Recently, a baseball scout was a part of a panel on ESPN’s Outside The Lines program and he made a statement that reminded me of Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger from the movie “Rudy.”

The scout said, “Baseball is a failure game.”

I have never heard baseball described as a “failure game,” but it sure makes sense. Consider: a batter who fails seven out of ten times is considered an outstanding hitter. So, the great hitters have to have a short memory and a strong resiliency to get back up after the many failures.

Isn’t life a “failure game” as well? I believe the people I respect the most have experienced failure – both personally and professionally – and then they got right back up and lived what Pat Riley said, “Success is getting up one more time than you’ve been knocked down.”

I know very few people who were knocked down as much as Rudy.

We recently renewed our friendship of forty years when we spoke together at a YMCA convention in Wisconsin. Hearing his story again reminded me of all the failure – all the closed doors – he has opened in his life by the sheer strength of his resiliency.

How does a guy who graduated third from the bottom of his high school class earn a degree from Notre Dame?

Where does a guy find the resiliency to get back up educationally when for twelve years of school he was constantly told he was stupid? No one diagnosed his dyslexia during these years. They just told him he was dumb.

How does a 5’8”, 185 pounder make the Notre Dame football roster?

And how does a guy who made one tackle in his collegiate career convince both Hollywood and Notre Dame to make a movie about him? As he pursued this idea for ten years door after door was continuously closed on him.

Just think about his life…and his accomplishments. It is virtually impossible to believe that he could overcome all the obstacles in his path.

He may be the only guy in the history of Notre Dame to rank in the bottom 2% of his class and get his degree from there. And how does a guy who is a totally unknown former Notre Dame football player who has no knowledge of the movie industry convince Hollywood to make a movie about his life…and then get Notre Dame to buy in?

The great majority of movies fail. But this movie about a Notre Dame student-athlete who nobody heard of is one of the great inspirational movies of our time.

None of Rudy’s success makes any sense!

His life is baseball. It is a failure game. But he just kept getting back up against all odds. He has traveled the country for the past 30 years telling kids not to give up on their dreams and even more importantly, telling them not to allow anybody to call them dumb!

All leaders meet failure because life is like baseball.

Periodically watching “Rudy” may give leaders the resiliency to keep getting back up.

My wife, Peg, and I were recently at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. Three things stood out during the two hour show – God, the elderly, and humor. Three thoughts that leaders may want to reflect on.

“God bless you” and “thank God” were frequently heard from the performers throughout the evening. Those words were refreshing to hear.

I have always felt that it is ironic how political leaders want to take “God” out of our national vernacular, but when tragedies come, the first thing they ask everyone to do is to pray. In concert with that how often do we hear them end their speeches with, “God bless you and God bless America?” Why, if a prayer in school is forbidden?

Leaders have an awful lot to be thankful for and not being ashamed to thank God, like the performers at the Grand Ole Opry often do, may be something to consider.

The Opry cherishes and honors its older performers. One emcee had her first performance there 48 years ago and another 53 years ago. Too often organizations rid themselves of their aging people and thereby lose parts of their tradition and the wisdom that comes from the older people’s experience.

I have known a number of younger leaders who have reached out to their predecessors and learned a great deal from their knowledge. They were glad they did so.

Humor was recurrent throughout the night. Bill Anderson may have led the league when he said he wrote a song for his “ex” titled, “The Only Good Years We Ever Had Were the Tires on Your Car.”

Leaders can and should bring humor and fun into the workplace. Great leaders demand effort but also bring lighter moments to their organizations.

Thanking God for your many blessings, honoring and learning from older people, and bringing laughter to your organization are three concepts worthy of consideration.

Willie Young, a defensive end on this year’s Chicago Bears, recently said in the Chicago Tribune, “To some extent, patience is the key to success….But it’s all about staying focused, staying patient.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, speaking about time healing difficult tragedies, had an interesting insight in his book, Why We Can’t Wait. Paraphrasing, he said time alone does not heal. How you USE the time is what heals.

Just as the use of time relates to healing, focus relates to patience. Patience can and often does lead to success. But patience without focus will not bring success.

When we first got to the University of St. Francis, we hoped to eventually be good enough to get into the six-team NAIA state playoffs, which led to a national tournament appearance. That was our focus. We were fortunate to recruit players who achieved that goal.

The playoff format changed and our goal changed. We then strove to win the post-season playoffs and get to the national tournament. We lost once in the playoffs when we were ranked first in the state and we lost twice in the state championship game, but our focus to advance to the national tournament remained.

Our patience was rewarded and we finally reached the tournament. I always believed it was the focus that led to the success even more than the patience.

This is why leaders set goals. The goals create the focus and how you use the time creates the success. Focus, use of time, and patience all work together.

ESPN did an insightful commentary on the retirement of Derek Jeter.

Two things stood out. The first was a comment by his former manager, Joe Torre, who said Jeter was special because he never became part of the “me, me, me” generation.

Then ESPN noted that he wore number 2 because he never wanted to be considered number 1, even though he was part of the conversation.

Jeter was the captain of the Yankees and was known as “the captain.” He was their leader.

His legacy, which included five World Series championships, said a great deal about leadership.

Leaders who are “full of themselves” and want everyone to know they are number 1 are not only difficult to work for; it is equally as difficult just to be in their presence.

I once met a man at a wedding. He was a real gentleman, had nothing to say about himself, and was extremely humble. I found out from others that he was the point person in the merger of two major American companies and that he and his wife had developed a ranch for special needs children. He never uttered a word about either achievement.

I had the unique opportunity to work in clinics with some of the best basketball coaches in the country, men like John Wooden and Dean Smith. I never once heard them talk about themselves or their achievements.

If you’ve done it, there’s no need to talk about it.

In this “me” generation, Derek Jeter showed us, did not tell us, but showed us what leadership is all about.

The philosophy of the 2014 NFL Arizona Cardinals is “Next Man Up.” They know football is a sport of attrition, so they have developed a culture of trust. They trust everyone on the team – starters and substitutes alike – and when a starter gets injured, they trust that a substitute will be the “Next Man Up.”

We had a season where we were in contention for the conference championship. In the last game of the first round of conference play, we lost our best player, a senior, to a season-ending injury.

Fortunately, we had a junior varsity team that ran our system. They did everything we were doing on the varsity. So everyone in the program ran the same offense, defense, and special situations.

Because of the trust in the system, we were able to bring a freshman up to replace our senior. We finished the second round 7 – 0 and won the championship.

I think if leaders have developed a system, they may want to enhance their system with the “Next Man Up “philosophy.

Gordie Gillespie, whose basketball, football, and baseball teams won an incredible 2,402 games in his career, developed a great system of teaching in all three sports. When you examine his 59 years of coaching, you find that he almost exclusively hired men who had played for him or coached with him. His hiring and promotion practices were to hire and promote from within.

Knowing he could trust that the coaches knew his system and were men of character, Gordie was, often with them not realizing it, preparing them to be the “Next Man Up.”

For a myriad of reasons, there is attrition in all businesses and organizations. That is why leaders have to be coaches. They have to coach their people to be ready to step in and lead when that attrition arises.

Leaders must continuously get their people to be prepared to be the “Next Person (Woman or Man) Up.”

“Competing beats game plans.” Jim Crews, the St. Louis University basketball coach, said this at a clinic I recently attended.

I never thought of this before, but it makes a great deal of sense to me.

As a college basketball coach, I always liked to recruit multi-sport high school athletes, especially the basketball-football combination. I certainly did not limit multi-sport to basketball-football only. Any sport or sports combined with basketball were beneficial.

The primary reason I liked multi-sport athletes was because they learned one overall concept – the most important concept in sport. They learned how to compete.

When I reflect on the best athletes I coached in my 44 years of coaching basketball, there is one recurring theme that unites all of them. They were competitors.

Joey Meyer, the former DePaul University basketball coach, believed there were two kinds of players – performers and competitors. Performers wanted to look good; competitors wanted to win. One year he felt he had more performers than competitors, so he made all of his practice drills competitive.

To be successful in sport you have to have competitors. Game plans are important, but if you don’t have competitors to execute them, you won’t be successful.

In business or any other profession there is failure. If your organization has performers, they may very well quit when times get tough. Competitors continuously get back up and attack the challenge.

Competing does beat game plans.

William Barclay wrote: “We have a duty to encourage one another. Many a time a word of praise or thanks or appreciation or cheer has kept a man on his feet.”

Ken Blanchard wrote that it is a good idea to walk around and CATCH a person doing something GOOD and compliment him or her.

In their book, In Search of Excellence, authors Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman made the point that one of the problems in corporate America is that top officers in companies – vice-presidents, presidents, and CEOs – fail to come to the people making the company successful – secretaries, assembly line workers, and truck drivers – and thank them for all they do.

I saw the importance of encouragement in my playing days. I played for one coach who hardly ever encouraged us but constantly criticized our play. And his criticism was not just directed to our play. He regularly criticized our personhood, saying sarcastic remarks that had nothing to do with our play. I did complete two seasons playing for him but got so tired of the caustic criticisms that I did consider quitting a game that I loved to play a number of times.

I saw this also in my coaching days. We had a player transfer to us who had played for coaches similar to the coach I played for. The criticism was constant and personal. He could be going to lunch, have the coaches run into him, and immediately his courage and commitment were questioned. He was told he’d never be a good player because he had no guts. The degrading comments were thrown his way both on and off the court and they continued all year. He told me by the end of the year, he actually didn’t care if he ever played again.

I played for a college coach, Gordie Gillespie, who approached his leadership totally opposite the above coaches. He constantly encouraged us to strive to be the best we could be. He definitely let us know when our play was lacking, in no uncertain terms, but it was ONLY about our play, never about our personhood. And his comments also went beyond the playing court or field, with one major exception. His remarks were positive and encouraging.

Leaders who use encouragement and positive feedback definitely enhance a workplace….Something to think about.

Bob Boyd, the former University of Southern California basketball coach, and Jimbo Fisher, the current Florida State University football coach, both had insightful comments on coaching that may be beneficial for leaders.

Boyd taught coaches at clinics that, “it’s not what you teach; it’s what you emphasize.” We’d like our teams to be good at everything, but you only have so much practice time. Therefore, it is important to ascertain the most important things that will lead to winning and then make those concepts the main points of emphasis.

At St. Francis, we felt the most important things that led to success were the fundamentals. So, balance, footwork, passing, dribbling, shooting and the defensive fundamentals became the cornerstones of our basketball program. We felt if we emphasized the fundamentals, the offenses and defenses would fall into place.

Jimbo Fisher’s Florida State football team was last year’s national champions. As he and his staff analyzed their championship season, they came up with a different approach to this year’s season. Most coaches look at a past season and see where their team failed, then put in systems and drills in practice to improve on their deficits.

Fisher and his staff reversed the above concept. They looked at what they did well and continued with the systems to sustain their strengths. They didn’t want to lose what they did well by emphasizing their weaknesses.

These two concepts may be valuable for leaders to reflect on.

“It’s not what you teach; it’s what you emphasize.”

Analyze what your organization is doing well at the year’s end and be sure to sustain it.