If you are uncomfortable walking around your team’s workplace, awkward and out of place, you are a disconnected leader—not really part of the team. Sitting in your office with the door closed and issuing edicts from on high is not communication, and is certainly not collaborative leadership.

Leadership is expertise. It is not rhetoric or cheerleading speeches. People will follow a person who organizes and manages others, because he or she has credibility and expertise—a knowledge of the profession—and demonstrates an understanding of human nature.

Unless you’re a guard on a chain gang, others follow you based on the quality of your actions rather than the magnitude of your declarations.

My father is gone, but his hard-earned leadership lessons remain in place, perhaps more relevant now than ever before. I know he would hope that something in his own experience, as shared in this book, is of value in your own challenges as a leader. It would mean that once again he was able to do what he loved doing and did so well: teach others

The “big plays” in business—or professional football—don’t just suddenly occur out of thin air. They result from very hard work and painstaking attention over the years to all of the details related to your leadership.

I firmly believed that if I took care of my job the score would take care of itself. When it didn’t, I worked even harder to improve my coaching and elevate the Standard of Performance of our team.

“I’ve got a 24-hour rule. You only let it bother you for 24 hours and then it’s over.”

Football coaches, just like executives who push themselves to the brink and beyond, often have no support system and become isolated from family, friends, and normal interactions. I’ve described it as being in a submarine, submerged and cut off from the human race.

“Pick-a-Seat Day” was a total flop, but it was a flop that taught me something very important: A pretty package can’t sell a poor product. Results—in my profession, winning football games—are the ultimate promotional tool.