
Steve Hauser, an intern the past two summers for the Cleveland Browns and Wesleyan U. senior football/tennis player let us know about Eric Mangini, Wesleyan Class of '94, two-time NFL Head Coach and Super Bowl winner and his feelings on convictions:
(On if he learned anything about handling the pressures of being a head coach by watching Belichick)- “Bill’s a pretty focused guy and I think the important thing is that you have to know what you stand for, know what you believe in and have conviction. There’s always going to be...differences ofopinion and you respect the differences of opinion, but at the end of the day you have to go with what you feel is right and what you believe is right. Sometimes it is right, sometimes it’s wrong, but there’s always going to be ideas and thoughts as to how you can do something differently. Your job is to do what you feel is going to give the team an opportunity to be successful.” - Eric Mangini
There's a fine line between standing up for what you believe in, knowing what's right and being too stubborn and stuck in your ways - a line that only the true great leaders really know how to straddle. Mangini is definitely right in saying that believing in your own convictions to carry forward is the way to go, however, it's also a strong quality to realize when to take criticism - learning from mistakes and being open to learning in general is when people really take their game to the next level.
When first deciding to introduce John Wooden I had no idea how contradicting he was to the figure we studied last week - Rex Ryan. John Wooden is probably one of the purest people to ever achieve so much success in his time and be so humble about it. John Wooden epitomized the saying: taking it one step at a time, he walked the walked, and performed with the best of them. John Wooden was the type of coach that as a mother, you wanted your son to play for. He was the grandfatherly figure that everyone wants in their life - vastly different than Rex. John Wooden is definitely someone we'll talk about throughout the semester as he's a very influential figure in my life even without ever meeting him. His values are so sensible but so complex that they're mind blowing. His passages get you thinking about yourself and it's not as if he's trying to convince you that he's right at all, but he's doing what he does best and that's teaching.
Who Can Lead, A Leader's Difficult Task, A Leader Is Fair, Walk the Walk, Dictator Leaders, Leaders Listen, Rewarding Individuals, Leadership and Punishment are a few of the passages from John Wooden's A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court
It's a title everyone should have in their book collection. The discussion caught fire with a Leader is Fair. I think that a lot of times in life people encounter troubling times with leadership that's frustrating to them. They encounter a Captain, Vice President, Manager, a Coach or leader of whatever organization you are a part of that makes you feel held down, people that hold back your creativity, don't see your potential, don't see your ability to grow, and if you are the last one on the bench - they treat you like it. We talked about treating the last guy on the bench the same as the starter and being just as hard on both, treating the entry level college grad with the same level of respect as the Vice President in a company. We coined this as building a healthy environment for leaders to be developed. We talked about how in building an organization or a championship team that role players are just as important as the All-Americans. In a business sense - that means that the entry level employees who are crunching the numbers are just as important as the VP's making the deals. It's an intertwined net that makes a company go, makes a company flourish - when everyone feels that self-worth, they perform better.
We talked about walking the walk - and doing everything that you're preaching to your company, parishioners, followers, players (we can go on and on, but in our opinion you're influencing people at every moment in your lifetime). Then we walked into an interesting discussion as to why John Wooden thinks dictators don't make good leaders. Someone brought up Hitler and a few actually argued that Hitler was the best leader to ever walk planet Earth - only leader to ever have zero unemployed, etc., etc (I see the argument but I'm not buying it - it's something we'll talk about in the Leadership vs. Power section later in the semester) Wooden mentions dictator leaders like General Patton and Vince Lombardi who were successful but Wooden claims that he (himself) led with "concern, compassion, and consideration". What did we think of this? We said it depends - we talked about having the best of those qualities - like setting the tone as a dictator while having a soft, compassionate inside. Many of us saw that with Lombardi, who had a dictator approach on the field, but was a little softer with his players off it. He would rip into a player for doing something wrong in practice and then in the locker room a few moments later (probably feeling guilty) he would compliment the guy or give him a pat on the back. That's the kind of guy Vince was, however, and maybe that's what made him such a great leader. He had that vision for greatness and he also knew how to relate to his players.
I think that ultimately what we tried to beat home is that people are humans. Humans want to feel valued, humans want to be pushed, and whether they fail or succeed they want to be acknowledged. Simply put, "Treat people the same way you'd like to be treated" (Sully). You probably learned that from your mother in the 1st grade, but it's as simple as that. A pat on the back, a head nod, a smile, a handshake, a hello. It doesn't always need to be much, but it's important for a leader to have those personable qualities that make the last guy on the bench, the entry level college grad, or the middle class father/mother of two feel important once and a while. It's funny, but sometimes maybe our own leaders lose sight of this oh so important quality, losing sight of what's important in life.
Next week we're welcoming in Coach Mark Woodworth of the Wesleyan Baseball Cardinals to talk about many a topic.
If anybody would like the slides we reviewed in class I can send them to you, just e-mail me at jgiaimo@wesleyan.edu.
All the love from Middletown,
JG
"Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Character is what you really are; reputation is merely what you are perceived to be." - John Wooden
