You Cannot Lead If You Cannot Listen

“I had a hard-and-fast policy: Any player who needed to see me, at any time, could. That simple.”

Bo Schembechler never won a national championship, but after amassing a 194-48 win-loss record at the University of Michigan, he remains an influential figure in football.

In his book Bo’s Lasting Lessons, Schembechler says that he was well aware his public image was one of a cantankerous, angry man who would shout at people, but his game day persona masked a leader who obsessively listened.

“My players listened to me for one very simple reason: I listened to them!” he wrote, adding: “I spend a lot of my time listening to my coaches, my players, my support staff. And they spend a lot of their day listening to each other.”

Schembechler believed that it was impossible to be a leader if you didn’t listen, and tells a story of firing an assistant coach because he talked too much, and listened too little. “Why is a player going to bust his butt for a coach like that?” he ponders in his book, suggesting that you lose players when they come out of a meeting with a coach feeling unheard.

A Lesson From Lombardi

Before Schembechler got to Michigan, he had an opportunity to spend some time observing the Green Bay Packers and their legendary coach, Vince Lombardi.

One interaction in particular stood out, and it would shape Schembechler’s thinking for the rest of his career:

Later, Schembechler asked Lombardi about the interaction, surprised that the notoriously gruff coach didn’t blow his stack at being challenged by his QB.

“You want to be stern with your players and make sure they’re doing things the way you want them done,” Lombardi responded, continuing, “But sometimes they have a better idea. And if they have one, you ought to listen. Bart’s a smart guy and a great quarterback, so if he has a better way, you don’t want him to shut up and keep it to himself, because then he’s demoralized—and you’re missing out on a great idea.”

Schembechler took that to heart, and it became a rule that he lived by even after he’d finished coaching. “If he’s wearing Maize and Blue (Michigan’s colours), he’s a Wolverine, he’s one of mine, and he’s welcome to call me or see me anytime he needs to, day or night. To this day.”

The coach notes that it’s not an easy rule to fulfil, he’s been called foolish for committing his time to it, and that it’s challenging to show as much interest in the ideas of your star quarterback as it is a walk-on, however “when the chips are down for them, that’s when they need you most.”

“These guys know that the most valuable thing I’ve got is my time, so if they’ve got the guts to come down and pull me out of a meeting, it must be pretty important to them. Something must be eating them up. So I owe them that much, at least,” Schembechler writes. “If my secretary asks him to come back tomorrow, that guy ain’t coming back. He’ll lose his nerve, and then his problem—whatever it is—isn’t going to get solved, and it’ll start festering inside him. And I’ll lose him.”

Obviously, there were limits to when Schembechler would be seen, but to provide clarity to his secretary, he posed it this way: “If the president of the university calls, take a message. If the president of the United States calls—I’ll call him back. (And I’m not kidding!) But if one of my players comes down to see me, for any reason, I am always to be interrupted.”

Cody’s Notes

• I’ve found a lot of coaches say they have an open door policy, but when players need them they’re either too busy or unavailable.

• Technology has made ‘being available’ more difficult, with mobile phones and emails and calendar invites making it easier to be distracted during meaningful conversations.

• Another trapping is in being available, but not genuinely listening to what the player is saying to you. Remember, athletes are often 18-32 years old and sometimes fumble over the best way to explain what they’re dealing with.

• I use Nancy Duarte’s ‘adaptive listening’ framework, which suggests there are four styles of listening based on what the speaker requires of the listener at that time:

  
  Immerse: the speaker needs you to absorb without judgment

  Discern: the speaker needs help identifying options

  Advance: the speaker needs assistance getting work done

  Support: the speaker needs you to be a confidante or cheerleader