Being a diehard University of Michigan Wolverines fan, it’s hard for me to say anything good about that school to the south of us. But being a lifelong learner of quality leadership insights, I have to tip my cap to Urban Meyer for the outstanding principles he presents in his book Above The Line.
Coach Meyer has been developing the principles he shares in this book for years, but he tells the story of how they all came together for his team during the season they went undefeated and won the college football national championship. As he correctly notes, leadership isn’t just for sports teams: “Where the coach’s job comes in is to get great players to play great. That is the responsibility of any leader in any organization.”
The title of this book comes from the overarching maxim for all of Meyer’s leadership teaching. It goes like this: E + R = O (where E is the Event, R is your Response to the event, and O is the Outcome. The response winning leaders are trying to develop in their team is an above-the-line response. He says that most of us default to below-the-line behaviors—
“It isn’t hard to find people who are caught up in Below the Line behavior. All you need to do is look for those whose first reaction is to blame (others), complain (about circumstances), and defend (yourself), or BCD. … Instead of accountability, BCD creates a culture of excuse making and victimization—things that are toxic for your organization and performance.”
The bulk of the rest of Above the Line is Coach Meyer elaborating on the six healthy “R” responses that leaders should be building into their team members. He says, “Here’s the bottom line: exceptional leaders think about common things in an uncommon way.” In keeping with this truism, Coach Meyer doesn’t share any uncommon leadership principles, but he does share them in ways that most leaders probably haven’t considered before.
Although this book is written by a college football coach, there isn’t much football talk on the pages of this book. So I can highly recommend this to any student of leadership who is ready to learn some new ways to get better outcomes to the events that happen to them and their organizations.
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Craig T. Owens 