"I came in at halftime, and it's 16-6, I believe, and we're not playing well, and I look in the locker room and ready to kind of go after everybody, and I see Coach (Luke) Fickell has the -- you know, they use that projector, and they're going through making adjustments. All the defense is sitting right in front of them. I go walk in on the offense and get ready to implode a little bit, and they're in there, Ed Warinner and everybody is working like pros, working on things.
"The worst thing I could do is open my big mouth and get in the way of a bunch of people working their tails off and being professional, as they were"
The Ohio State University football team is down 16-6 at halftime against Wisconsin. OSU came out and won the game by dominating the second half. The next day, everyone wanted to know what was it that Urban Meyer said to his team at halftime?!?! The answer - nothing.
To me, Urban Meyer is one of the best leaders on the planet. I love learning from others. So what can we take from that? Two things.
1. There are times as a leader in which you lead by stepping back and letting others lead. Urban saw that was already happening and he had the humbleness to be able to let it happen. We need to be humble leaders and not always feel the need to be the one to do everything.
2. Urban Meyer had to create a culture in which this could happen. Not every leader or not every organization/team is ready for its leader to step back and this doesn't happen automatically. You have to build the right culture. How do you do that? Meyer said in this same interview that what matters is "...what you say and do in January, February, March, April, May, June, July..." so that those involved feel ownership and are emotionally vested in the organization/team.
Quotes taken from:
https://www.cleveland.com/osu/index.ssf/2016/10/what_did_urban_meyer_say_to_oh.html
