Subject: Leadership Thought: Stop, Look, and Listen: I'm Doing an Attitude Check.

Dear Friends,

As a former teacher and coach, there were often times in my career when I would stop what I was doing in the classroom or on the basketball court, look straight into the eyes of a student or player and utter the words, “Attitude Check.”  

Those were two of the most often used words in my teaching and coaching vocabulary. Sometimes they were uttered in the form of a question while other times as an exclamation, but they always had the same intent-to challenge a student or a player to change his/her attitude. I knew I must always immediately treat ‘attitude disease’ when I discovered it, because I recognized how contagious it could be.

Attitude is the difference maker for me when evaluating students, players, or staff members. If I had to choose between attitude or aptitude, I would choose attitude every time.

If you were a boss and you were interviewing two people who had similar skill sets, experience, backgrounds, and one of them had a great attitude and the other had a poor attitude, your decision would be easy-attitude would be the difference maker every time.

Attitude was always at the top of my list as a teacher, coach or pastor when assessing the potential of a student, player, or staff member. No matter how competent and experienced a person may be, he or she will never be a good fit without a good and positive attitude.

In his book The Winner Within, highly successful NBA coach Pat Riley, who is the general manager of the Miami Heat basketball team, writes about the ‘disease of me.’ He says of team members who have it: “They develop an overpowering belief in their own importance. Their actions virtually shout out, 'I'm the one.'”  Riley asserts that this action will always have the same inevitable result: “the defeat of us.”

The late John Wooden, considered by many to be the most successful basketball coach of all time, said to one of his players: “You are not the best player on the team, but the team plays the best when you are on it.” He was simply saying, I choose to play you because I know attitude triumphs over aptitude for attitude is always the difference maker.

Whether in athletics, or the classroom, or in the professional world, always choose attitude over aptitude. It is not the only thing you need to look for, but it should be the main thing.  

What better verses to sum up the quality we should be looking for as teachers, coaches, employers, and yes, parents, than the Apostle Paul's words found in Philippians 2:5-8 where he writes, "In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: who, being in the very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; Rather, He made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death-even death on a cross."

Yours in faith and friendship,

Tom

P.S. “You’ve got to have great athletes to win…...........You can’t win without good athletes, but you can lose with them. Talent is never enough without attitude.” Lou Holtz, former outstanding football coach. The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork, John Maxwell, p. 105