Leadership Lessons From The NFL
Yes, I was one of the 133 million people who watched the Super Bowl this year.I wasn’t rooting for either team, so I just enjoyed the game, and yes, the halftime show too.
Everytime I watch an NFL game, I’m always struck by how huge the players are; they dwarf everyone else on the field – the coaches, support staff, referees. But they seem bigger than ever, dwarfing the reporters who interview them and appear more massive than former football greats.
To confirm my suspicion, I looked up the stats. I was right. The average weight of an NFL player has increased by 10% since 1985. Today’s players are also much more athletic. They run faster and hit harder.
This has created a game that is more competitive, faster-paced, and, according to many observers, much more challenging.
Sounds a lot like the current business environment, doesn’t it? It’s fiercely competitive, fast-changing, and unforgiving of mistakes.
Let me suggest that to compete in this environment, companies need leaders who think and act like professional athletes – people who work hard at developing the skills and stamina needed to perform at consistently high levels.
What does it take to achieve this level of performance? Three things.
Fundamentals
According to Vince Lombardi, “football is only two things – blocking and tackling.” Purists may quibble with this, but Lombardi’s larger point is spot on – excellence in football requires solid fundamentals. The best players in the NFL know how to run, block, tackle, and so forth, and they do each very well. This is what gives their team a competitive advantage.
Successful business leaders also possess solid fundamentals.
These include business acumen, industry knowledge, and leadership skills.
Unfortunately, mastering these competencies is difficult. Unlike athletes, most leaders learn how to lead while on the job, through trial and error, with little feedback. Furthermore, the total set of skills needed by a leader far exceeds that of a professional football player.
Still, it’s possible to develop leadership skills through what, the late psychologist, Anders Ericcson calls deliberate practice – “practice that focuses on tasks beyond your current level of competence and comfort.”
As every athlete knows, drilling between practices and games is critical to success on the field, court, or pool, and receiving a skilled coach accelerates skill gain.
Here’s how you can apply these principles to become a more effective leader.
First, start by identifying your leadership gaps – those behaviors that hold you back from being a maximally effective people leader. Use manager feedback, self-reflection, and especially 360-assessments, to gain these insights. Common development areas of need include delegation, emotional intelligence, prioritization, goal setting, communication, and coaching, to name a few.
Next, align with your manager on the type of experience, exposure, or education needed to achieve your leadership development goals.
Attending formal leadership development programs is a great way to start. There you’ll learn different leadership models and techniques you can incorporate into your management style and have the opportunity to network with other leaders.
In a similar vein, you can learn a great deal by studying case studies and keeping abreast of leadership best practices. Harvard Business Review and LinkedIn Learning are good resources in this regard.
Next up is the actual deliberate practice part – putting into action what you’ve learned.
Some of the ways we can hone our leadership skills include engaging a mentor and modeling their behavior, experimenting with different leadership approaches and choosing those that work for you, and gaining insight through personal reflection.
The gold standard for driving lasting behavior change is of course coaching.
A skilled executive coach will help guide self-discovery and bring to life the knowledge you have learned through experience and/or structured learning opportunities. Great coaches ask probing questions (this includes challenging our assumptions), help us arrive at our own solutions, and hold us accountable.
One-on-one coaching should be a component of any leadership development journey, be it for an individual or a larger, enterprise initiative.
Finally, especially for newer leaders, I encourage them to volunteer for leadership positions outside of the workplace, such as in community or non-profit organizations. There they can develop leadership skills they can take back to the workplace, all acquired without any professional risk.
Agility
The best professional athletes react quickly and easily when the game changes. They follow the flow of the game, consider their options, and make instantaneous adjustments. And the very best players create change, rather than follow it. In one word, they are agile.
© Getty Images
For example, take Peyton Manning, the legendary quarterback, and 11-time Pro-Bowler. He exemplified agility, especially mental agility, and is arguably one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history.
Sportswriters George Bretherton and Carl Nelson describe a typical Manning play this way: “In the time it takes most people to flip a switch, Manning can calculate what an opposing defense is trying to do, adjust to it, and then release the perfect pass.”
How did Manning do it? It comes down to the way he thinks. According to the Colts’ quarterback coach, Frank Reich, Manning was successful because “[his] mind is always going, he’s formulating a plan, synthesizing all this information that he is hearing, seeing, studying from other people.”
Business leaders need a similar level of agility. According to business author Bruna Martinuzzi, the best leaders “… get out of their comfort zone, and learn continuously as a way of adapting to changed surroundings.” They think, ask, adjust, and act.
In a word, they are deeply curious. They constantly seek out new information, experiment with new ways of working and new products, and never settle for the status quo.
The net result: these leaders are quick to respond to change, but even more importantly, they anticipate change; they are able to, in the words of a former colleague of mine, “see around the corner.”
Ok, personal reflection time.
Are you an agile or fixed mindset leader? Do you welcome change or fear it? Do you see change as an opportunity or a threat? Do you respond quickly and effectively to change, or do you stall, or worse, make rash decisions? Are you learning new ways to lead or are you stuck in a rut?
Change is inevitable, how we respond to it is not. If you want to improve your agility as a leader, check out some of these suggestions.
Focus
Professional athletes are obsessed with winning. How do they go about doing it?
Interestingly, they focus on the task, not the outcome. The best quarterbacks concentrate on executing every play well, not on achieving the long-term goal of winning the game.
Sounds counter-intuitive, right? It’s not.
The way to win is through consistent performance, not by obsessing or fantasizing about winning the game. Former Pittsburgh Steelers coach, Chuck Noll sums it up this way: “If you want to win, do the ordinary things better than anyone else does – day in and day out.”
The same principle applies to leadership.
Whether you are creating a vision and strategy or implementing it, the way to success is through excellent execution – accomplishing each task well on a daily basis.
Building a company takes a great deal of time and effort and is the culmination of thousands of daily decisions and actions. The better the execution, the greater the chance your company will succeed.
Long-term, strategic goals are critically important – they provide direction and vision of the future.
But focusing on achieving daily accomplishments is key to delivering future success.
The best leaders, like the best football players, focus on getting the job done and delivering the goods, every day. They don’t just think or talk about it. They do it. And they bring others along with them on their quest.
Leaders may not be doing the work, but they are in the position to create daily/weekly goals for themselves and their teams to track progress against the larger strategy, and then celebrate wins along the way.
If you want to become a better leader, approach your work in the same way – be present in each moment, intent on accomplishing each task well.
Focus on execution and never stop learning and growing as a person and a leader.
Doing these things will help you become a more skilled and effective leader, capable of becoming the best of the best.
Unless otherwise noted, all images courtesy of Unsplash.
