Published in the March 15 – 28, 2017 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Diana Wood
Diana Wood
My husband and I love to watch the Super Bowl. When we hear the sports commentary say, “No team has ever come back to win a Super Bowl game when they are 10 points or more behind at halftime,” we buckle down to witness the possibility of history being made.
I absolutely love comments like this because as I teach my clients, everything rises and falls with leadership. Super Bowl LI had a record U.S. television audience of 172 million people tuned in at some point to watch the New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons play.
What magnetized my attention to the game was how Tom Brady, Coach Bill Belichick, Matt Ryan, and Coach Dan Quinn would lead their teams through to the end. The entire pre-game, live game and post-game Super Bowl event is flooded with fantastic leadership lessons. The lesson that stands out the most to me is the Law of the Price Tag, which we witnessed in the fourth quarter.
In John Maxwell’s book the 17 Laws of Teamwork, the Law of the Price Tag states that a team will fail to reach its potential when it fails to pay the price. A week after the game I was on a call with Maxwell where he shared information he learned from Belichick coaching.
Do you know what the New England Patriots were doing one week before the Super Bowl? The week before the Super Bowl, Belichick mandated the entire team to do something that they absolutely hate and that no other NFL team does. Regardless of their success to date, he made them run sprints uphill for one full week prior to the game. Belichick calls this fourth-quarter conditioning.
One of the players said, “Here we are in the twenty-third week of the football season and we only have one game left and he still makes us run sprints.”
All growth stops when we fail to pay the price. The Patriots paid the price. During the last quarter of the Super Bowl the Falcons were tired but the Patriots knew they had the fourth-quarter conditioning advantage over Atlanta.
Let’s take a look at the Super Bowl of our lives. Whatever quarter of life you’re in, are you doing what it takes to accomplish your goals and aspirations? Are you even still working on your 2017 goals, or have you given up? If your answer is yes and you are on track, stay the course. If your answer is no, now is the time to transform your life’s path.
You don’t seize your goals because you are hoping to achieve them. You achieve your goals because you are conditioned through planning, prioritization and action. I encourage you pick up the ball and run your sprints uphill — get into condition. Align yourself with a coach. If you don’t have a coach, it would be my pleasure to help.
Morgan Hill resident Diana Wood is the president and CEO of Wood Motivation, a certified independent John Maxwell Team coach, speaker and trainer. Reach her at [email protected].
