NEVER STOP PRACTICING, NEVER STOP LEARNING
Basketball Hall of Famer Larry Bird has talked about some advice from a coach that stayed with him throughout his career. As he was quoted in the New York Times: “My coach told me, ‘Larry, no matter how much you work at it, there’s always someone out there who’s working just a little harder—if you take 150 practice shots, he’s taking 200.’ And that drove me.”1
That’s a principle I’ve used in my life as well. Phrased another way, there’s always going to be someone bigger, faster, and more talented than me. I can’t do anything about that. But I can always choose to outwork that person. If I think another quarterback is making 150 practice throws, I’m going to make 200. If he stays an hour after every practice, sign me up for two.
Early in my career with the Texans, columnist John McClain of the Houston Chronicle made some very nice comments about my work ethic, praising me for staying after practice and working on off days to improve myself: “I can’t overstate how hard rookie QB Deshaun Watson worked in the off-season. Stayed after practice. Worked on days off. What a work ethic!”2
When I read what John wrote, all I could say was “It’s a lifestyle.”3
For a servant leader, hard work should be a lifestyle—an ongoing choice that never changes. It should be part of your DNA, as important a part of your personal makeup as anything else. You shouldn’t have to put all that much thought into it.
HARD WORK SHOULD BE A LIFESTYLE—AN ONGOING CHOICE THAT NEVER CHANGES.
Hard work is the best way to position yourself to help those around you succeed. For instance, if I work on a particular type of throw or scheme and really get it down, that’s going to help my receivers on their end of the play. Hard work never exists in a vacuum.
Continual practice is also an example to others. When others see you working hard, they’re inclined to follow your lead. Again, hard work is pervasive, an attribute that any servant leader wants to encourage others to emulate.
But I haven’t limited my conviction to hard work just to the football field. I also carried that commitment into the classroom. By working hard, I was able to finish high school early and graduate from Clemson in three years.
Making a habit of hard work gives you the confidence to rise above the naysayers. When I first decided to complete my Clemson degree in less than the usual four years, I naturally had my share of doubters. They weren’t being nasty or critical for criticism’s sake. Instead, given the enormous amount of time and energy required to play high-caliber college football, they just didn’t see how it would be possible for me to succeed in that area while graduating well ahead of the usual schedule.
Yet I did just that—through time management, self-sacrifice, and my commitment to hard work. And I gained a fresh wave of confidence in myself. When you achieve something that others are doubtful about, you come out the other side that much more confident—not just in what you achieved but in everything you pursue.
A sign in the Gainesville High School locker room boils the issue down to a simple question: “Did anyone outwork you today?” Every day I try to make sure I can answer truthfully no.
But working hard isn’t enough. A leader also has to find new ways to improve his mind and his skills. One semester in college I signed up for a series of American Sign Language courses. Some people joked that, with my reserved personality, I jumped at the chance to take that class just so I didn’t have to talk. But truly I loved the challenge of it. Not only was it difficult to get the alphabet down, we were taught to focus on facial expressions—not just the hands—to better understand what someone would be trying to say.
Part of the class also included social events at local restaurants with people from the deaf community. We went to Chick-fil-A, Pizza Hut, and other places a number of times. But the food was not the point. Knowing enough sign language to communicate with someone others might find hard to connect with was incredibly rewarding. It also helped me use and develop different parts of my brain.
It was yet another lesson in leadership. A leader understands that everyone has something to say, everyone has something to contribute. The problem is, some are challenged to get their message across. Learning sign language and communicating with people for whom communication with the hearing world was difficult showed me the challenge wasn’t theirs alone. As a leader, it was also up to me to find a way to connect with them.
As I grow and mature further in servant leadership, I’ve come to realize that servant leaders never stop being students.
For me, a commitment to learning works hand in hand with all the values and attributes I’ve discussed throughout this book. From my earliest days in school and on the football field, I’ve prided myself on my teachability. No matter who or what was doing the teaching, I believed there was always something I could learn.
A LEADER UNDERSTANDS THAT EVERYONE HAS SOMETHING TO SAY, EVERYONE HAS SOMETHING TO CONTRIBUTE.
Obviously, I’ve been blessed with gifted, passionate teachers throughout my life—Coaches O’Brien, Miller, Perry, and Swinney, not to mention Mrs. Frierson, Mama Maria, and my classroom instructors. I’m grateful beyond words for all they shared and taught me.
Being a committed student also means paying attention to others, regardless of whether they’re consciously teaching you or not. For me, that’s meant studying the skills and abilities of some of the NFL’s greatest quarterbacks—Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, and many others. Not only do I look at their playmaking and decision-making skills; I look at their own paths as students—how they got to be where they are and what learning moments helped push them forward to that level of excellence.
I recently decided to push myself to learn something new and took up the game of chess. I do have my nerdy side, as anyone who knows me will attest to, and this came out in force when I really started to grasp the game. Chess has been a revelation both to my intellectual growth as a leader and also in my performance on the football field.
During the summer of 2019, I was introduced to a performance coach named Seth Makowsky. He consults with a number of organizations and businesses, including Fortune 500 companies, sports teams, airports, hotels, casinos, and investment firms, to help improve performance.
I told Seth that I wanted to improve my leadership skills in terms of better understanding strategy—how various parts interact and work together. Seth suggested I give chess a try.
CHESS HAS BEEN A REVELATION BOTH TO MY INTELLECTUAL GROWTH AS A LEADER AND ALSO IN MY PERFORMANCE ON THE FOOTBALL FIELD.
The nerd in me shifted into overdrive the very first time I sat behind a chess board. My initial “training” session went on for more than three hours. “[Watson] nerded out,” as my quarterback coach Quincy Avery joked to Bleacher Report.4 I wasn’t just interested in learning how the individual pieces moved and their strengths and weaknesses; I was captivated by the synergy, how the pieces could work together effectively or, just as easily, against each other. I was fascinated with gifted chess players’ ability to plan and execute their strategy many moves in advance.
But my involvement in chess wasn’t limited to sitting at a table. I began to introduce chess into my practice on the football field itself. During breaks I would go over to a table where a board was set up. Playing against an opponent—often Seth—I would make a move or two, then get back to practicing.
Not only did the ongoing exposure to chess help me better understand strategy and how to help direct an overall strategy as a leader; it also taught me how to focus my mind. (The popular buzzword these days is mindfulness.) I learned not to dwell on unnecessary, unhelpful thoughts. I learned what it meant to be completely focused on a task or a decision at hand.
A football in one hand, a chess piece in the other. How athlete/nerdy can you get?
Learning doesn’t necessarily have to take place when there’s a “teacher” present. In fact, a servant leader approaches every experience and situation as a learning experience. That can be everything from a joyous victory on the football field to the most crushing of defeats.
And as I’ve mentioned before, defeat is the best teacher you could possibly have. In many ways, success can be a false friend. It feels wonderful to win, but winning can also make you complacent—giving you a false sense of safety and confidence.
Losing, on the other hand, can fill you with the resolve to move forward and continue to improve. When you lose, it means someone or something was better than you—more prepared, better positioned to execute. With losing you come face-to-face with what you have to do to avoid that defeat again. You see who or what won and why, and you learn from those examples, however difficult they may be.
A leader understands that losing is rarely permanent, that there are almost always opportunities for victory and redemption. Chess really taught me that principle. For instance, if a player loses an important piece such as a bishop or a rook, it’s a setback, but the game isn’t necessarily over. By learning from the mistake that led to the loss of a critical piece, you can reap the benefits of losing before the final outcome and, perhaps, come back and win.
IN MANY WAYS, SUCCESS CAN BE A FALSE FRIEND. IT FEELS WONDERFUL TO WIN, BUT WINNING CAN ALSO MAKE YOU COMPLACENT.
A servant leader is always a dedicated student, understanding that nothing ever stays quite the same. Football is an ideal example. From season to season, from game to game, and even from one quarter to the next, everything is changing—people, situations, emotions. Nothing is identical—except perhaps your determination to learn all you can, no matter who or what is the teacher of the moment.
Every moment is an opportunity to learn, as I see it. And by staying committed to learning, your example shows others the value of their own learning as well.
Even better, the more you pursue learning, the better you get at it. You grow in your ability to retain information and insight and process them. In my case, as a quarterback, I used to be able to keep one or two plays in my head along with a few options. But because of my commitment to learning, I can now handle as many as a half dozen plays at the same time, reviewing them in my head to see which one might work best in a particular situation.
Lastly, being a student reinforces your sense of humility. By committing to ongoing learning at every opportunity, you acknowledge that you can’t possibly know it all. You know that physical skills and attributes mean little without the intelligence to execute and coordinate them.
As a servant leader, you never stop growing. And maintaining the mindset of a student is central to that sort of growth.
PASS IT ON
• Ask yourself honestly: Are you a hard worker? How do you define hard work? Is it a matter of giving everything you can or outworking those around you? In your opinion, how important is the value of hard work with regard to obtaining significant goals?
• Would you consider yourself a student, someone who is continually learning? If you do see yourself as a student, do you actively seek out opportunities for learning? Moreover, do you look for learning opportunities that are especially challenging, or are you more comfortable with learning at a slower, less-demanding pace?
• Think about the activities you enjoy. Are they teaching you something, such as focus, patience, flexibility, or determination? Taking what you consider fun to a deeper level can make those activities all the more rewarding.
• Consider taking up an activity or hobby—maybe learning a musical instrument, cooking, gardening, or some other pastime—that you think can offer useful benefits to you as a leader.
YOUR CHALLENGE
Set aside a period of time—at least a day, but ideally longer than that. Pay attention to everything you learn over that time frame. Write down everything that you’ve learned. At the end of the exercise, look over all that you’ve learned. Is there a common theme to what you see? Do you recognize any particular value in what you’ve learned?