The Foxhole

I once worked with a high school basketball team. At the beginning of the season, the coach named one of his players team captain. The coach later revealed to me that he chose the team captain based on the boy’s character and leadership potential.

About a month later, after weeks of intense practice preparing for the upcoming season, the coach led his team through an exercise called “The Foxhole.” It is an exercise that I encourage all teams to execute.

The Foxhole is based off of military jargon. In trench warfare, members of the same team would dig a hole dubbed a “foxhole.” The team would live in the foxhole, eating, sleeping, and fighting together. There was no world outside of the foxhole. The men inside that hole lived and died as one. They became closer than brothers and literally trusted each other with their lives.

The Foxhole exercise run by this coach was for each member of the team to imagine they were in battle and dug into a foxhole. In their foxhole would be three other members of their team. In this exercise, each team member had to choose three teammates to accompany them in that foxhole.

The coach had his team take ten minutes to think about their answers without speaking to anyone. Then, when the time was up, he had them write their foxholes down and submit them.

On a team of a dozen kids, there were a dozen different combinations of foxholes. There was, however, one similarity in each of the foxholes: every single member of that team included their team captain in their foxhole.

The coach later told me that it was at that moment, when he saw this, that he realized that he had made the right choice in team captain. In a life-or-death situation, each member of his team wanted their team captain at their back.

Leadership is about your team knowing that you have their back.

What trust looks like

If things are ever going to go sideways, a team needs to trust that their leader is going to have their back. That’s the kind of trust that leadership requires.

I have talked to many people about leadership, and one of the complaints I hear far too often is that people don’t trust their leaders to have their backs. They see their leaders as middlemen rather than leaders. These are the managers who will throw their team under the bus in order to curry favour with the CEO. These are the principals who will ignore the complaints of their teachers because they only care about input from their Board of Trustees. That does not garner trust. That is not leadership.

So how do you build that kind of trust? I have a few suggestions for you.

Trust requires:

1. Building caring relationships

Stop and think for a moment about the people in your foxhole. This is a great exercise that you should do in-depth, but for now just quickly think about the top three to five people who would be in your foxhole. Got them? Great. Now, what do they all have in common?

If you are like most people, the people in your foxhole all share one important characteristic: they are people who care about you and your well-being.

This seems obvious, but it is important to building trust.

We trust people who care about us.

If you build a positive relationship and that other person knows that you actually care about their well-being, they will want you in their foxhole. And that is a leadership win.

2. Practicing competency

Go back and think about the people who are in your foxhole. I bet you didn’t choose people who are incompetent. We don’t trust incompetent people. Think about it. If your neck is on the line, you want to be able to trust someone who knows what they’re doing.

If you want people to trust you, they need to trust your ability.

3. Demonstrating integrity

Think about your foxhole again. These are the people who you trust with your life. Are any of them particularly untrustworthy? Probably not. You trust them because they have demonstrated in the past that they are trustworthy.

In other words, we naturally trust people who demonstrate that they are trustworthy. Again, it seems obvious, but it’s easy to forget. If you want people to trust you, walk in integrity. That means doing the right thing, even when nobody is looking.

Dynamic lessons

In short, if you want people to trust you, you have to prove that you are worthy of their trust.

We looked at three ways you can earn your team’s trust:

1. Building caring relationships. People will naturally trust people who demonstrate that they care about them, so build trust by showing that you care.
2. Practicing competency. You don’t have to be the best at everything that you do, but if you want people to trust you, you have to demonstrate that you know what you’re doing.
3. Demonstrate integrity. People are usually pretty good judges of character. So do the right thing, even when no one is looking. Then, when people are looking, they’ll see someone who is trustworthy.

What are your thoughts on building trust in the workplace. How do you build trust?

Books that influenced this article:

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You by John C. Maxwell

Leadership is an Art by Max De Pree

The post Lessons from a Foxhole: The Importance of Trust in Leadership appeared first on Great North Dynamics.

Risk-takers are the ones who change the world.

It was April 9, 1917 – Easter Monday, right in the middle of the First World War. The Germans were entrenched in their position in northern France on the high ground known as Vimy Ridge. From this strategic position near the Belgian border, the Germans had successfully repelled numerous attacks by Allied forces.

Over the previous two weeks, the Germans had been bombarded by Allied artillery. They knew that the Canadians and the British were planning another full-scale assault – the planned assault had been revealed by a Canadian defector to the British – they just didn’t know when. Or how.

Unbeknownst to the Germans, in the early hours of that fateful Easter Monday morning, the combined forces of four Canadian army divisions and one British division were about to emerge from underground tunnels and launch their assault on the German position.

The plan was one of the most audacious strategies employed to date in early-20th century warfare. It involved months of training for the specific conditions of Vimy Ridge, weeks of artillery barrages, months of underground tunnelling, and all to attack an enemy that already knew an attack was coming.

From it’s very beginning, this was a risky plan. Not only were the Canadians tasked with taking over a heavily-fortified enemy position, but their own allies had tried and failed at the same mission TWICE. In order for the Canadians to pull this mission off,  not only would they have to achieve something their allies could not, but they would also have to come up with a plan just crazy enough that it might even work.

The Battle of Vimy Ridge lasted for four long, bloody, gruelling days. And by the time the sun set on April 12, 1917, the Canadians had forced the Germans from their final positions and taken Vimy Ridge.

This story is of particular importance to Canadians because this battle, the Battle of Vimy Ridge, is widely accepted as the “birth of a nation”, or Canada’s “coming-of-age”. This battle was the first time that multiple Canadian military divisions operated in a war theatre under the leadership of a Canadian commanding officer, Lieutenant General Sir Julian Byng.

I tell this story for two reasons. First, April 9, 2017, was just celebrated across Canada and by Canadians around the world, because it marks the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge – the birth of the Canadian nation. I had the honour of laying a wreath and laying my respects on behalf of the Government of Canada at my local memorial, and it was humbling to be a part of such a sombre yet significant moment. The second reason I share this story is because it illustrates perfectly the value and techniques of effective risk-takers.

In this post I want to use this story and other information to demonstrate that risk-takers can change the world, but to do so they need three things: an audacious vision, meticulous preparation, and an irrepressible flexibility.

Risk-Takers Can Change the World

World change doesn’t happen by accident.

If changing the world – through any of the private, public, non-profit, or education sectors – was easy, everyone would do it. But the fact is that there are very few people who have a lasting, world-altering legacy. And those people are risk-takers.

Think about it. If you live a comfortable life and take no risks, you will spend your life in the comfortable cushion you’ve created for yourself. And there is nothing wrong with that! If you have no desire to make a lasting impact on the world around you, then by all means, enjoy your comfortable life. But if you want to leave far-reaching legacy, you will need to take risks.

For many people, the legacy they leave is their family. I fully support this, because I think there is no greater legacy to leave behind than our relationships, especially with family. But guess what: having a family is a risk in and of itself. Having kids is a risk, because you don’t know what the outcome will be. Entering into a long-term relationship with someone is a risk, because you can’t predict the future.

Whether you want to start a family, a revolutionary business model, or a political campaign to exact social justice, you will have to take risks to accomplish your goals.

Everything worth doing will come with some level of risk. The question is where do you want to go and how much are you willing to risk to get there?

Audacious Vision

A leader is someone who can inspire a vision in their team.

In the case of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, that leader was Lieutenant-General Sir Julian Byng, and that vision was the taking of a strategic German stronghold in the face of overwhelming odds.

When you dare to dream wild enough to take a big risk, there has to be something inside of you that WANTS to succeed. That desire to succeed has to be stronger than the fear of failure. That’s where vision comes into play.

Whether you have a team of followers or not, if you want to be an effective risk-taker, you need to have an audacious vision.

Developing a vision can be a difficult task, but it is critical to success. Your overarching vision will guide your planning and help you execute each step towards success.

If you want to know more about learning how to create and share a vision, you can check out my blogpost on inspiring vision. You should also check out my workbook on developing a personal vision for your life, as there are many tools and strategies there that can help you.

Meticulous Preparation

The Battle of Vimy Ridge took four long, arduous days. But, if you have read Sun Tzu in his classic, The Art of War, then you understand that the outcome of the battle was decided long before the first shot was fired.

The Allies had spent months preparing for their assault on the German stronghold. Their strategists had been compiling all the information they had on the enemy positions, their experiences from previous (failed) attempts at taking the ridge, and the strengths and weaknesses of not only the German divisions but of their own as well.

The battle is won in the preparation.

Once the Allies came up with an attack plan, they then practiced it, over and over again. Let me remind you that this was 1917. Military maneuvers had just evolved from standing in a straight line and shooting at each other until one side surrendered to lining soldiers up in a trench and swapping canisters of mustard gas. Training for and practicing specific, strategic military maneuvers was a radical idea.

When you’re taking a risk, no innovation is too radical.

The execution of the plan was so important to the Allied soldiers that they practiced that execution as often and as thoroughly as they could. They knew that without the proper execution, all the preparation in the world would be useless.

Once you have a strategic plan in mind – and you should take the time to create a thorough plan – you need to make sure that you (or your team) has the ability to follow-through with the execution.

Once a plan is put into motion, there are so many variables that can directly affect you. There is only so much that you can predict. That is why practicing the execution is so important, because you need to know that you can execute your plan without even thinking about it. It should be second nature, a knee-jerk reaction, instinct.

If you have meticulously prepared by developing a detailed plan and practiced its execution, it doesn’t matter if there are bullets whizzing by your head or competing businesses nipping at your heels, you will be able to fight your way through, sticking to the plan the whole way.

Irrepressible Flexibility

The strategic plans for the Canadian-led assault on Vimy Ridge predicted that the German stronghold would fall largely into Canadian hands by early-afternoon on the first day. Instead, what followed was four days of some of the most horrific fighting conditions ever known to man.

The Germans provided a stronger resistance than the Canadians expected, and the trench warfare was fierce. This was World War One, remember, when chemical weapons were still widely used and soldiers advanced from trenches only to be mown down by machine guns. This was as close to hell on Earth as you could get.

The first thing that will keep you going under such circumstances is, as we discussed earlier, an audacious vision.

During the times when you are faced with your bell on earth, your vision is what will sustain your perseverance.

But vision alone is not enough to win a war. You need to be flexible.

When night fell on the first night and the Canadian plan had anticipated a victory by this point, it would be very tempting for the Allied soldiers, whose lives were miserable, to turn around and say “better luck next time.” But that is not a risk-taker’s response.

Risk-takers recognize that when things don’t go as planned, the plan has to change.

Rather than retreating when the strategy’s timeline was not met, the Canadians pressed their advantage. They continued to bring the fight to the Germans for three whole days before finally taking the ridge.

In other words, the Allied forces were flexible. Their plans had to change, but they pursued their goal against all opposition.

No matter how detailed your plans are, things will still go NOT according to plan. You need to be flexible and adapt to change. I wrote an entire blog post on adapting to change. You should probably read it.

Dynamic Lessons

I am going to end this post the same way I started it, by stating a simple truth: risk-takers are the ones who change the world. Risk-taking is a dangerous business, but it is necessary to reach long-term success.

In order to be an effective risk-taker, you must make sure you follow these three steps:

1. Create an audacious vision. Risk-taking is audacious in and of itself, and to make it work you need to be daring and create an audacious vision that will guide you through the ups and downs.
2. Carry out meticulous planning. Once you put your plan into action, real-life happens and you will face tons of differing variables. Do yourself a favour and make sure your plan is detailed enough to survive.
3. Maintain irrepressible flexibility. Things will not go your way. For all your meticulous planning, things will still happen that your plan did not account for. You need to be flexible and be able to roll with the punches.

Are you ready to be a risk-taker? I’m excited for you! Let me know in the comments section what kinds of risks you’re taking and how you’re planning for them! Or post it on social media and tag me (@kylewierks on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter, Great North Dynamics on Facebook). I’ll make sure to comment!

This post was inspired by a TEDx Talk I gave recently (the Saturday before I wrote this, in fact). The talk I gave was about the importance of imagination and creativity in a world that prioritizes realism over imagination, and I spoke about the importance of creativity in risk-taking. It was recorded and will be posted online (I’ll keep you posted on that).

Creating Your Personal Vision

Check out You Can’t Reach What You Can’t See: Developing a Personal Vision for Your Life. This workbook will help you create a vision that will guide your career planning.

Books that influenced this article:

The Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You by John C. Maxwell

The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris

$100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau

The post Risk-Takers: What History Can Teach Us About World-Change appeared first on Great North Dynamics.

In leadership, the value of inspiring vision cannot be overstated. Time and time again I will mention the importance of inspiring vision because it is crucial that leaders, teams, and organizations be purposeful in maintaining a solid vision. However, it is common that a team can lose or outgrow its vision. Sometimes a vision needs to be re-envisioned, re-purposed, or reinvented.

The process of re-imagining your vision is so important that I have dedicated this post to three steps on how to inspire your vision back into your team (or inspiring your vision for the first time).

1. Stop everything

It is vitally important that you fix this, and that might mean stopping everything. In his book Creativity, Inc., Edwin Catmull describes a vitally important measure that Pixar had to take: they closed their campus for an entire day and paid their staff to attend a workshop that would design their corporate vision for the future. In order to get Pixar’s staff on the same vision, they stopped everything and made that vision their number one priority.

Starbucks did something similar in 2008. Business Insider has a great article about how Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz turned the company around. One of the ways he did that was by closing every Starbucks store in order to retrain their staff. The purpose was to rediscover Starbucks’ vision for perfection. According to this article, this cost Starbucks over $6 million, but it was worth it to perfect the vision that would make Starbucks excellent. This is a good example of how vision and excellence go hand-in-hand.

If your team has lost its vision, it is imperative that you, as a leader, make regaining that vision a number one priority. Stop everything and make vision your focus.

2. Dare to dream

If you were a Canadian hockey fan in the late 1990s and early 2000s, you probably remember the Kokanee beer commercials featuring the Sasquatch (if you haven’t seen these, I highly recommend them). One such commercial is firmly imprinted in my memory. For those who don’t know, these commercials feature a forest ranger and his assistant, Arnold, who protect the Kokanee Glacier from the Sasquatch. In this commercial, the ranger hires three beautiful women to help protect the glacier from the Sasquatch. Arnold turns to the ranger and says, “But I thought the Sasquatch wasn’t real.” The ranger’s classic response was simple: “Dare to dream, Arnold. Dare to dream.”

When it comes to your vision, you have to dare to dream. The grander the vision, the greater the accomplishment. There are a few ways to produce such a vision.

1. Corporate vision. The case of Edwin Catmull and the Pixar vision seminar is a classic example of this tactic. The Pixar organization engaged their entire staff, from their accountants to their executive, to produce a corporate vision that included participation from their entire staff.
2. Team vision. I worked with an organization that saw a marked decrease in enthusiasm and ownership in their team (I’ve written a separate article on ownership). It was decided that the problem was in the communication of the vision to the team; they forgot why they did what they did. This particular organization decided to create a team vision that would reinvigorate the team. To do so they took a select number of trusted team members — in their case six — and together we created a vision for the rest of the team to follow.
3. Personal vision. If you are an entrepreneur, chances are that you have a vision that you want to realize. This is not a vision that you have created with others; it is yours. It is perfectly acceptable to use your personal vision as the head of a team.

Regardless of whether your vision is the result of corporate consultations, a small team brainstorm, or your own brain child, the creation of your vision is only the first step (steps on creating this vision will be discussed in a later post). Now you have to communicate that vision.

3. Insane communication

A vision is only a picture in your head if nobody else can see it.

That means that once you have your vision established, you have to sell it, and not to your customers. Before anything else, you have to sell your vision to your team.

If you are an executive, that would mean selling it to your executive team. At you’re at a lower level of leadership, that could mean selling it to your own team, or even to your peers. If you want someone else to carry that vision, they need to  be sold on it. I have a couple tips for the initial sale of your vision.

1. Keep it simple. If you over-complicate your vision, you will kill it before it has a chance to take root. There will be plenty of time to go over the intricacies and the individual steps to success later. But to inspire vision, keep it simple.
2. Focus on the why, not the how. Another way to put it is focus on the result, not the process. Again, you will have many opportunities to lay out your fifty-step plan to achieving your vision, but people don’t buy into a vision because they love the idea of the process; they own a vision because they desire the end result.
3. Make it personal. People are, deep down, selfish creatures, and the question burning in the back of our minds is, “What’s in it for me?” We will all deny that, of course, and sometimes we aren’t even aware that we’re thinking it, but there is a selfish lens that we all use. So make it personal. Tell your team exactly what the realization of your vision will produce for them, personally. Will stakeholders get a financial return? Will staff be able to be a part of a revolutionary industry that changes the way the world works? Can the volunteers at your non-profit be able to change lives? The more people you are selling your vision to the harder it is to make it personal, but at the end of the day, you want your team to have a personal stake in the realization of your vision.
4. Be realistic. Don’t try to sell anyone a unicorn. Your vision is going to take a lot of hard work to realize. It will probably call for a lot of sacrifice, both in time and money. Be realistic with your team. Let them know that it will be tough. Give them a taste of what is to come. If you sow your vision in reality, your team won’t be surprised when things get tough a month down the road. There won’t be a mob at your door complaining that it’s too hard. They need to know exactly what they’re getting themselves into. And they need to know that it is all going to be worth it.

Speaking of realistic, it is not an easy thing to sell your vision. But it is necessary, and it will be worth it when your team buys into it.

Communication does not end when the vision is sold. You will need to be in constant communication with your team to ensure that your vision does not die. Remind your team regularly about why you’re doing what you’re doing. That vision will empower everyone.

Dynamic lessons

Are you, your team, or your organization struggling with maintaining or developing a vision? The good news is that you’re not alone; thousands, if not millions, of individuals and organizations are going through the same thing. The better news is that there is a solution.

I gave you three simple steps to reinspiring vision in your team and organization:

1. Stop everything. Vision is vital to your organization’s survival and success. Take the time to get it right.
2. Dare to dream. This is the time for big dreams and aggressive goals. If you want the comfortable route, get out of leadership.
3. Insane communication. Once you’ve developed your vision, you have to communicate it. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary.

If you want more help in developing vision for you or your team, there are resources available for that. I have published a workbook dedicated to helping you develop a personal vision for yourself. To inspire vision in others, first you must inspire vision in yourself.

Have you ever struggled with developing or maintaining a vision? How did you make it work? I’d love to hear from you! Leave a comment below.

Creating Your Personal Vision

Check out You Can’t Reach What You Can’t See: Developing a Personal Vision for Your Life. This workbook will help you create a vision that will guide your career planning.

Books that influenced this article:

Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You by John C. Maxwell

The post Three Steps to Inspiring Vision in Your Team appeared first on Great North Dynamics.

You want your team to take ownership.

Most organizations do not structure themselves in this way, but the notion is an important one. As a leader, you want your team to take ownership. Whether you are overseeing a team project, an executive team, or your high school basketball team, you want everyone on your team to act as though they have a personal ownership stake.

I am going to give you five ways to inspire ownership in your team.

1. Give up power

Leadership is not about power; it is about empowerment.

If you keep everyone on too tight of a leash, you will suffocate your team. Delegation is key. When you delegate a task to a member of your team, you delegate responsibility.

To be clear, you are still responsible for the team so at the end of the day if something goes wrong it is still your problem to fix, but the delegation of authority and responsibility gives that team member the opportunity to make a personal impact on that project or task. Human beings are more likely to take ownership over a task/project if they believe that they have a personal stake in it.

When I was going through grad school, I volunteered with a local youth program that attracted nearly 300 middle and high school students every Friday night (closer to 500 students on special events). The key to their success was identifying students with leadership potential and giving them basic responsibility. Armed with such responsibility, these students took ownership over the program and invited all of their friends. By delegating responsibility, the program saw exponential growth in a short period of time (more on this in a future post).

2. Believe in your team

Okay, so you’ve delegated responsibility to a team member to complete a certain project. That team member is excited about the opportunity and has taken charge of that project. Since you are still the leader, you are still responsible for the outcome, so you do everything you can to make sure that it is completed exactly how you would have done it. Right?

I hope you can tell what is wrong with that scenario. That is a classic example of micromanagement. You could argue that it’s not micromanagement when it was your  project to begin with, but you would be wrong.  When you hand off responsibility to a team member, you have to trust them to do the job.

When your team members know that you trust them to do the job, they will step up to the challenge and take ownership. If they do not, then you have done a poor job of gathering your team. If you have not had the luxury of building your own team and must work with people who have been assigned to you, then delegate accordingly.

3. Foster a culture of encouragement

Encouragement is a common thread in my blog, because I truly believe that encouragement is the best way to get results from your team. Positive reinforcement encourages strong behaviour attributes.

More importantly, regular encouragement from upper levels of management fosters a culture of encouragement in your organization. Such a culture promotes optimism and positivity. A culture of constant correction and discipline, on the other hand, fosters discontentedness, animosity, fear, and apathy.

This is not to say that there is not a time and place for discipline and correction. If a team member is out of line and needs to be corrected, that is the job of you, as the leader, to deal with in a timely manner. Further, if you are an editor or have a similar role, you have to make editorial corrections where needed. Still, the prevailing sense in your organization should be one of optimism and positivity, not fear and anger.

4. Make excellence a priority

Imagine for a moment that you are a business owner looking to hire a new assistant. You interview two different people for the position. On paper, they are virtually identical with similar qualifications; in person, however, the first interviewee showed up in a suit and was well-prepared while the second showed up in a track suit and seemed to not care. Who are you more likely to hire? Obviously, the applicant who was better prepared and better dressed.

Excellence attracts people.

Your organization is just like a job applicant; excellence attracts people. If you want your team to take ownership over your organization, give them something worth owning. Humans want to be associated with excellence, so if you foster excellence and make excellence a priority, your team will want to take ownership. After all, we would all rather be associated with something great than something mediocre.

You want people in your organization who take pride in excellence, and that starts from the top: from you. If you want your team to dress well, you should dress better; if you want your team to be early for work, show up even earlier; if you want your team to take ownership, take ownership yourself.

5. Project your vision

As a leader, it is easy to get caught up in the tasks that need to be done. Sometimes you need to take a step back and remember why it is that you do what you do. Working your butt off is not taking ownership; working your butt off with a vision for the future is ownership. If you find yourself losing that vision, it is time for you to remove yourself from the busyness of your job and reignite that vision.

I can tell you from personal experience how easy it is to lose sight of vision. I have gone to weekly meetings wondering why everyone else seems so removed from the discussion and why everyone seems to lack vision, and then I realize that I’m doing the exact same thing. When you as a leader lack vision, your team will lack it too. If your team is going to take ownership, you need to project that vision for them.

Do you lack a personal vision for your life? Check out You Can’t Reach What You Can’t See: Developing a Personal Vision for Your Life. This workbook is designed to help you find your passions and create a personal vision and plan for your own life.

Dynamic lessons

Fostering ownership in your organization will help drive your team and organization into the next level. When team members take ownership, your organization will thrive. I gave you five ways to inspire ownership in your organization and on your team.

1. Give up power. Leadership is not about power; it is about empowerment. Empower your team to succeed and they will reward you for it.
2. Believe in your team. Don’t micromanage. Let your team take initiative, make mistakes, and take responsibility.
3. Foster a culture of encouragement. By encouraging your team, you will build a culture of optimism and excitement instead of fear and anger.
4. Make excellence a priority. People are attracted to excellence, and your team will want to be associated with excellence.
5. Project your vision. It is so easy for you and your team to lose sight of your vision. Reinforce it at every opportunity. Make vision paramount.

What other ways have you successfully inspired ownership in your organization or on your team?

Books that influenced this article:

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You by John C. Maxwell

Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace

The post 5 Ways to Inspire Ownership appeared first on Great North Dynamics.

Peyton Manning is regarded as one of the best quarterbacks of his generation, possibly even in history, and for good reason. By the time that he retired, he held the following records:

1. Total career passing yards (71,940)
2. Total single season passing yards (5,477)
3. Seasons with 4,000+ yards (14)
4. Games with 400+ yards (14)
5. Total career touchdown passes (539)
6. Total touchdown passes in a single season (55)
7. Number of seasons with 25+ touchdowns (16)
8. Number of games with at least 4 touchdowns (35)
9. Number of four-touchdown games in one season (9)
10. Number of total wins (200)

These are just the records that Manning holds on his own (not to mention the more obscure records that he holds, such as the oldest quarterback to win a Superbowl (39) or the most playoff appearances by a quarterback (15), to name a few). In addition, Manning is tied for the top spot for these records:

1. Average yards per game over a career (342.3)
2. Number of 400+ yard games in a single season (4)
3. Number of touchdowns thrown in one game (7)

In case you aren’t a football fan, let me shed some light on these statistics: Peyton Manning is an impressive individual. Some of the records he holds are quite close to the competition, but many of them have a huge gap between him and second place. In other words, Manning is an elite among elite players, and a very successful man.

When Manning and the Denver Broncos took the field on February 7, 2016, this was their second Superbowl appearance in two years. On February 2, 2014, Manning led the Broncos onto the field at Metlife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ, to do battle with Russell Wilson and the Seattle Seahawks in Superbowl 48. In 2014, however, the end result was very different from 2016.

On the very first offensive drive of Superbowl 48, Peyton Manning, one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, fumbled a snap that Seattle returned for a touchdown. Seattle never looked back, and for the rest of the game, the Broncos were steamrolled. The final score: Seattle: 43, Denver: 8.

This was a huge surprise to the football world. It’s not that the Seahawks were the underdogs — the Seahawks had the highest-rated defence in the league — but nobody expected such a blow-out. The Broncos had the best offence in the league by far. Peyton Manning had just had one of the best seasons of his storied career. The question on everyone’s lips was: “Can the Seahawks keep up with Peyton?” Nobody thought to ask if Peyton could keep up with the Seahawks.

The defeat was humiliating and the wounds were fresh. Peyton Manning had just played a record-setting season (he had set three single-season records for that season: most season passing yards, most touchdown passes in a season, and most four-touchdown games in one season) and had capped it off by losing the most important game of the season. How do you come back from that?

The answer, according to Peyton Manning himself, was self-evaluation. The first day back at the the Broncos training facility in Denver, Manning and the rest of his team watched the entire Superbowl game on tape. Multiple times. No, they weren’t reliving the defeat, they were watching themselves. Manning watched every single snap, every pivot, every throw, every play that he did. And he learned.

That’s not all that Manning reviewed. Over the course of the 2013-2014 season, Manning threw 787 passes (regular season and playoffs combined). He rewatched every single pass. He wasn’t just looking at his throwing technique either; he was watching to see where his receivers lined up, where their defenders matched them, the routes his receivers ran, where his eyes went, which receiver he threw the ball at, and how the defence responded. After each throw he would ask himself if he threw to the right receiver or if there was a better option. What did he do right? What did he do wrong?

Manning was so dedicated to watching game film that he went high-tech, even mobile. He had a top-of-the-line home theatre installed in his home for the sole purpose of watching game film at home. If that wasn’t enough, he also had a tablet that he carried everywhere with him, so that he could watch game film whenever he had a spare moment. For Peyton Manning, the time he spent actually playing the game paled in comparison with the amount of time he spent evaluating his own performance.

In the 2013-2014 season, Manning threw 55 touchdown passes (the most ever thrown in a single season). Was he happy with that? No. There were missed opportunities that he identified on film where he could have made more touchdown passes. More game film to study, to learn from.

So what is the point of all this work? Two years later returning to the Superbowl and winning that all-important final game was the point. Armed with the knowledge, Manning was prepared for the work it would take to get back to the top. Now, he did not do it alone. If there is one sport that epitomizes the concept of team, it is football. There are eleven players on the field, and each one is vital to the success of the team. As a leader, Manning had to first evaluate himself and improve himself before he could ask his team to do the same.

Demaryius Thomas is a wide receiver and was one of Manning’s teammates in both the 2014 and 2016 Superbowls. He was once interviewed by ESPN about Manning’s film review habits and he said, “[Peyton] will always say if he thought he could have done something differently. He’s not afraid to just say it. … When guys see somebody like Peyton so accountable, you have to be accountable. You can’t help it. He’s Peyton doing that — how are you going to just duck your head and not admit what you did?”

As team captain and a leader, Manning focused on improving himself before improving his team. The rest of his team saw their leader, the 2013 Most Valuable Player and arguably the best regular-season quarterback of all-time, evaluating every single second of his own performance in order to improve. Such action inspired them to evaluate their own performance, to get better, to match their leader. And they did. And two years later they won the Superbowl and became the best football team in the world.

Dynamic Lessons

Leadership is not just about inspiring others; it is equally about inspiring yourself.

1. You are first and foremost responsible for yourself. If you want to succeed, you must take ownership of your actions. There are always ways for you to improve. If the MVP of the NFL and the single-season touchdown record holder can find ways to improve his game and spot places that he could have made more touchdowns, then you can find areas of your own performance that you could tweak to become better and more efficient.
2. When a leader voluntarily evaluates his/her own performance, the rest of the team will follow. Oftentimes leading by example is far more important than leading by instruction. You want your team to be able to evaluate themselves, so show them how it’s done.
3. It’s a team game. You might not be a football player, or even a sports fan, but you are probably working in a team. Teamwork means, believe it or not, working together. When you constantly evaluate yourself and improve yourself, you make yourself and your team better.
4. Failure and success are equally instructional. This is perhaps the most important lesson. Manning learned not just from his mistakes, but also from his successes. He had the most successful individual season he ever had in 2013, even though he ended up losing the Superbowl. Both his failures and his successes were instrumental in teaching him and his team the lessons they needed to learn in order to win two years later.

Have you ever taken the time to stop and evaluate yourself and your outcomes? What did you learn about yourself?

The post Case Study: Peyton Manning and the Value of Self-Evaluation as a Leader appeared first on Great North Dynamics.