I recently completed a course with Lifehack titled, Laser Focus with Purpose. I wanted to take this course because coaching, both in practices and games, did require Laser Focus and I wanted to learn all I could about the topic.

Upon completing the course, here is my review and feedback. I hope there might be a concept that you may be able to integrate into your work. Thanks to Lifehack.org for providing me with this opportunity.

I am going to divide my study of Laser Focus with Purpose into two categories:

• Concepts I Learned
• Concepts that Complement and Supplement the Learning

Concepts I Learned

1. I had no idea that 1 of 3 people live with extreme stress. This knowledge has tremendous implications for leaders.
2. We all set clear goals, but I liked the idea of creating Roadmaps with Milestones. I also liked the concept of learning from others. Athletic coaching is a study of constant learning from other coaches.
3. I liked negating the idiom, “Time is Money.” I never thought about the fact that you can accumulate money, but time wasted can never be accumulated.
4. The Big Picture breakdown of time was a good long range teaching point. 10 minutes only per day equates to 60 days in a lifetime. 2 ½ hours per day equates to 54 WEEKS in a lifetime.
5. In my working years, I prided myself on being able to multitask. The idea of sticking with one thing at a time does make more sense.
6. Another teaching point is that 2 ½ hours per day on Social-Media does take over a year of your lifetime. What an impact!
7. It would be a good thing for all of us to remember that due to the internet and texting, we are available 24/7. We must put up some stop signs!
8. The average person receives 16 notifications per hour. Decide if you are going to answer them immediately or wait until you are less busy.
9. Realize that notifications can become a major obstacle to your focus.
10. Focus on completing one task, then respond to messages. Only after the task is completed do you respond to messages.
11. Distinguish between short-term and long-term time expenditures. The tendency is to spend too much time on short term expenditures.
12. To help evaluate a task, utilize the designation: MUST HAVE; SHOULD HAVE; GOOD to HAVE.
13. Through my working years, I did a DAILY to-do list. I like the idea of doing planning on a weekly basis. I think this format would lead to staying away from the minutiae.
14. The average adult maintains focus for 15-20 minutes. I thought it would be longer.
15. The average human attention span is 8 seconds. Again, I thought it would be longer.
16. I appreciated the concept that focus is a flow. Failure is a bump in the road and after success keep moving.

CONCEPTS that COMPLEMENT the LEARNING

1. “Time is finite and precious.” There is only so much of it. Then the learning took us to time expenditures and investments. “Quiet time” was not examined. I think quiet time is a major investment.
2. Quality time is extremely important today. Our work can overwhelm us. It may be a good idea to schedule time for your children and spouse right alongside your business schedule. It is true that when people die, they don’t say, “I wish I had spent more time at the office.”
3. Some thoughts on Distractions

• • When a colleague comes to you with an idea and if you elect to discuss that idea, it could take 2 hours of your time. Instead, tell him you might have a good idea here; write it down, get it to me, and then we’ll discuss it. This forces him to synthesize and crystalize his thinking and writing.
  • A professor at Notre Dame wrote, “I complained that for 25 years I could get nothing done at work because of the interruptions. Then in my 26th year, I realized the interruptions were my work.”
  • “People are more important than things.” This statement complements the above point. Interruptions can be very different. When someone comes to you with a legitimate problem, it is a good idea to put away the “thing” you are doing and give him your full attention.

4. “Distractions take time and energy away.” A good friend who has authored 18 books on mathematics teaches at Temple University. When he teaches the same math class in a regular class setting versus remotely, the results might surprise you. The students taking the course online consistently score higher on the exams than those in the actual class. Ray’s theory is that the online students do not have the distractions the in-class students have.
5.“Prioritze like a pro.” It was stated that business leaders prioritize well. So do athletic coaches. Both sectors must first teach the fundamentals.
6. When it comes to time limits, I hope preachers take this course! I cannot count the number of times clergy homilies go on and on! A good priest friend limits his sermons to 7 minutes and he is a most effective speaker.
7. I love Deadlines, especially when it comes to meetings. Leaders should set a time-limit at meetings and adhere to it. I love this definition of meetings, “Meetings are people sitting around TALKING about things they should be DOING!”
8. George Burns wrote, “To be a quality speech, it must have a strong beginning and a strong ending and the closer the two are together, the better.” When your Focus program teaches that the average human attention span is 8 seconds, that is a great teaching point for all speakers!

I was at a high school basketball game this past Friday at Marist High School in Chicago. Marist was playing Benet Academy and I knew it would be a good game because I know the coaches of each team, Gene Nolan of Marist and Gene Heidkamp of Benet. Both are outstanding coaches!

As I watched the game I thought the two “Gene Teams” exhibited four skills that leaders could reflect on.

     Gene Heidkamp | Benet

             Gene Nolan | Marist

First, both teams had a system of play which emanated from their respective philosophies of how the game should be played. Equally as important, they taught their systems exceptionally well because the players executed so well. They played very smart. Defensively, one system was man-to-man based and the other was zone based. Each system is a different way to defend but both effective because they were taught so well. Leaders have to be teachers.

Second, their kids played very hard. I could not count the number of times players from both teams were on the floor diving for loose balls. Most shots were contested and every rebound was earned. It was difficult for both teams to score because of the players’ knowledge of the defensive systems and the efforts put forth. Leaders not only have to teach but they have to motivate their workers to work hard consistently.

Third, both teams played together. They helped on defense and they made the “next pass” on offense. A player may have been open for a shot but if another teammate was more open, the “next pass” was made. Both teams showed what the great Bill Russell spoke to when talking about the championship Boston Celtics teams he played for. He said when they entered a gym for practice or a game they left their individual egos outside the door. But what they had was “Team Ego.” Isn’t that exactly what all organizations in all fields strive for – a genuine Team Ego?

So, both teams did what coaches always preach. They played “hard, smart, and together.” No matter the team — be it part of business, education, medicine, or law — I think these three criteria are the foundation for excellence.

Both Coach Genes accomplished the three concepts above, but I also believe all three characteristics were driven by a fourth thing they do. I have been privileged to know both men for quite some time and they both do something that the late Rick Majerus used to say about players. “Players don’t care know how much you know until they know how much you care.”

Gene and Gene are great examples of leaders who do care. They care about their players off the floor as much as they care about their performance on the floor. I could not help but think how fortunate the young men playing for these two quality leaders are. These athletes have friends in the two Genes for the rest of their lives.

Leaders who genuinely care for the people in their charge will get them to work hard, smart, and together.

“When we walked into a building for practice or a game, we left our egos outside the building. However, we brought our TEAM EGO into the building.”

The above quote is how Bill Russell described the Boston Celtics basketball teams he played on. Their Team Ego resulted in 11 NBA championships in the 13 years Russell played in Boston. I cannot imagine any future player entering the NBA whose team will win 11 championships in 13 years.

The essence of sport is getting teammates to drop their individual egos for the sake of the entire team. Various coaches have reiterated this concept in a myriad of different ways.

Vince Lombardi used to tell the Green Bay Packers, “Individual commitment to a group cause is what makes a team, a business, a church, or a country work.”

UCLA’s legendary coach, John Wooden, coached many stars during his tenure with the Bruins. He was the College Player of The Year when he graduated from Purdue University, so he knew about stardom from both playing and coaching. His insight was, “The main ingredient of a star is the rest of the team.”

Al McGuire, the former Marquette coach and the most “street-smart” person I ever worked with used to tell his athletes, “Either we all go uptown together or nobody goes uptown at all.”

When I think of some of the really good teams I was privileged to play on or coach, there is no question that everyone was on the same page and that page was “Us.” Individual glory was sacrificed for team glory.

I have always believed that the concept of teamwork definitely transcends athletics. If this is true, should not the first priority of a leader be the development of teamwork? If a business or any organization is to pursue excellence, I do not think they can achieve that goal unless they commit to teamwork.

A classic example of teamwork in the medical field is the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Friends who have been there tell me that they are immediately met by a primary physician. After a thorough examination of the medical issues, the patient is then assigned to a team of doctors. All the doctors work together to find the best treatment for the patient. Their commitment to Team Ego has earned them international acclaim.

In my 34 years at the University of St. Francis, I served on a number of committees with the Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference and was always proud of our work. Everyone was committed to make the best decision for the conference as a whole, not the best decision for their individual schools.

I have also been in situations where jealousy was preeminent and your outside competitors were not the problem; the problem was the people within the organization. The excellence that could have been — and should have been — achieved never came to fruition.

Leaders must do everything they can to develop Team Ego within their organizations!

My sister, Marybeth Balog, sent me a number of quotes and quite a few of them referred to how we will be remembered at the end of our lives. Enjoy them.

• Clarence Darrow wrote, “I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.”
• Mark Twain saw it this way: “I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”
• Oscar Wilde wrote, “He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.”
• Stephen Bishop was quoted as saying, “I feel so miserable without you; it’s almost like having you here.”
• Mae West stated, “His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.”
• Finally, Oscar Wilde once again: “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.”

I think I would be correct in assuming none of us would like to have any one of the above quotes be the theme of our funeral.

The Irish have often celebrated death by imbibing in the drink. They have been known to say that the only difference between an Irish wedding and an Irish wake is one less drunk.

On the other hand, there have been two funerals that I will never forget. The first was my good friend, Tony Delgado’s father. After the priest and the altar boys reached the altar, a Mariachi Band came up the center aisle playing very loudly. We were all surprised as none of us had ever experienced that in church before. In his eulogy the priest explained that Mr. Delgado requested the band to be part of his funeral. He said every room Mr. Delgado entered in his life, he brought joy and he wanted that joy to be part of his funeral.

The second was Dr. Gene Curran. Doc was a podiatrist and took the time out of his busy schedule to teach Biology at our high school. When the priest gave the eulogy, he referred to Doc as “the quiet man who said so much.” He truly was a mentor to many of us and he taught us how to treat people, not by his words but by his actions. His actions did say a great deal.

When leaders ever take the time to reflect on their legacies, they may want to reflect on Mr. Delgado and Doc Curran who lived by a creed Albert Einstein believed in: 

“I can think of no reason why we are here other than to help others.”

Leaders are in a unique position where they can help others.

I recently heard an expression from John Maxwell that I had never heard before that made me reflect on its wisdom.

“People don’t pay for average.”

I know we see this in the athletic arena. When we have excellent teams, we attract bigger crowds. Although people won’t pay for average, they will pay for excellence.

This is a great lesson for leaders. Whatever business, team, or organization you are leading, the more excellence you produce the more success will come your way.

I do believe in the last analysis all leaders are both teachers and coaches. I once heard that the best definition of a teacher is a one-word definition. That word is “Facilitator.” The great teachers facilitate the learning; they make the learning easier.

Please think of the BEST teacher or coach you ever had – not a good one, the BEST. For that teacher/coach to achieve excellence, I think he/she had to do four things. Did your best teacher/coach do these four things?

First, he/she knew his/her subject matter, be that subject algebra or football. The great UCLA basketball coach, John Wooden, had this insight on learning. He told a friend of mine who played on his last team how much he was still learning about the game. At the time, he was 65 years old.  

Coach Wooden’s teams won seven NCAA basketball championships in a row and in the last twelve years he coached they won ten. I don’t think either of those records will ever be eclipsed. Coach knew his subject matter and he was a lifelong learner. Great teachers, coaches, and leaders are lifelong learners in their subject matter.

Second, the teachers/coaches who achieve excellence are organized. They can disseminate their knowledge. Unfortunately, some of you may have had professors who definitely knew their subject matter, but they could not bring it down to our level, to the level of us mortals.

I have always liked this concept from the athletic world: “I have not taught until you’ve learned.” Great teachers, coaches, and leaders adhere to this adage.

Third, the great ones teach, coach, and lead with enthusiasm – not the “rah rah” enthusiasm; but the quality of enthusiasm where they are enthused because you did so well.

Fourth, finally, and most importantly, the great ones CARE. They care about the people in their charge far beyond the narrow confines of a classroom, a football field, or a place of work.

The greatest example of this in coaching was Amos Alonzo Stagg. He was the football coach at the University of Chicago when they were in the Big Ten Conference. His degree from Yale was in Divinity. He studied to be a Reverend but he felt he could better minister to America’s youth from a football field than a pulpit.

Vince Lombardi, the late, great Green Bay Packer coach, used to tell his players, “Pursue perfection and you might catch excellence.”

Leaders are teachers and coaches and there may be value in reflecting on the four things above that the great ones do on a daily basis. Hopefully, you will catch excellence!

I would love to hear about your experience with a leader that was above remarkable in these four areas. Was she / he a subject matter expert – lifelong learner, an organized communicator, enthusiastic, and did she / he care?

There has been a great deal written criticizing this relatively new concept of everyone getting a trophy. I am not in favor of it for one reason – Failure.

Failure is a part of life. I believe all of us meet Failure in our lifetime – both personally and professionally – and the sooner we learn how to deal with it the better.

So, instead of teaching young people that we all deserve rewards, thereby not hurting anyone’s feelings, I believe we would help them more by teaching them how to deal with Failure.

One of the most profound concepts I ever heard at the many basketball clinics I attended both nationally and internationally came from Dale Brown, the former LSU basketball coach. After telling a story about a woman who overcame tremendous odds, he said your “FQ is more important than your IQ.”

Your FQ is your Failure Quotient. How often can you fail at something and have the resiliency to get back up?

When you study the lives of great achievers, you see an awful lot of Failure. Abraham Lincoln lost many more elections than he won prior to being elected president of the United States. Thomas Edison failed 10,000 times in his experiments to find electricity until he finally met with success. When Winston Churchill, possibly the greatest leader of the 20th century, flunked 6th grade his teacher wrote that he was “dumb and hopeless.”

Each of these three men had strong FQ’s. Most, if not all achievers, have met or will meet Failure along the way.

If the above premised is true would it not be better to teach young people how to deal with Failure? The field of cybernetics teaches two ways to meet Failure:

1. Learn from it
2. Put it behind you

It is relatively easy to learn from Failure but more difficult to put it behind you. The best analogy I heard to accomplish putting Failure behind you was to have a big box with a huge, strong lock. Put the Failure in the box, lock it tightly, never open it up, and move on.

Leaders must learn to deal with Failure. If they have been given trophies all their lives, Failure very well may consume them. However, if they have been taught to develop strong FQ’s they will be in a much better position to lead.

Pat Riley, the former Los Angeles Laker coach and current president of the Miami Heat, summed up the importance of a strong FQ in his book, The Winner Within: A Life Plan for Team PLayers. He wrote, “Success is getting up one more time than you’ve been knocked down.”

Trophies are great but learning to deal with Failure is the better life-long gift.

Ben Zobrist of the Chicago Cubs gets “it.” I cannot explain what “it” is but I believe I know it when I see it.

On the World Series championship team in 2016, he was the Most Valuable Player of the Series. This is an extraordinary honor for any major league player.

He did an equally as extraordinary thing this past Saturday. I was at a north-side Chicago park district baseball park watching my nine-year-old grandson play in a Little League game that morning. He was playing on one diamond and another game was being played on an adjacent diamond.

All of a sudden the game on the other diamond stopped and we all wondered why. The players and the adults at the game gathered around someone. That someone was Ben Zobrist in his Cubs uniform. The Cubs had a game that afternoon at 2 p.m., so Zobrist, who lives in the neighborhood, rode his bike over to the park to watch the kids play.

I walked over to the diamond to see if I might be able to shake his hand, congratulate him on a great career, and let him know that I had coached at the University of St. Francis. He played his collegiate baseball in our Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference. We had a great rivalry and a great relationship with his University, Olivet Nazarene, and we were all were very happy to see a player from our conference have such great success at the highest level of baseball.

You can imagine the glee on the faces of the young players! They brought balls, bats, and hats to one of their heroes to get his autograph. The adults followed suit.

It was great to see a World Series MVP ride his bike to a neighborhood park on game-day to meet the young athletes and their parents and friends.

Just being there showed that Zobrist gets “it.” Then he took it to the next level. At each diamond he stayed until every boy and adult got his autograph and a picture with him. He could not have been more accommodating, humble, and gracious.

I thought he also showed how much he gets ”it” when I overheard his comment to an older umpire. I would think this umpire was being paid very minimally but he was there in ninety degree heat to serve the kids. Zobrist sincerely thanked him for what he was doing for the kids and for baseball’s future.

Not unlike ball players, leaders are often held in high esteem. Unfortunately, I have seen leaders and ball players act with arrogance and superiority when meeting others.

I would hope leaders could take a lesson from a ball player who gets “it.”

John Kennedy once said, “…a sense of humor makes it all bearable.” There is a great deal of wisdom in this statement and it seems that a number of leaders bought into this concept.

Lady Astor told Winston Churchill that if she was his wife, she would put poison in his coffee. Churchill’s response was, “If I were your husband, I’d drink it.”

Vince Lombardi was a very tough leader. As I remember the story from Jerry Kramer’s outstanding book, Instant Replay, Lombardi fined Paul Hornung and Max McGee for missing curfew. At a subsequent team meeting he told the two of them if they missed curfew again he was going to substantially increase the fine. After reflecting on what he had just said, Lombardi then told them if they were going some place that was worth that big of a fine, he would like them to take him with them.

Harry Truman was at a White House dinner and a very sophisticated lady chastised him for drinking too much. Truman’s response was something to the effect that she was right. He was quite drunk but the difference between him and her was that when he woke up in the morning, he would be very sober. However, when she woke up the next morning she would still be very homely.

After Casey Stengel’s New York Mets team lost something like 100 games the year before, one of the first questions he was asked at spring training the next year was, “What did you think of your team’s execution last year?” His response was that he was all for it.

Ronald Reagan was famous for his use of humor. One of his favorite stories was about two young men backpacking in the mountains of northern California and they came up to the biggest bear either of them had ever seen. The one guy looked over at his companion and he was seated taking a pair of running shoes out of his backpack. He asked him if he thought those shoes would enable him to outrun that bear. His retort was, “No, but they will enable me to outrun you.”

As you have read many times in this newsletter, I will always believe that the best coach  I have ever known was my college coach and a man I worked with for twenty-five years, Gordie Gillespie. Dan Sharp, the outstanding Joliet Catholic Academy football coach who worked with Gordie for a number of years, often told this story. The team practiced at a park district facility and right next to the field was a graveyard. After the offense messed up a play where they were working on timing, with no defense present, not once but three times, Gordie went over to the fence separating the field from the graveyard.

Now visualize some thirty players standing and watching their coach yelling to the graves saying, “Fellas… fellas… make room for Gordie. These guys are killing me!”

Leadership always has been, and always will be, replete with pressure. Many elect not to take leadership roles because they don’t care to deal with all the pressure. I read somewhere that if leadership were easy, we would have a lot more leaders.

So, how can you deal with the pressure? Two thoughts:

Consider the wisdom of former Notre Dame football coach, Lou Holtz, who liked to emphasize that things are never as good as they seem nor as bad as they seem, but somewhere in the middle. Don’t dwell on the bad because things are never as bad as they seem and you will work your way through the bad.

Secondly, consider doing what the leaders cited above did. Keep humor in your hip pocket and use it to diffuse the pressure. And the best example of this may have come from the former basketball coach at the University of Texas, Abe Lemons. He told coaches at a clinic in Chicago that when they get fired they may want to do what he did when Texas fired him. He got some mistletoe, put it in the back pocket of his jeans, and walked out the door!

Kenny “The  Jet” Smith said something during one of the telecasts of this year’s NCAA tournament that I never heard before, “Bring a game; not a name.”

I believe this statement can have a great deal of insight for leaders, whether you have or do not have a “name,” in terms of preparation. Just as the teams in the NCAA’s had to come to the tourney prepared, leaders have to come to presentations prepared.

I attended numerous basketball clinics during my 44 years of coaching that sport and saw both sides of this equation. I heard coaches with big names disappoint and listened to “no name” coaches who were the best teachers at the clinics.

While working in Greece one year giving coaches’ clinics and players’ camps, I had the opportunity to hear a coach who was considered the best coach in Europe. I was very excited to hear him and to learn from him. There were about 400 coaches at the clinic and everyone I spoke with after his presentation felt the same way I did. None of us learned anything from him.

While directing a clinic in Salt Lake City, Utah I listened to some outstanding coaches and most of them taught well. I was sitting with Carroll Williams, the creator of the Flex Offense, when a coach I never heard of came to the podium. Carroll told me to really listen to him. His name was Bud Presley, a junior college coach in California, and he was by far the very best presenter at the clinic.

There was a famous coach at one of our country’s elite universities. His presentations were replete with egotism and even though he was knowledgeable, his arrogance simply did not allow you to stay engaged in his speech. His arrogance was so ingrained that he once came to a speaking engagement and his introductory line to the organizer of the event was, “Who’s got my check.” Not “hello,” not “good to meet you,” only “who’s got the check.”

We had some great coaches at a clinic that I directed in Seattle. I was sitting next to the Southern Cal coach, George Raveling, when a high school coach, the only high school speaker at the clinic, gave an outstanding presentation.  To this day, I do not remember his name but I distinctly remember that he was better than all the college and NBA coaches who spoke. Raveling, a well known coach and a great clinician, felt the same way as I did about the coach’s teaching.

I have seen the same concept in the entertainment world. We recently heard a big name entertainer in a sold-out theater and we left early. He didn’t seem committed to his presentation and we were not the only people to leave early.

In contrast to the above, I would highly recommend a one-man play about Al McGuire, the former Marquette coach and NBC color commentator. The play was written by Al’s friend, Dick Enberg, and the actor was excellent. He was definitely a “no name” but he was a whole lot better than the more expensive entertainer who drove us to an early exit.

Finally, there were the big name coaches who came to the clinics throughout our country who came prepared and gave outstanding presentations. I never heard John Wooden, Dean Smith, Bob Knight, Rick Majerus, or Hubie Brown cheat the coaches. Our St. Francis players demonstrated for some of these coaches when they presented at one-man clinics where they taught for eight hours. Their preparation was meticulous.

When you are a leader, whether famous or unknown, when you are asked to present, don’t disappoint the audience. Come prepared and bring a game!