“We all we got. We all we need.”

As you are reading this, the Patriots are either planning a parade in the streets of Boston to celebrate their record-setting seventh Super Bowl or fans—like me—are licking their wounds after a loss to the Seattle Seahawks. I’m sitting down to write this just days after the Patriots won their 12th AFC Championship. I’ve always loved the team, even before they were good. I had the privilege of growing up, like many of you, during the dynastic years in which the Patriots won six Super Bowls during the Brady and Belichick era. The final years under Belichick’s leadership were a far cry from those years of dominance, and Robert Kraft’s mistake in hiring Jerod Mayo left many of us to wonder if the organization’s best days were behind us. Enter Mike Vrabel—a former player who a year earlier was inducted into the Patriots Hall of Fame—gets hired by Kraft to be the team’s next coach. Since the first day he was hired I have followed his leadership closely, down to the point of watching his daily press conferences.

I believe that there are so many similarities between sports and business, and it’s one of the main reasons I’ve paid such close attention. How does a leader come in after a slow—and then ultimately rapid—decline and turn things around? What we have had the opportunity to watch is a masterclass in leadership and change management. It’s impossible to chronicle everything that Vrabel has done in this blog, or even in a book, but I want to share a few things that have made an impactful difference in leading his team from a 4-13 season to the league championship just 12.5 months after he was hired.

Vrabel leads with vulnerability. At the start, he introduced the idea of the (4) H’s to the team: history, heroes, heartbreaks, and hopes. This was a framework for the players to be able to get up and share with one another their stories, the people they look up to, the adversities that they faced, and their greatest personal and professional desires. And not only did he introduce this framework to his team, he stood up and shared his (4) H’s first. Here are a bunch of grown men playing a violent sport getting real with one another. Why is this important? Because it builds trust which is more fundamental to success than anything else. We can’t perform at the highest level if we don’t trust one another.
He prepares his team by focusing on taking the right steps and executing at a high level. In a press conference after the team’s first playoff performance he said, “It’s difficult to be disappointed when you don’t have any expectations.” There is no attachment to outcomes or how things need to unfold. He’s not focused on winning because he knows that winning comes through mastery. When the players are focused on executing at a high level and love playing the game, teams earn their right to compete for the league title. This is also part of the reason that I chose to write this blog now and not after the Super Bowl. Regardless of whether the Patriots win or lose the Super Bowl, this was an extraordinary season. Only one team can win the Super Bowl, which means 31 do not. The Patriots have 1 of only two chances to compete for it. Attachment to outcome would call it a failure. Champions, however, look at it as major progress in the never ending pursuit of mastery.
Vrabel doesn’t get through one press conference without referencing identity. At first, I wasn’t clear about what he meant. As I’ve listened to him explain it, I’ve come to understand them as values. Vrabel is so focused on culture. He talks about it constantly. He sets and maintains the standard of what it means to be a New England Patriot. He recruits people that can help the team, not only by the way that they perform, but in what they value. The players talk about the identity regularly in press conferences too, and praise Vrabel for what he stands for. One of the team’s star wide receivers, Stefon Diggs, recently called him, “the best coach that I have ever had,” as he was choking back tears. That’s what buy-in looks like.
Lastly, Mike Vrabel lives with generous intent. He is always praising the players, talking them up, encouraging them, cheering them on, and quite literally draws the best out of them. Earlier this season Rhamondre Stevenson, one of the team’s running backs, was fumbling frequently. Vrabel kept him in rotation, publicly defended him, privately coached him, and Stevenson has been a key ingredient in the Patriots’ success during the playoffs. Vrabel would have been entirely justified in benching Stevenson and moving on. He didn’t. He saw the very best in him and understood that it was the job of he and his team to help Stevenson perform at the highest level. Vrabel has not forgotten what it’s like to be a player. He remembers how challenging it was to play in the NFL and he holds that in a beautiful tension as he doesn’t lower his standards because of it.

The title of this blog has been the mantra of the Patriots this season. It’s their foundational belief in committing themselves to the team, the process, and their belief in what could be possible. One of the greatest privileges of the work that I’ve been called to is that I have a front row seat to extraordinary performances like these every day. I get to witness clients shatter five year revenue goals in two. I get to help them create roles and compensation packages to hire multiple managers in their scaling organizations. I get to see a single-location business become a three-location organization in 18 months. I get to witness the faces of people who start to believe that extraordinary things, which once seemed silly, are not only possible but predictable. So if you are reading this and think it sounds great for Vrabel and the Patriots, or for the clients whose successes I’ve just shared, I’d invite you to come off the bench because they’re possible for you, too.

Quote:

“One thing I realized about culture is you can find out what your culture looks like when your family, your business, or your team is at its low point. It’s not when you’re winning Super Bowls.” - Mike Vrabel

Question:

What identity are you consistently reinforcing through your words, decisions, and standards—and how might living with more generous intent draw out the best in the people you lead without lowering the bar?

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