Today, during practice 137 with a team that’s grown quite comfortable together, I kicked the couchies in the ass because they failed to stick to the discipline of speaking and listening, BTL style. I could have easily let it go. It would have been easier for me and better for the rest of the team. The couchies would have been let off the hook.
Yesterday, during practice with a CEO I’ve been with for years, I kicked his ass for something small regarding his handling of one of his projects. I asked him to remember when he played college athletics and someone on his team messed up in practice. He put himself back on the field and acknowledged my challenge. I asked him how his Coach would have reacted. “Easy,” he replied without thinking, “He would have made us all run it again until we got it right.” How would you have felt, I continued. “Like we’re all being penalized for the sins of one. I would have been pissed,” he concluded.
You see, virtuous Coaches care enough to teach even when the teaching is inconvenient, unfair, and takes the team off track. Virtuous Coaches care enough to blow up; blowing it off, not so much. Virtuous Coaches are TNT cause they care. They care enough to blow things up. They care enough to blow you up. They care enough to blow up small stuff so it never turns into something seismic. Virtuous Coaches don’t like to blow things or people up and they don’t do it out of frustration or anger. Instead, out of belief, they blow things up to make you better. Virtuous Coaches are Tough N Tender. Your problem, most likely, is you don’t care enough to blow up good for great. Your problem is you’re too comfortable and too worried about being “that guy.”
Virtuous leaders are TNT. Are you?
BUILT TO LEAD 