 I'm the Type of PersonA few weeks ago I found myself in a large group of people at a social gathering. Admittedly, this is a situation I try hard to avoid. Nonetheless, there I was. Uncomfortable and anticipating the relief of it being over, even more so than the dread of going in the first place. It’s not that I don’t enjoy being around people, I do. I just prefer them in smaller sample sizes. And, preferably samples I pick.
In any case, I’m having a great conversation with someone I have a ton of respect for. I listened, I shared, we laughed. It was exactly what you hope every conversation is like. They’re not, but that’s the hope. As the conversation ended, we both drifted off to mingle. For me, that looked like gazing into the group of people and simply observing. People-watching is easily one of my favorite leisure time activities. As I’m watching and noticing, a conversation off to my right catches my attention. Call it eavesdropping if you’d like. It was a discussion between one person I knew well and one from out of the area that I didn’t. In a matter of seconds, the acquaintance of mine starts into a self-descriptive declaration that catches my full attention. She had been talking without a breath for the past three minutes, then grabbed a strangle hold on the conversation with a phrase that has become a major red flag for me. In an effort to validate, she begins the sentence with, “I’m the type of person who”. I’m not an expert on social behavior, but I’ve experienced very few interactions in which someone has said “I’m the type of person who” that actually is, indeed, a person who does whatever ‘thing’ they are so convinced they do. If you have to tell people the type of person you are, then there’s a real good chance you’re not. Why Should We Care? We can say whatever we want. Claim to be this or that all day long. It takes zero effort to tell someone you're hard working, loyal, disciplined, or unselfish. The proof isn’t in the words we choose. It's in the next hundred decisions we make after we say them. "I'm the type of person who" is an attempt at a shortcut. It's asking people to take our word for something instead of earning their belief through our consistent actions. And the people who lead best realize there are no shortcuts. They don't announce their personal standards. They live them so consistently that other people end up saying it for them. Every leader has a gap between what they say in the team meeting and what they actually do when things get real. But we can be sure our people are aware of and watching that gap. They're listening to our speech, they're watching our actions. If those two things don't match, we don't have a leadership problem, we have a trust problem. And a lack of trust is a big problem. The credibility that trust provides is the only thing that lets us have real influence on someone else's life. REAL TALK - Action Steps They say talk is cheap. They’re right. Here’s a few ideas to be sure you’re really the type of person you say you are.
If you're building a life and a leadership style people can actually trust, it starts with closing the gap between your words and your actions. Be they type of person that doesn’t have to tell people what type of person they are. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!
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 Bright LinesI peak out from under the covers, attempting to check the time on my alarm clock while allowing the least amount of light possible into my one sliver of an eye. 4:43 AM. My alarm is set for 4:45 AM. I resist the bait. Rather than squeezing my eyes back shut for a poultry two minutes, I hop out of bed, turn off my alarm, and dive into my morning routine. It always begins with a workout.
I workout every morning with the exception of Sundays. So, if for example, I didn’t get home late the night before, I workout. If I’m tired from a really taxing day of physical labor and my hands and feet hurt, I workout. If I'm not feeling the greatest, I workout. There is no negotiation with myself on whether or not I will workout or not. The decision has been made and it won’t be made again. I agree to a rare night out with a college teammate to attend a pay per view watch party for the one and only, Mike Tyson. I mean, who can pass on a Mike Tyson fight! No less than twenty people offer me a drink. Beer, whiskey, rum, scotch, wine, champagne - you name it and they had it and wanted me to enjoy it with them. I decline. I don’t drink, never have. It’s not a noble stand or anything, just a decision I made for a variety of reasons a long time ago. Over time, the choice has only gotten more clear. When someone asks me if I want a beer, I never ask what kind they have. It’s irrelevant to the choice I’ve already made. The environment and circumstances don’t factor in either because I’ve decided I don’t drink. It’s a bright line. I wish I could say all aspects of my life are as bright as the two examples, but they are not. However, I have realized that every time I make an effort to raise my personal standards all I’m really doing is brightening the lines. Why Should We Care? Blurry lines are exhausting. Every single time you approach it, you have to make another decision. Rather than making a decision and moving on, you are forced to decide over and over and over. And every one of them costs you energy you can’t get back. A bright line decision is made once and it’s made way before the moment ever shows up. The moment has nothing left to negotiate with. It doesn't matter what mood you're in, who's buying, or how good the excuse sounds. The decision isn't up for a vote anymore. It's been settled. This is a huge deal when applied to ourselves, but the impact of it as a leader multiplies ten fold. Blurry lines make us unpredictable, and unpredictable leaders can’t build trust. Without consistency, our people are left to wonder which version of us will show up. Bright lines make us predictable. Our people don't have to guess where we stand, because we already told them. Pressure doesn’t change it. The audience doesn’t change it. The potential for a promotion doesn’t change it. We just need the courage to paint them. Bright is bold when it comes to our standards. REAL TALK - Action Steps Bright lines don't draw themselves. Here's where to start.
Start drawing a few bright lines. Not a hundred, pick one. Decide it now. A stressful moment will come looking for a negotiation. Don't give it one. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!  Conviction is CurrencyI’ve made several mistakes over the years in coaching. I’ve said the wrong things, called the wrong plays, and given the ball to the wrong players. I can’t even claim to have always hired the right coaches, but I do stand by one hire: Rex Brooking. Rex was incredible with our guys, brought decades of head coaching experience to our staff, and operated with a humility that perfectly illustrated what we believe competition at the highest level should look like.
He also owned a Chick-fil-A restaurant. If I ever had a doubt based on his other qualifications, the free chicken sandwiches on game days completely erased it. Even if I would’ve wanted to, mutiny by the players would’ve ensued had we ever chosen to part ways with Coach Brooking! Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Chick-fil-A is one of the most powerful leadership models in the world either. Thanks to founder Truett Cathy and his unwavering commitment to his core values, Chick-fil-A is the gold standard of culture. When Cathy opened his first small diner outside Atlanta, he worked long hours, seven days a week. The Dwarf Grill was the name of his first endeavor, but something about the seven day grind pulled on him. So when he opened his first Chick-fil-A in 1967, he made a decision that made no business sense at all. He would be closed on Sundays, forever. God’s chicken was born. Everyone told him he was crazy. Sunday was one of the busiest shopping days of the week and every restaurant would be full while his would sit empty. The warnings never stopped. Stay open, you're leaving money on the table, he was told over and over. Cathy never budged. Not when the company grew into thousands of locations. Not when it became the second-largest quick-service chicken chain in the country. Not when the math started saying the closed door was worth well over a billion dollars a year in lost sales. Cathy wanted his employees to have a day for rest, for family, and for worship. That was the value. And once he was clear on the value, the decision was never a decision again. It just was. That's what real conviction looks like. It squashes negotiation. Why Should We Care? We tend to admire conviction like it's a personality trait. Some people just have it and some people don't. That's a convenient story, but it isn't true. Conviction isn't something we’re born with. It's a byproduct. It shows up automatically once we’re clear about what we value most. Conviction is simply clarity. The people we call the most convicted aren't the most stubborn or the most confident. They're the ones who did the work of figuring out what they actually value, ahead of time, before the situation that calls it to the carpet shows up. Cathy didn't discover his conviction when the criticism started to fly. He already knew what he valued. The pressure just revealed it. Most of us want the conviction without doing the work of defining the values underneath it. So when the critical moment comes, when staying open on Sunday would make us millions, we fold. Not because we're weak, but because we never actually decided. You cannot borrow conviction in the moment. You have to build it in advance, out of values you've already settled on. What you value most is what you'll be convicted about most. Everything else is negotiable, and that's not a flaw. You can't hold the line on everything, so you'd better know exactly which lines are yours. REAL TALK - Action Steps Conviction feels like a mystery until you realize it's actually a discipline. Here's where to start building it.
Get as clear on your values as you possibly can and you won't have to manufacture conviction. It'll already be there, just waiting on you to use it. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!  Chase the WhoIt always ends the same way.
You spend days deliberating the perfect destination, make all the arrangements to see the most amazing sites, and make reservations for the very best evening meals. The sunsets are gorgeous and the dinners, to die for. However, those memories soon fade and we are left with the most significant factor of a great vacation: who we spend it with. You start a new season, full of hope and promise. You settle on the perfect offensive system and agonize over all the details of the best defensive packages for your team. The plan is in place and the team executes on it, or they don’t, and you win some and you lose some. As the season nears a close, reality becomes starkly clear: the most memorable part of the last five months was never the results of the game, but who you shared the struggle with. You buy a new house and begin planning for the move. You make arrangements for renovations at the new place and begin packing at the old place. As you remove the pictures from the walls, you have flashes of emotion as you recall the moments each captured. You smile a little, tear up a little. But, once again, reality settles you: it’s never about the house you live in, but the people you share it with. It always ends the same way. Wouldn’t it do us well to mind that from the start? Why Should We Care? We live in a world consumed with measurable results. It’s what gets rewarded so it’s what gets chased. The luxurious vacation destination. The win total. The square footage. Those things are easy to point to as markers of success. Who you're with is often an afterthought as we pursue. This is the trap for leaders especially. We build systems. We chase the records. We obsess over the plans. All of it matters, but none of it matters the most. Your people won't remember the exact defense you ran or the numbers on the best deal you closed. They'll remember whether you knew their name, whether you noticed when they were struggling, whether you were someone worth being led by. The results fade much faster than the relationships do. The who is never as urgent as it should be. The people around you rarely announce a deadline, so they get pushed to whatever time is left over. And the time left over is usually nothing. We treat the who like it will always be there, but it won’t. People move, drift, and eventually they're gone too. We don't get an unlimited number of hours with the people who matter most, we just live like we do. Since our time is finite and our relationships are the most valuable things we have, wouldn’t it make sense to prioritize both? REAL TALK - Action Steps Knowing the who matters is easy. Living like it does takes intention. Here's where to start.
It always ends the same way. Might as well start that way too. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here! |
About bcI'm a teacher, coach, and parent seeking excellence while defining success on my own terms. Archives
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