Bench Talk #2 Know Who You Are October 5, 2012 I firmly believe ...

Bench Talk #2
Know Who You Are
October 5, 2012
I firmly believe that most of us have an inclination to be good people.
However, sometimes societal pressure and social restraint make us lose track of our
natural selves, and it brings out our competitive, cutthroat, warring—sometimes
mean‐‐ selves. When these outside forces have a louder voice than the voice within
us, then we can make bad choices and hurt ourselves and hurt other people.
Those who are most vulnerable to these bad choices are people who are insecure
about their own identities.
Without a strong sense of self, we are also vulnerable to people who force others to
behave in certain ways. We are vulnerable to leaders who prompt girls or boys to
do destructive things to others. This kind of person is not a leader but a bully. I am
sure on our own we can think of examples of people who lead through artificial
power, power that they get because people are afraid of them.
True leadership begins with knowing who you are and being comfortable with who
you are, and when this happens, you can make other people comfortable with who
they are.
We tend to follow people who are authentic. Followers grant a leader their
cooperation when they perceive natural integrity, and this comes from this sense of
self that I am talking about. Today I am going to tell you a story about an authentic
leader.
I realize some of you might think that leadership is not something you aspire to, but
it should be. It might seem self‐promoting and self‐aggrandizing to think that you
can be a leader, but it isn’t. All of you should aspire to be leaders if being a leader
means inspiring those around you to be their best selves.
I do not usually talk about the National Football League, and trust me, I am not an
expert on this topic, but this morning I am briefly going to look at it from a cultural
standpoint and from the question of authentic leadership and identity.
I want to emphasize that there are many good men in the National Football League.
But there are also felons; there are men who have stolen things and assaulted
people. There are men who have been encouraged to purposely injure other men
during a game. There are men who physically and emotionally hurt their wives and
friends. There are also good men and upstanding men and family men. So how does
a good man emerge from such a complex, wide‐ranging culture of the NFL to be a
leader of such a diverse group of men?

Although this player that I want to examine has an unwritten future, although we
cannot know what his career or life will ultimately look like because he is only
twenty‐five, during a specific period of time last fall and winter he was able to lead
his team to heights none of them ever dreamed of, and I want to briefly look at his
weeks of leadership under those conditions. In the weeks preceding his leadership,
his team was losing, and they had a first‐year coach. Morale was low.
This leader is not a beautiful player; there are abundant flaws to his game. He is
slow to throw; he has an inefficient and unorthodox throwing arm, and he has
trouble reading the field. Some of you know this quarterback because he was the
most written about quarterback last year. I am not promoting him as a player or his
old team or his new team or his religion. But I would like to tell you the brief history
of this team’s turn‐around last winter due to this player’s leadership. Of course, all
of us know I am talking about Tim Tebow.
I do not know everything there is to know about Tebow, but here is what I can tell
you about last season: around week 7, Tebow got his chance to start, and he did
well. Soon his fellow players began to grant him power as a leader. He did not lead
by force or by bullying or even by being cool. Players voluntarily followed him.
Interestingly, on the barometer of coolness, Tim Tebow is nowhere near the list for
the top 20 coolest players in the NFL as produced in last August’s Bleacher Report.
It is remarkable, really, that Tebow was not laughed out of the locker room with the
words of inspiration he gave the team. Quoting from the Bible to a diverse group of
players when you are twenty‐four years old and relatively new on the team is risky,
especially when the other players do not necessarily believe in the things you
believe in.
But no one laughed at him. They trusted him. After a bad start to the season, under
Tebow the team had five fourth‐quarter comebacks and three overtime wins. In the
overtime of their playoff game, Tebow launched an 80 yard pass that won the game
in an upset and was the fastest overtime win in NFL history.
That is the end of Tim Tebow’s story on that particular team. He was traded away,
and now he has a new team. He is not getting much playing time, and some people
are still saying negative things about his playing ability and his constant references
to his religion, but many people believe that this season he has inspired the player in
front of him to be a better leader. This is another form of leadership: inspiring
others to be their best selves. Many feel that Tebow’s arrival to the team inspired
Sanchez to work harder, to train more than he ever had, to study more film, and to
take a stronger leadership role (despite Sanchez’s performance last week). Because
of Tebow’s presence, Sanchez is a better leader.
Authentic leadership comes from knowing who you are. It means knowing your own
limits and potential; it means putting your weaknesses out there even as you are
proud of your strengths. If you can be comfortable in your own skin, you will

inspire others to feel naturally comfortable with who they are, even if it is different
from you, and I have one short story to end with.
I have a friend who is a junior in college. He is a really bad singer, but he loves to
sing, especially show tunes and love songs. He sings in the shower; he sings when
he is driving; and he sings publicly any chance he gets even on the men’s lacrosse
bus and even when no one else joins him. And believe me, he does not sing softly;
his voice is a full‐throated yelp.
He knows he is worse than bad; he is off pitch, but he is OK with that because
singing makes him happy. He is not confined by an outside measurement of his
singing ability. Standardized scales and notes are meaningless to him. Nor is he
defined by standard protocol of male lacrosse players. He is dictated by his own
metaphorical pitch–however painful his notes are to the people around him. And
for this reason, he is a good example of someone who is comfortable in his own skin.
And in truth, the joy he achieves through singing gives joy to those around him‐‐
except perhaps the players on the lacrosse bus, but since he is the biggest and
strongest member of the team and the only long‐stick middie, no one bothers him
about it.
You are doomed for hardship if you try to live someone else’s life or if you try to live
by some abstract norm. Do not betray who you are to satisfy others or to satisfy
some external expectation for the approval of others. Define and claim yourselves.
Listen to the voice within and be comfortable with who that is. This will allow you to
be your best self. And if you can do that, you will inspire others to join you and be
their best selves, too.