Michael Lombardi is a former NFL executive. He’s worked for many teams in the league and has written several books on the NFL, often focusing on leadership.
How successful was Lombardi as an executive? That’s hard to say; however, he has worked for some iconic, successful NFL coaches: Bill Walsh, Al Davis, and Bill Belichick. Incidentally, he is not related to the great Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi–at least, that’s what Wikipedia says.
Regardless of how successful, or not, Lombardi has been, he is always opinionated. That makes him interesting to listen to and consistently thought provoking.
In a segment about the problems of Urban Meyer in Jacksonville on the Rich Eisen show, Lombardi outlined four areas of leadership that coaches need to do well in order to succeed. They are:
- Management of Attention: This means you have a plan.
- Management of Meaning: This means you can explain the plan.
- Management of Self: This means you govern yourself as the leader. Govern yourself toward the plan? That’s not stated or clear in Lombardi’s interview, but it would make sense in context as well as being an important truth in general.
- Management of Trust: Do the people who are supposed to be following you trust you? You can be a jerk as a coach but if you are a consistent jerk, they’ll listen to you. Consistency is the most important quality a coach has to have.
Here’s the entire segment on YouTube: