LEADERS GET TO KNOW THEIR TEAMMATES AS PEOPLE, NOT JUST EMPLOYEES
There’s a certain segment of sports fans across the country right now who are extremely happy. Those are National Football League aficionados because the 22025 NFL season is upon us as week three continues today.
Week two started a week ago Thursday night when the Green Bay Packers defeated the Washington Commanders in Green Bay. Fans in the DMV, where I live, were not happy. And one man in particular experienced bittersweet feelings: Dan Quinn, the coach of the Commanders. Quinn saw his team go down to defeat on his 55th birthday.
Quinn is in his second season coaching Washington. Last season he led his team to the National Football Conference Championship game, where they lost to the eventual Super Bowl champions, the Philadelphia Eagles. During that season, Quinn managed to transform the leadership culture within the team. The manner in which he achieved that goal carries a lesson for all of us.
In the Spring of 2024, soon after his hire, Quinn asked each member of his coaching staff to create a PowerPoint presentation. The subject of the presentations was not supposed to be how the Commanders could be a better football team.
The presentations Quinn requested had to be about the coaches’ own lives – their childhoods, significant milestones, their families and best friends, all explained through words and pictures.
As Elise Devlin of The Athletic wrote, “For the next 16 weeks, each staff meeting started the same way: with a new presentation…There were tears, there was joy…Quinn viewed those moments as an important part of his team’s surprise 12-5 record in his first season.”
My favorite leadership expression, which I have written about here previously is simple: “It’s all about relationships.” It sounds easy. It is not easy. It takes time, effort and intention to build meaningful relationships with the people we lead. Each one is an individual with a unique life story. Have you made the time to learn those stories and get beneath the outer veneers put out there by your colleagues?
This season, before the season began, Quinn asked each of his players go through the same exercise, a presentation for all coaches and players called “My Story.” Why did Quinn do this – an exercise I have never heard a coach implement before?
To Quinn, “deepening relationships with players and coaches fosters trust and understanding, which makes it easier to navigate tough moments together. He believes it also correlates to performance…It gives me a better perspective on them.”
In the process of getting to know his coaches and players as people, Quinn also emphasized the importance of diverse viewpoints. “Having different points of view, I really encourage…Different points of view, collaborating to test things – that’s now my process of winning.”
Quinn added: “Sometimes as a head coach, you feel the responsibility of having to plan everything. But you want your own ideas challenged and tested. Because the easy thing is just to agree with the head coach and move forward. But if you are really about the process of winning, then some people should say, “Or what if we did it this way?”
He said that hearing “my story” from other coaches and players was a way that people “could connect. You could see an impact. Somebody might have a shared experience, at least in terms of ‘I also went through that or I also have been dealing with that issue.’ Sometimes hearing somebody’s shared experience about what they’ve gone through can be a really big deal.’”
In hearing the stories of his fellow coaches, Quinn admitted that it also helped him to know his staff better. “There are some things that I found out about people that I’d never known before and I’d known them for a long time. I thought: ‘Wow. I would have gone all this time and maybe not known some of these things.”
He concluded: “I think when you know somebody a little deeper, you know their why, then you’re able to go further in the relationship and understand each other better. Maybe that comes up during a difficult moment, maybe it comes up that you’re able to respond better to somebody when they need your help.”
I encourage you to think about Dan Quinn’s approach. As leaders, we are also coaches. It is incumbent upon us to get to really know our team members. They are all different. A leadership or coaching approach that works with one teammate may not succeed with a different person.
Once we truly make the time to get to know our colleagues – what makes them tick, where they have been, where they strive to go – we can simultaneously build and sustain our relationships with them and tailor an effective leadership strategy that resonates with them.
Make the time. Make the effort. It will be worth it.
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-Larry