Being in the “talent arena,” its been my goal to seek out ways to engage people and help them embrace the things that can make them be successful more frequently. I’m a seeker not a philosopher, so I am not about to add my own recipe, but recently I stumbled upon a jewel that I bet most people missed in the thousands of Super Bowl articles from last week…
Realistically, most people don’t think about the basis for career success very often - life’s daily routine intervenes too regularly for us to make much of a dent in these thoughts. One thing I have learned is that inspiration and motivation are the keys to getting people’s attention. Starting the “success” engine comes from the passion each of us holds within, and lighting that passion is what fuels our success. Can the one event that grabs more of our collective attention than any other light the flame? Whether you’re a Giant, Patriots or just plain football fan, we can all learn from what it takes to be a winner…
Last Friday two days before the Super Bowl, one of the “throw backs” to a time of Lombardi, Ditka and Shula sat down for an interview. Now I digress a bit, but growing up as the youngest son of a coach that epitomized the era of the perfectionist, tough guy, winning is everything approach to coaching - I have a little experience in this area. If my Dad was still with us, the guy giving the interview would have been more than a kindred spirit and he would have rooted like hell for him.
That man was Tom Coughlin, New York Giants head coach, and the one minute answer he gave to one of the hundreds of questions asked amid all the silliness of the week before the big game blew me away. If you’re like me you have a serious case of Super Bowl fatigue (try living in New England’s 24x7 Patriots cocoon - hopefully it will subside when baseball starts in April…). He was asked what it takes to be a winner. His answer had nothing to do with X’s and O’s and is a wonderfully concise and oh so simple road map for success in anything we do….
"Surround yourself with great people, people who have an outstanding work ethic, people who are business-like, who are focused and concentrated. Get everybody on the same page and have the same inspiration, same kind of drive, same kind of desire. Do the very, very best you can. Work to the best of your ability. Be efficient. Don't waste time. You have to be organized and you need to be in a position where you are mentally prepared for all circumstances that might happen in the course of a season.
"Football is a cumulative game. You must continue to work on the situational things and the things that might happen to you in various situations, but you have to be prepared. You try to put your players in that situation. You boil it down to blue-collar work ethic. You go to work every day and work as hard as you possibly can and surround yourself with great people. Keep your eye on the prize, which is very, very important…" *
The morning after winning the game, Coughlin was asked what was it that made his Giants able to come back and win in the end. He was able to break down the “success” recipe even further…
"Mental toughness, resiliency, resolve. We keep playing, we keep fighting, and we're highly competitive. We do have great trust in each other, great belief that we can finish, and that if we keep playing one play at a time as hard as we can go that we will find a way to win." *
Hard to come up with a better winning formula than that. Whether you are leading or a part of a team, if you follow the path Coughlin lays out it seems hard to not be successful. Sure, not everyone wins the Super Bowl, and the Patriots have a similar approach and didn’t, but as Tom Brady said after the game, he would rather be competing for the big prize than sitting home watching it…
By getting in the game and releasing the energy of what motivates us the most, we can compete too!
* Excerpt and images from Doug Farrar and Yahoo! Sports http://ow.ly/8Vw3J