I am a huge Notre Dame fan. I think the couple of years that we spent in Michigan when I was a pre-teen cemented the relationship for me. My dad worked for General Motors in the 80s and accepted a transfer to Detroit. So while most of my new friends were big Wolverine fans, my natural contrarian streak led me to cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame (mainly because Michigan State and Ohio State were struggling at the time).
With that history and small disclaimer out of the way, I come to the subject of this post: Charlie Weiss. For those that don’t know, Mr. Weiss was the head football coach at Notre Dame from 2005 through 2009. His teams experienced some early success but faltered later in his tenure and he ended with a 35-27 overall record in his five seasons. Recently, he had this to say about his struggles at Notre Dame:
“I hired too many people that wanted to use the school as a stepping stone for a head coaching job.”
There are so many things wrong with this statement, I hardly know where to begin…
First, the real job of any person in a position of leadership is to help those that follow or report to him/her. Charlie Weiss should have been grooming his assistants to be head coaches. He should have been celebrating their success. That is what real leaders do; they serve others. In sports, business, and especially life, the only way to build a successful team is to practice servant leadership.
Second, it is also the job of any leader to take responsibility for the decisions they make and for the results their team produces. There are always going to be things that happen that are beyond our control. A leader does not sit idly by and complain about those events. A leader takes action. Otherwise, we might as well just give up. If we didn’t control our past, then it follows that we also don’t control our future.
Additionally, my faith leads me to believe that every decision I make is guided by God. Yes, even the poor decisions I have made were divinely ordained. Those bad decisions/results made me the person I am today. What kind of leader would anyone be if they hadn’t experienced any trials and tribulations? Imagine someone coming to me for advice and all I could say was, “Whew, that’s a pretty bad situation. I can’t help you because I’ve never gone through anything that bad.”
Even if the assistant coaches that worked for Charlie Weiss were “using” him and the university, a true leader that accepted responsibility would also forgive those same assistants. He would understand that since he could not and cannot control the motivations of others, poor results are still not their fault. Leaders must constantly forgive those that make mistakes and use those mistakes as teaching moments. In the end, failing to forgive others means that ultimately, we are not forgiving ourselves.
So, is Charlie Weiss a typical American? Are we practicing the servant leadership that Jesus taught us nearly two thousand years ago? Are we taking responsibility for our past and our future? Are we forgiving ourselves and others for the mistakes we make, learning from those errors along the way? I can’t answer for you or for our country. But I can answer for myself. And I think you know my responses.