Values, Good or Bad, Tie Back to Leadership

While Terry Francona was the manager of the Boston Red Sox during the late season collapse in 2011, and he contract option wasn’t renewed afterward, I’m not placing the blame exclusively on him. Quite frankly, I thought John Lackey was a goon long before that. And while Francona held the “manager” title, there are tons of people within every professional baseball organization who have as much or more control over the purse strings and play a role in impacting the culture of the team. That said, we rarely know the names of those others, nor are they usually the ones moving to a new city and team following this kind of debacle.The manager, or whatever the position is called in a given sport, is the public facing leader in the organization.

One of the very first catch phrases I remember hearing from John Maxwell was “Everything rises and falls on leadership.” Over more than two and half decades of studying his work, I’ve heard (or read) him say that thousands of times. Through all that, one specific story stands out. John was sharing an interaction he had with a venture capital group with a long history of purchasing struggling businesses, turning those businesses around, then selling them at a substantial profit. John asked one of them if there were any specific things they did with every business, regardless of industry. They immediately responded that they first thing that’s done in every acquisition is get rid of the existing executive team. John pushed back, asking it that was necessary every time… The folks in the group were adamant that this was absolutely critical. If those executives were effective in their roles, the company wouldn’t have been struggling and in a position for this venture capital group to buy them out!

That example solidified John’s statement for me; everything truly does rise and fall on leadership. While Francona’s tenure in Boston ended after closing the 2011 season with a 7-20 September record, his role as a leader did not. He became the manager of the Cleveland Indians in 2013 and was named American League Manager of the Year that same year. He earned that designation two more times during his stint with the Indians/Guardians organization.

I’ve never met Terry Francona but what he’s achieved since that 2011 Red Sox melt down tells me that he shares one particular trait with the most effective leaders I’ve ever interacted with: he took responsibility for what happened around him and made changes. Although I don’t know the specific changes Francona made, the results he achieved in Cleveland speak for themselves. That said, I have had the opportunity to work directly with numerous leaders as they’ve encountered challenges. The common thread has been, regardless of which individual on their respective teams dropped a ball that created the issue initially, these leaders have been willing to accept responsibility personally rather than throwing a team member under the bus. Since I’ve referenced Craig so many times to this point, I’ll start with him. He and I have worked through several scenarios where clients came to him with complaints. Every single time, I’ve seen Craig take responsibility and work to find a solution. The friend I mention before that’s experience 5X growth in less than a decade since purchasing his business used to have a sign on his desk that read “The Buck Stops Here”; not out of the kind of arrogance that would imply he had the last say, but to send the message to anyone coming to him that he’s always willing to help with an issue.

In looking at how this applies to our core organizational values, John’s statement is spot on: “Everything rises and falls on leadership.” If the culture isn’t one that’s attracting and keeping great people, that’s on us as leaders. If we’re blessed with a consistent stream of amazing candidates reaching out to join our team, that ties back to how we’ve instilled those values into the organizations we lead. But we can’t afford to take our foot off the gas! With that in mind, let’s consider just how frequently we need put our values in front of our team members.