DC Velocity - April 2016

Everett Withers, Dan McCarney, Kyle Whittingham, and Gregg Brandon. Ripples on the pond, or waves of the future that are upon us?

PIECES AND PARTS

In a stroke of fortune, Meyer found a voice to speak what he had learned and articulate what more he needed to master as a sustainable leader. Tim Kight, founder and CEO of Focus 3, has provided process and structure to help Meyer leave his past negatives behind and carry his positives into new realms as he has used life epiphanies to transform his journey and inform his paying forward, developing leadership skills and capabilities in those around him. A key is that Kight’s approach embodies a system and is not a collection of slogans or a burst of cheerleading.

The details would take more space than we have to work with, but some core elements include:

b Living above the line, behaving intentionally, on purpose, and skillfully rather than below the line, being impulsive, on autopilot, and resistant.

b The importance of the R Factor (as in E + R = O), in which Events occur unpredictably, and the Outcome depends on the strength of your Response.

b A structured culture-building process, constructed on levels of Belief, Selling, and Demanding—an accountability that is a natural consequence of believing and persuading the legitimacy of the process and plan over time, and with continuous application. And that teaching team members at all levels, and in all roles, to reach beyond their capabilities is a key to winning leadership.

There’s more, of course. It’s all in Meyer’s 2015 book, Above the Line, published by Penguin Press.

A TAKEAWAY

My favorite, frankly, is Meyer’s take on leveraging emerging leadership, in which assistant coaches and top 10 percent standouts are accountable for moving the middle 80 percent up into the top tier—and not wasting any precious time on rehabilitating lost causes, the bottom 10 percent. That alone can make the elusive “good to great” progression a practical reality.

So, whether you take the Urban Meyer model or another that’s equally comprehensive and balanced, I’ll pose the challenge. Are you really a leader or an emerging leader? Are you willing and able to dedicate enough of yourself to create a culture and link behavior to outcomes, rather than simply show up and do a job? Are you ready and willing to make those game-changing ripples in the pond?

I hope you are; the profession needs you—as a real leader—desperately.

COACHES GO TO SCHOOL

The difference between coaches as uber-bosses and coaches as organized and authentic leaders is growing—and becoming more obvious—daily. The obvious beacons in contemporary college football coaching, Nick Saban and Urban Meyer, would be appalled at any suggestion that they are successful because they rule by fear, or that they scream loudest, are most persuasive in one-on-one recruiting promises, or are master motivators in half-time pleas and sermons.

To shine the torch on Urban Meyer, to illustrate, he has had the benefit of a series of relationships with mentors, generally of the Old School—Earle Bruce, Lou Holtz, Sonny Lubick, Bob Davie. But he learned from each and all of them, and incorporated what he learned into an emerging philosophy of leadership and achievement. And he has actively cultivated other learning relationships, with such people as Nike’s Phil Knight, JPMorganChase’s Jamie Dimon, Jon Gruden, John Robinson, and Bill Belichick.

In turn, Meyer has become a mentor, with numerous assistants moving on to head coaching leadership positions and taking the lessons of new leadership with them. Tom Herman, Dan Mullen, Charlie Strong, Chris Ash, Tim Beckman, Steve Addazio, Doc Holliday, Gary Anderson,

Art van Bodegraven is, among other roles, chief design officer for the DES Leadership Academy; he can be reached at (614) 893-9414 or avan@columbus. rr.com. His website is www.artvanbodegraven.com.