Quiet Strength

Tony Dungy 2007
Read: 2010 or before
Education/Leadership, Non-Fiction

I listened to Mr. Dungy read his books while driving back and forth to work. Again, www.audible.com for great downloads right to your iPod. I’ve always admired the man and did not know much about him. A very successful, and once very publicly fired, NFL head coach, and in 2007 the winning coach of the Super Bowl. He was the first African-American coach to win the Super Bowl.

Two things struck me in this book. First, his commitment to faith and family. It is overwhelming. It’s where the title of the book comes from and it is real. He is a high quality man with deep beliefs and he lives his beliefs every day.

Second, he believed that the plan of action he brought for his team would pay big dividends, and he never wavered. His assistant coaches and his players heard the same values/commitments in the first team meeting, and they heard the same ones four or five years later as the team headed to the Superbowl. I love that. In fact, when things got tough for his teams, one of his mantras was, “Do What We Do.” It’s not time to panic, it’s time to do the things that we as professionals have worked so hard to learn and practice. Do What We Do.

But you can’t “Do What We Do” if not everyone knows what that is. That’s the problem with education.  I’ve said it before, but we as educators are famous for blowing in the wind. The prevailing philosophies change, and we change with them. We don’t have what Stephen Covey would call “True North” on our internal or educational compasses. Teachers don’t believe that any new philosophies will stay, and therefore they develop their own. When teams/schools are operating without one compass, they cannot move forward as a unit, nor can they learn from each other. Reading Mr. Dungy made me recommit to my philosophy of communicating often, communicating clearly, and never having more than two new things we are working on, and always being clear on what we stand for and strive for.