Timeout for Leadership-your one-minute leadership idea

Op-ed #20

How thick is your skin?

Fact:

Do you think that you have thick skin or do you really have thick skin?

Today, I present to you above an interesting question and I hope that you have the clarity to answer it truthfully.  I say that because I have found that many people that I have known profess to have a very thick skin and, in all actuality, their skin is paper thin.  And if you have any hope of being that successful school principal or leader, if you do not have a thick skin you better develop one.

I thought of this today because I heard several NFL head coaches speak about their new draftees.  Yes, in this time of a lockdown, for us sports fanatics, the NFL draft provided a bit of an escape.  Of course, everything was over-analyzed to death.  Yet I was able to pick up several important items that all leaders should reflect upon.

Joe Judge, the new head coach of the Giants spoke of his desire to have players that possessed this thick skin that I talk about.  He wants players that he and his staff can “coach hard.”  He went on to speak about before he could draft someone, that person had to have the right demeanor and make-up to be successful on a team that he coaches.  He wanted his new players to basically “keep their head down and improve every day.”

Judge’s players have to embrace the structure of the organization and the hierarchy of the unit.  Each of Judge’s players has to “fall in line” and possess the right level of humility.

It sounds like a speech I would want to give all of my new employees.  It sounds like the old saying, “There is no I in TEAM.”  It sounds so simple. But yet it is so hard to accomplish. 

Come to work every day, do the best that you can do every day, prepare hard, work to improve every day, demonstrate humility, be able to accept hard coaching and KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT!  Those teams that accomplish this will have the potential to be champions.  Those teams that cannot, in all likelihood, will never come near the level of a champion.  What team do you want to be on?   Of course, most people will say that they want to be champions.  That is the obvious choice.  But are they willing to pay the physical, mental and emotional price to be a champion?

At the end of the day, I know that I want to be on Joe Judge’s team.