ARE YOU ON THE RISE?

Recently I ran across a video clip of former Pittsburgh Steelers football coach Mike Tomlin from a few years back. Tomlin is well known for his dynamic communication and leadership style, and this short video highlights why. It’s the first team meeting of the off-season, and the head coach is outlining what he calls “reasonable expectations” for the experience this group of high-level athletes are preparing to share together. His words offer some brutally honest insight into the harsh reality of high achievement for anyone, from a professional football player to you and I here today.

The expectation Coach Tomlin has is simple: get better. “I expect you to get better in all areas. Whether it’s the knowledge relative to what it is that you do, the maintenance and the preparation of your body, the understanding of the game, etc., etc., etc. You need to continually be a guy on the rise. That is a reasonable expectation.”

“The things that made you viable in the past,” he continues, “aren’t gonna be the things that make you viable moving forward. You better be continually getting better as long as you’re sitting in rooms like this. I’m not doing my job if I’m not pointing that out.”

Coach Tomlin’s message to his team validates the foundational belief that drives our work at Champions 101, that champions aren’t born. They’re built. What that really means is that who we are in the important areas of life and performance isn’t nearly as important as who we’re working to become. It means that what we know and what we’re capable of has gotten us here, to this point, but success moving forward requires us to keep getting better. It means - if we’re serious about the success we say we’re after - that we need to continually be, as Coach Tomlin puts it, on the rise.

I think this is the first and most foundational expectation Tomlin shares with his team for two reasons. The first is because that commitment to getting better is so important. I’d argue it’s the most direct determiner of future success. We have a tendency to point to people’s natural talent or God-given ability, but there are plenty of really talented people out there who never come close to reaching their potential or achieving anything meaningful or significant. Talent and ability set the floor, but it’s your willingness to develop that talent and ability that determines your ceiling. The longer I’ve spent studying those we consider champions in any important area of life, the more convinced I am that their eventual success is a direct byproduct of their commitment to improvement. The same, I’d argue, can be said for you.

The other reason I think Coach Tomlin makes improvement an expectation is because he recognizes not only that it’s really important, but also that it’s really difficult. It doesn’t matter whether you are a big-time coach, a high-level athlete, or whatever it is that you are here today. An authentic commitment to getting better requires you to accept and even embrace the straining and the striving and the struggling that comes with it. We talk a lot about the value of improvement, but we don’t always acknowledge the difficulty of doing it. Really improving is really hard. It’s easy for anyone - pro football players included - to make getting better a counterfeit commitment. Coach Tomlin didn’t want “get better” to be a comfortable and convenient catchphrase. He wanted his players to embrace the discomfort and the inconvenience that each of us who really wants to improve must be willing to embrace.

I’m here today to borrow Mike Tomlin’s mandate for his team, and to reframe it towards you and your winning pursuit. In doing so, I’m asking you to reflect on a few important questions that real success requires you to answer. Is getting better a comfortable and convenient catchphrase for you, or have you accepted and even embraced the straining and striving and struggling that comes with it? Do you see that what’s made you viable in the past won’t make you viable moving forward? Are you committed to doing the really important but really difficult work that winning at the next level requires you to do? What I’m asking is, when it comes to the success you say you’re after…are you on the rise?