Have you seen the documentary Bye Bye Barry yet?
Amazon Prime Video when you’re ready.
There was a major leadership takeaway for me:
This Razor can be taken in a few different directions.
Take it literally
Take it figuratively
Taking the Razor Literally
We complain this generation is soft but Barry Sanders was waiting for the Lions to give him a reason to retire even staring down the biggest record at his position within reach. And he grew up in Kansas in the 80’s.
If your D3 team has a dinosaur coach and it isn’t fun anymore with no records to chase… They are one bad day away from quitting your team.
Taking the Razor Figuratively
Let’s add a few words to the razor now for this remix:
Assume your players are closer to quitting ON YOU than you think.
Okay, so they love the sport too much to quit it entirely, but they’ll quit on a leader. For example, watch any team in games right before a coach gets fired and then watch the next 3 games when the new coach takes over. Same people, different level of give a fuck.
Sam Hinkie has discovered there is some magic in assuming you are worse than you think you are at things.
Here’s the cliff notes from that podcast… The best people at statistical analysis underscore how they think they do on statistical analytics tests. And then come to find out they are in the 99th percentile amongst their peers.
My assumption for leaders is this…
Coaches who are good at player relationships don’t believe they are that good at them.
It’s a white-belt mentality. If you believe you can be better, your advantage compounds over time, if you feel you’re a black-belt, you stay where you’re at.
If you assume your players are one bad moment away from walking away from the game forever, it might change how you coach. It might change what you coach. It might even change why you coach.
You might do fewer powerplay meetings and more coffee with coach where you don’t talk about the powerplay.
After all, your powerplay problem isn’t a hockey problem, it’s a people problem.
As coaches, we fall into into this illusion that all the sticky notes are on the sports side so we have more powerplay meetings when the powerplay struggles, more clips of the forecheck when that isn’t up to par, but we fail to realize the unlock to unlimiting the on-ice aspect comes from a human to human unlock.
Unlearn that it’s a sports issue.
Unlock the human bottleneck.
Unlimit your team.
If you use the Barry Sanders Razor, you can’t help but align with the real ‘issues’ your team is facing.
Question To-Go
When was the last time you thanked guys for simply showing up?
For more on the Sanders Razor and its various implications for leadership, check out the podcast episodes: