Winning in leadership requires a deep commitment to the plan. Without a plan, we lack direction for ourselves and the people we lead. Lack of direction leads to losing our way and the ability to take others with us towards the plan’s destination.
Commitment To The Plan
It’s football season. I spent twenty-one years of my adult life coaching youth football. Our teams were extremely successful. We won two hundred and twenty-seven games and only lost thirty-one during that time span. That equates to us winning about eighty-eight percent of the time.
I don’t share this to brag, but for validation of the concept. We were committed to a plan and it resulted in winning. Here are the three elements of our plan that we were deeply committed to:
Discipline
I always highly encouraged my son to play football at a younger age. Once he got to middle school it was his decision. Football teaches many things such as teamwork, tenacity, and toughness, but discipline was the one that I wanted him to take away.
Our plan was to teach the Fundamentals of the game. Before we learned to block, we learned to get in a good stance. Before we learned to run a play, we learned to block. Before we learned defensive schemes, we learned how to tackle. Fundamentals came first, we never got ahead of ourselves in the process.
Too often in leadership, we skip the Fundamentals in the pursuit of winning. It’s the mundane, day to day disciplines, that are required for sustainable success. Arriving to work on time, staying on task, treating people respectfully, and serving others. The basic expectations of performance.
Adjusting
When you think of “commitment to the plan,” you probably don’t thing of adjusting. The concept comes off as a straight, hard-lined charge towards the destination.
Our game plan was to establish the run on offense and be disruptive in the other team’s backfield defense. Within that commitment to the plan required some adjustments.
Maybe we had to establish the run off-tackle, because it wasn’t working outside. We still remained committed to the run, just made a simple adjustment to the plan. Maybe we weren’t causing the disruption in the backfield with our interior defensive lineman like we had planned, so we blitzed linebackers to help the cause. We remained committed to the plan, just made a simple adjustment to the plan.
Football is a game of adjustments, so is leadership. We can still move in the direction of what our vision for victory is. It just may require some bobbing and weaving in the meantime. A simple adjustment in the game can get us to the same place we desire to be… victory. Failing to make an adjustment can leave us stuffed at the goal line of leadership.
Drowning Out Noise
Football games are intense, they are loud and produce lots of noise. Most of that noise comes from those not in the game. Not the coaches, not the players, but the parents.
I received plenty of praise as a coach over the years, but I also received my fair share of criticism. Especially in the thirty-one losses. You can Count On Critics to produce noise when the plan isn’t working. No matter how much we communicate our plan, some just won’t understand it.
There would have been a lot more than thirty-one losses if we let the tough moments relieve us of our commitment to our plans. There were way more games won than lost because of our ability to drown out the noise and remain committed to the plan.
The further we go in leadership, the more opportunities for criticism emerge. It’s the stark reality of leadership, it just comes with the territory.
At times, it can feel like there are more that seek to tear us down, than to build us up. But…that is when we get caught listening to the noise. When we drown out the noise, we can remain committed to the plan.
Conclusion
I shared with you our stellar record as a coaching staff to lead this blog post off. Let me share a secret with you, that record means absolutely nothing to me. It never has and never will define winning to me. In fact, we received a lot of really big, expensive trophies over those years. Not even one is in my possession any longer.
The commitment to the plan from the beginning was to build young men into good fathers, good husbands, and overall good men down the road. Our desire was to teach them the great game of football as a tool to open up a world of opportunities ahead.
Sure, seeing many of the kids we coached celebrated on social media platforms on Saturday, for their stat lines on Friday nights is rewarding. Let me tell you what is more rewarding, seeing the pictures from high school graduation, college graduation, being recognized for their community service, becoming a husband, and becoming a father. Seeing them become good people is pure fulfilment of the plan.
One of my favorite movies of all time is Remember the Titans. When questioned on his limited playbook by an assistant coach, Coach Herman Boone replied with, “It’s like Novocain. Just give it time, it always works.” If we have a good plan, it will always work, it just needs some time and commitment.
From a leadership perspective, the plan is similar. The leadership process just needs some time and commitment. Leaders should commit to bettering others. That is the plan, plain and simple. The question is…are we committed to it?