This has been a tumultuous week in the football world as two of the all-time greatest coaches have stepped down from their jobs.
After 17 seasons and 6 college football championships, Nick Saban announced that he was retiring from being the football coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide.
Soon afterwards, Bill Belichick left the NFL’s New England Patriots. Belichick had been the coach of the Patriots for 24 seasons and won 6 Super Bowl titles.
Here’s a “vintage” photo above of a young Belichick and a young Saban when they both coached for the Cleveland Browns back in the 1990s.
While I think we will inevitably see these coaching icons in other leadership positions on the gridiron, here’s 3 leadership lessons that we can learn from them:
🏈 Learn from Your Mistakes: Before becoming legends at Alabama and New England, both Saban and Belichick had coached elsewhere with lackluster results. Their coaching struggles early in their careers and their abilities to adapt and learn provided them with the foundation for their eventual sustained coaching success.
🏈 Grow Top Talent: Both of these icons had the ability to identify, secure, develop and retain top talent on the football field. In turn, they created “destination organizations” where the best players and best assistant coaches wanted to play and coach at Alabama and New England.
🏈 Be Transparent & Drive Clarity: Saban and Belichick have always driven precise role clarity and exacting high expectations for their players and coaches. This transparency enabled them to build high performing organizations.
What else can we learn from quite possibly the greatest of all-time AKA G.OA.T. 🐐 coaching legacies of Saban and Belichick that can be applied to the workplace?