Things will go wrong at times. You can't always control your attitude, approach, and response. You options are to complain or to look ahead and figure out how to make the situation better
It's about the journey--mine and yours--and the lives we can touch, the legacy we can leave, and the world we can change for the better.
The secret to success is good leadership, and good leadership is all about making the lives of your team members or workers better.
I don't have the strength or wisdom to get through a single day without guidance and grace from God.
You can't always control circumstances. However, you can always control your attitude, approach, and response. Your options are to complain or to look ahead and figure out how to make the situation better.
. ){kind=small}
Remember that mentor leadership is all about serving. Jesus said, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
People look at me and see a calm, cool guy on the sidelines and I want them to know that my Christian faith affects my coaching and everything I do.
When I played at Minnesota, Green Bay, those northern cities, Buffalo, they wanted to have those championship games at home. It was going to be an advantage to be there with their fans and the cold weather and all that. But when you've got a Super Bowl, and it's the two best teams, you want ideal conditions. You want to play a great game.
You can have an impact anywhere you are.
You never know what's going to happen. My mother was an English teacher. If someone had told her that I was going to write a book, she would never have believed that. So you can never say never.
You should never be defined by what you do, by the things you have; you've got to define yourself by who you are and who you impact and how you impact people. And that's the thing I try to get across to my players.
When you're in a situation, you can complain about it, you can feel sorry for yourself, you can do a lot of things. But how are you gonna make the situation better?
The best leaders are following Christ. That's the best leader you can follow.
Everything's not going to go perfect. You're going to have some losses that you're going to have to bounce back from and some things that are a little unforeseen that you're going to have to deal with.
We talked about some of our experiences, focusing, hanging together down the stretch, important games. It's not necessarily who has the most talent but what team sticks together and executes their fundamentals the best.
We need somebody to give us a chance.
We have so many young men, especially, who are growing up without their dads. We have to fill that void. We have to do a better job helping young people see what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman. And then, somehow, we have to put that family structure back together.
The reason my kids like McDonald's is that they always know what they're going to get. It's not gourmet food, but the french fries they order in Indianapolis are just like the french fries they order in Tampa. Wherever they get McDonald's fries, they know it will be the same. That's what McDonald's does.
Sometimes I think God wants there to be a circus so we can show there's another way to respond.
It's just really making sure I am doing the best job I can do as a dad. I do think that is my No. 1 job.
Balance provides the chance for longevity. You can be a champion at work and at home.
My dad, who was a teacher, used to tell me that a teacher's goal should be for every one of their students to get an A. If that's your goal every day - to make every student or player learn - then it doesn't matter if you won last year or didn't win. When next year's team shows up, I try to help every player become as good as they can be.
The book is actually called 'A Mentor Leader, a Different Way to Lead.' It really talks about my experience in the way I tried lead our football team, things that I learned from, basically, the coaches that I played for and my parents about leadership. And it is a little bit different, counter to maybe what society says about great leaders.
The Lord doesn't always take you in a straight line. He tests you sometimes.
That's the difference between the NCAA and the NFL right now. They've got to step up and say, 'We're going to do the right thing. We're going to hire qualified people. We're going to hire the best man for the job regardless of what boosters or anyone else has to say.'
The narrow path that 'Uncommon' people will take, that the Lord wants you to go down, that really is the ultimate way to go.
I think I've got a responsibility to be home a little bit more, be available to my family a little bit more and do some things to help make our country better. I don't know what that is right now, but we'll see.
The Lord has a plan. We always think the plans are A, B, C and D, and everything is going to be perfect for us and it may not be that way, but it's still his plan.
No excuses. No explanations.
Our goal was to win, to win a Super Bowl, but also to win in the right way, to be role models to our community, to represent Indianapolis, the state of Indiana and the National Football League.
