Leadership

Tonight I watched the second half of a rebroadcast of last year's Georgia at Auburn football game, ranked by ESPN as the #3 best college football game of 2013.  It got me thinking about college football, football in general, and also leadership.

I remembered my college football coach, Barry Streeter, who SUCKED as a football coach.  I have stated to others and I write unequivocally here that my high school football coach was superior to, better than, Coach Barry Streeter.  When I played for Coach Streeter, he ran the wing-T offense, consisting of three running backs and only one wide receiver.  He remained stubborn in this offensive set during a time when college football at the Division I level was opening up to a more pro-style offense, that is, more passing.  I remember that his inflexibility actually gave the opposing teams an advantage, because his playbook as head coach was the same year after year.  So opposing head coaches and defensive coordinators could just study film from previous years and coach their defense on how to defend a particular play based on the offensive formation and the action in the backfield.  This is common sense of course, something that Coach Streeter apparently lacks.

I just looked up Coach Streeter's overall record as head coach (see here).  In the past 16 seasons, he's had a winning record just 4 times.  Despite anyone who may want to call him a "legend" based on his long tenure, this record is anything but legendary; it's sub-par.

Now, let's contrast...

I just saw an article on philly.com, the headline of which was "Expect Kelly's Eagles to have new wrinkles in their offense."  The first sentence of the article reads: "Chip Kelly has said since Day 1 that offense is personnel-driven."  Then, just a couple lines later, Kelly is quoted as saying: "The biggest thing that you have to do is identify the skill-sets you have..."  I made this same point numerous times as a college football player to my positions coach under Coach Streeter.  Even as a student, I recognized that you don't plug players into a cookie-cutter system, which minimizes players' unique talents and makes your offense completely predictable.  And this is a principle of leadership that should apply to any team, organization, or company: you take the time to assess and understand your talent, then you put your team members in the best possible positions to exploit those individual talents with the objective to meet your team's goals.  It's not rocket science.

As author Warren Bennis wrote in his book "On Becoming a Leader": "The success or failure of all organizations . . . rests on the quality of their decision makers."  Again, refer back to Coach Streeter's overall record over the past 16 years; does that significant sample size reflect success or failure?  (As an important sidenote, Warren Bennis died two days ago (article here)).  There are certain traits of a leader, which include being active (as opposed to reactive), experimental (as opposed to rote), and flexible (as opposed to rigid); these are all cited by Bennis in On Becoming a Leader.  Whereas Coach Kelly exemplifies those positive leadership traits, Coach Streeter exemplifies the stagnant traits of a manager wearing a leader's mask.

I imagine that, at this point, at this late date, there is likely no way to get Coach Streeter to retire (or have him 'relieved of his duties').  If you're a high school player being recruited by, or considering playing for, Coach Streeter, my clear advice is: don't.

And for the vast majority of you who aren't being recruited by Coach Streeter, keep this leadership principle in mind when looking at your own career: spend as little time as possible in a workplace where management and supervisors are mediocre managers, rather than true leaders.  You'll get sucked in; your self-esteem may take a hit when you don't fit into the cookie-cutter mold; and you may start to question your skills or abilities.  If that happens, get the hell out of there!  Go somewhere to work for real leaders, people who will support you, encourage you, and positively challenge you, based upon an assessment and understanding of your individual skills.  Understand that good leaders make you better; bad leaders mostly waste your time, except to learn how not to be.