Doug Cartland's Four-Minute Leadership Advisory
Dung             
by Doug Cartland
Doug Cartland, Inc.
10/07/2014

To share Doug's articles on Facebook and other social media sites see the icons above.

Doug's Articles
 
Doug's newsletter articles have been reprinted in dozens of periodicals and newspapers!
 
For permission to reprint
Join Our Mailing List
Pick up Doug's New eBook

"Optimum Power: Leadership for
a New Age" 

Just $5.99 at: 
   

You've heard the phrase, "(Dung) rolls downhill" yes?

 

I say, bull(dung)...

 

The seniors on my soccer team weren't real happy with me.

 

I was the head coach of the Harvard, Illinois varsity high school soccer teams back in the 1990's...boys in the fall, girls in the spring. (I had to give it up when I began to teach leadership and travel. That was tough to do, I enjoyed it so much.)

 

It started with the boys.

 

Before my tenure, as on most high school teams, the menial, unpopular and grunt work was done by underclassmen. By that I mean, for example, after practices collecting balls, cones, practice jerseys, whatever and putting them away.

 

I had a different philosophy.

 

I put a premium on my leaders leading by example, so I had the seniors do all the grunt work during the two-week preseason, and then had them rotate equally with the underclassman the rest of the year.

 

I also paired my seniors with underclassman so they could take the lead in the work and build relationships.

 

First ones in were the captains.

 

This prompted one of my upperclassmen to whine, "I've been picking this crap up for all these years. I thought I finally wouldn't have to."

 

He got over it.

 

I realized at the time that this flew in the face of most coaches' philosophies. Most want the underclassmen earning their place, proving themselves, testing their mettle, doing the grunt work until they earned the right not to.

 

(This, by the way, is the philosophy of hazing. You know, put the newbies through all this stuff to see if they'll take it; to see if they're team players. Hazing stokes the arrogance of the leaders, undermines mutual respect and, I promise you, has never once added to a positive team dynamic. I never allowed one iota of it.)

 

I, too, believed in underclassman earning their place, but by being slow to speak and quick to work. By practice, a good attitude and success on the field.

 

The more important lesson for these young men and women, I thought, was to emphasize that leading by example and establishing one's credibility is the cornerstone of successful leadership.

 

I wanted them to learn that promotions in life are not a series of escapes from responsibility, but that each rung up comes with a greater responsibility than the rung before.

 

I wanted to dampen their arrogance by making sure that, although they reached a certain positional level, they weren't better than anyone else or above any job.

 

I wanted to immediately deflate the sense of entitlement that too many leaders have. Indeed, these underclassmen were not there to be their servants.

 

As a matter of fact, quite the opposite: It was the job of the experienced players to make these newcomers feel welcome, to assimilate them into the team dynamic and to help them understand what they could achieve through hard work.

 

Yeah, I was an odd duck I guess.

 

But then in my five years of coaching them, both my boys and girls teams set school records in wins, set school records in winning percentage, won a conference championship for the first time ever and went further in the playoffs than they ever had before.

 

Much more than dung, it's better to have success roll down hill.

Click here to "Like" me on Facebook
Click here to Follow me on Twitter
I'd love to hear from you. Reply to this email and let me know your thoughts. 

 

Sincerely,  

Doug

 

Doug Cartland, President
Doug Cartland, Inc.

 

The ONLY Leadership Resource with Guaranteed Results!

16 years...47 states...14 nations...82.1% repeat business...

 

262-736-1800
[email protected]