Larry Weidel argues top leaders act as championship coaches, developing champions rather than just maintaining their position. They spotlight top performers, stage competitions to build confidence, and maintain weekly focus on high-level performance through group and one-on-one coaching.
Welcome to part five of the Becoming a Leader series. Continuing on, focusing on the greatest leaders. Here's another great thing. Number eight. It's how they see themselves. They see themselves differently. How do you see yourself? See, most people are trying to hang on to their job. They see themselves is just they're all wrapped up in themselves and their insecurities and just trying to get through the day. They don't see themselves more or less as a parenting type situation, trying to groom their child to be all they could be. But the great leaders, they see themselves as championship coaches. See, they don't see themselves as someone just trying to get the job done, just trying to do good work, trying to get other people. They see themselves as someone who has the responsibility. See, they assume they've got the responsibility to produce champions, championships, put points on the board, do something spectacular. So of course they don't mind putting the demands on them. And the theme is touching on this. Bill Parcells, who just went into the hall of Fame, said he remembered a what he was told early in his coaching career, and that is the quote, that players deserve a chance to win and you as a head coach have an obligatory responsibility to give them that chance to win to great to do something significant. The coach is going to be there year after year. The players come through, they have their moments and you want them to have the chance to excel because they're looking to you for leadership. So what happens is these leaders look at themselves. They're supposed to produce all stars. So when they see their players, they see people on their team that they're training. It's like they want them to be world class Olympic medal winners. They don't see themselves just running a training program. They see a lot like running an Olympic training center. They're not just teaching. They don't just teach the basics, they teach the basics and focus. See, the difference is the focus, the emphasis, not what you teach, it's what you emphasize. They focus on doing it at the highest level. They make sure their trainees are watching videos, listen to audios, watching reports of who or the most outstanding people in their sport, their business, their area of life, who are the best and brightest, what are they doing? You know, Tiger woods when he was eight years old had the greatest golfer of all time, Jack Nicklaus, records up on his wall. They asked Tiger, what was the first time that he broke 80 when he was playing golf? A little kid coming up, when's the first time you broke 80? He said, I was 8. And he said, the reason I Know that is because Jack Nicholas broke 80 for the first time at age 12, and I wanted to beat him now at that stage. Tiger will tell you, growing up, his dad was always trying to push him into other sports, to have a balanced childhood. But Tiger was coaching himself. He just had that inside of himself, pushing himself to the top. Right from the beginning, that was all he was interested in, being the best. So you can coach yourself that way. But when you're coaching others, the people who rise to the top, that's all they focus on. So is it funny that since they focus on going to the top, they see their obligation is to give their people with them the chance to play on a championship team and be a part and experience that thrill, that maybe it's not an accident they rise and once they get there, they're likely to stay at the top. No, see, it's by design. It starts in their mind. It's how they see themselves. And so what are they doing? They're constantly teaching the basics. You can do that pretty quick, but it's challenging people to do something with, not just to do it, but if you want them to do it at the highest level, you can't nag them, but you can challenge. How do you challenge? Well, again, you spotlight people who are on top. You spotlight success stories. You're constantly. Because people have a short memory, you're constantly spotlighted that to throw. You're not trusting them to be thinking that way. You're constantly talking about that and throwing their focus on that. You know how you do that? You ever been around a kid who wanted something? They talk about it all the time. Well, that's what you do. You're talking about people at the top and how great it is to be at the top and how they got to the top and examples and stories of that all the time. And the fresher they are, the stories, the more recent and the more local they are, the more powerful, the most powerful stories. That's why you've got to have local success. The most powerful success stories are always going to be recent and local. That's why you always want to be pushing and creating local heroes. Those are the most motivating for your people. Now, the other thing that you do is you are putting in competition. Everything is a competition. Who can be first, who can be fastest. You're constantly coming up ways to challenge them and keep them competing against themselves locally. But they're also, again, they have this. Since they know what's happening at the highest levels, they're always comparing their performance there with the idea of moving up. But you're always trying to develop that through competition. Their competitive spirit that causes them to do the extras competition will get you to do. Make the extra effort that you can't get yourself to do any other way. So rather than challenging by nagging and harassing, you should be. You're wasting your future. Give them a challenge. Spotlight people doing great things. Analyze how they're doing. Break it down. Give them a chance to win something and start to build. It allows them to build their confidence. You'll find little competitions that people win will all of a sudden change their whole mindset about what's possible for them. So it's up to you to create those competitions. Now let's move on there. See, the biggest coaches, their world is their people. They constantly focus. This is something they do like once a week. They're constantly focusing in groups, big groups, small groups, one on one. Informal presentations, casual conversations. The focus is always the same. Great. Doing it big. So it's not something you do once or twice. You do it on Monday. But it's the theme. See, the theme behind all of this is doing it big. You can do it big. Showing them how to do it big. Convincing how they can do big. Now how do you do do that? How can you get inside there?
