REFLECTION
In my career, I played with at least 700 guys, just a guess. They came from all walks of life, every part of the country, every religious faith, every economic stratum; each with their own personality and unique abilities.
What they had in common was that they did whatever it took to get to the NFL, and then once they got there, they worked their asses off to stay. At least most of them did. On the great teams I played for, that meant they practiced with maximum effort, they were diligently prepared for each day's tasks, they did their job well so that others could do their jobs well, and they gave relentless effort on the field come game day. By using their physical gifts, their energy, their IQ and their EQ, they grew personally, they made their teammates better, and they made the team better.
They were force multipliers, in other words.
I can count on two hands the number of teammates I had who didn’t fit this description, whose selfish behavior distracted from the team’s mission and had to be managed or worked around. That’s how rare these “energy vampire” types were.
I feel very privileged to have spent my entire career around so many great teammates, and I recognize how uncommon my good fortune has been. Even by the standards of the NFL, which naturally weeds out truly selfish people. Everyone in the NFL wants to be there and understands how quickly it can end for someone who always puts ‘me’ before ‘we’. No team with the right values or well-defined priorities has time for that kind of bullshit. It takes too much energy away from the team goal.
What I experienced on those New England and Tampa teams was even more rare compared to regular life. In most situations, the vast majority of us have very little control over who we spend our time around, and we’re rarely so lucky to be with a bunch of people who are exactly where they want to be. We don’t get to choose who goes to our school or who’s in our classes. Until we’re a boss, we don’t have any say in who our co-workers are. And it’s so well understood at this point it’s become a cliche that you don’t get to choose your family.
All of which is to say, the times when you have a say, when you do have control, you need to be deliberate and conscientious about who you let into your orbit and who gets most of your attention. You need to maximize the force multipliers in your life
LESSON
Force multipliers fill your cup. They consistently give more than they take. They do their job, and in doing it, they make your job easier and your mutual success greater. Their priorities may not always align with yours, but they’re always complementary.
Some force multipliers are obvious and undeniable and make themselves known immediately by virtue of their role in your life and what they do in that capacity. A great partner and co-parent is like that. Offensive linemen are like that. They’re unassuming 300-pound billygoats who charge headlong into violent collisions with other 300-pounders sixty times per game for the sole purpose of creating a wall for the quarterback or a hole for the running back.
When an undeniable force multiplier comes into your life, onto your team, or into your company, you hold onto them. You empower them. You figure out how you can help them perform at their best or reach their full potential, because that will also be good for you and your organization.
Interestingly, a lot of force multipliers aren’t naturally vocal leaders. They’re closer to “followers” to the extent that their actions are guided by the mission, not their own self-interest, and they’re focused on living up to the values of the organization. Ironically, by being followers of something greater than themselves, they become invaluable leaders by example.
And really, that’s the most important kind of leadership you can display as part of a team. To me, leadership is caring about your teammates and their well-being. It’s supporting them and helping them grow as you both work for the betterment of the team. This isn’t something you accomplish by talking, it’s something that happens through doing.
Which brings me to the other kind of force multiplier: the quiet heroes. The ones who do their job expertly, often unnoticed and underappreciated. On an NFL team, these are the locker room staff, the video crew, the laundry people, the travel coordinators, the cooks. They provide invaluable services to the team, but really what makes them indispensable is that they remove the anxiety and the time-suck created by all the little non-football-related decisions that players would otherwise have to make every day. Things like figuring out what to eat for breakfast, what to wear after practice, when to do laundry, how to get to the airport, etc. When you come into the building and these basic life chores are done for you, the people who do them feel like angels.
These unsung heroes exist everywhere, not just in organizations with big budgets. You might not relate to what I’m describing here, but then maybe you’re just not looking closely enough at the people around you. And that’s the whole point. The unsung force multiplier isn’t asking to be noticed, they’re just doing their job. But a good team only becomes great when its leaders and its highest profile members acknowledge the people that others don’t see. The people who are working for more than just a modest paycheck, who are working for them. For the possibility of some acknowledgement and appreciation from them, and for the chance to feel a little bit of ownership in the organization’s success.
Whether you’re a CEO, a head coach, a parent, or a leader of any kind, when you consciously empower and consistently acknowledge your force multipliers–whether they’re the undeniable or the unsung types–you create the conditions for real, sustained success. You put everyone in a position to just do their job, as Coach Belichick would say, and you create a level of mutual trust that allows your team to put 100% of its focus on achieving the collective goal, no matter what unexpected obstacles pop up along the way.
APPLICATION
So what about the energy vampires?
Energy vampires are takers. They don’t fill your cup, they drain it. They demand a disproportionate amount of your attention. They don’t make your life or your job easier, they make it harder. What they want almost never aligns with what you or the team want, because most of the time they care about what they want first, and what the team needs second.
Energy vampires have never thought to ask what they can do for their country. They don’t bother to ask if there’s anything they can do to help you or make your day better. As a player, I always thought about what I needed to do to help the other guys on the team achieve their goals, and if I found them acting the same way toward me in return (i.e. figuring out how they can help me achieve my goals), then I knew I’d found my force multipliers. Energy vampires rarely ever reciprocate. They don’t understand or appreciate this magical aspect of a team, or a relationship, or a business with a singular mission.
Energy vampires are clearly not the kind of people you would ever choose to be on your teams or in your life, but like I said, most of the time you won’t have a say in the matter. Maybe they’re a first round pick with some potential, maybe they’re your best friend’s husband, maybe they’re the boss’s kid. You’re not going to dislodge them, no matter how much of your energy and attention they monopolize.
So what do you do?
Well, if you’re going to empower the rockstars and acknowledge the unsung heroes, as a leader at the very least you need to be willing to have a conversation with the energy vampires in your life. Because I’ve found that most energy vampires don’t know that they’re energy vampires.
People are often selfish and self-involved for reasons they don’t understand or even recognize. For some it’s a result of where they grew up. For others, it’s a product of how they were treated. Selfishness isn’t a matter of ego, it’s a matter of self-preservation. Looking out for #1 is how they got to where they are, so why would they change now? Why should they trust you or the mission or the team and its values?
There’s no great answer to those rhetorical questions until you stop making them rhetorical and start making them literal and specific.
Earlier I talked about the handful of teammates I played with who needed to be managed or worked around. There were others who were headed in that direction. But as one of the leaders of our team, I had conversations with those men. I pulled them aside and said to them, “I want to share with you what I’m seeing with how you carry yourself around here, would you like me to tell you the truth or would you like me to tell you something that probably won’t be the truth but might make you feel better?” Most guys wanted the truth. As I got older, and we won more Super Bowls, all the guys were willing to hear the truth, even if they didn’t want it.
I told them that they were taking more than they were giving. That if they wanted to secure a place on this team, or be successful in this league or in life, they needed to figure out how to put all their selfish tendencies aside and become a force multiplier. They needed to get with the program. In the same breath, I made sure they understood that I was there for them, just like the other 51 guys on the roster. We wanted them to be great, and we needed them to help us be great, because then together we could achieve the kind of collective greatness that turned into wins and championships and parades.
And you know what, some of those guys really listened. But not all. You’re not going to reach everyone. And the ones you do reach, you can’t expect a 180-degree turnaround overnight. It’s incremental. It’s amplifying their positive qualities by 10-20%, then reducing the negative behaviors by 5% here, 5% there—all of it reinforced and expanded with additional conversations over time that you initiate. That’s your job as a leader of a team, as the leader of your own life, and as a force multiplier in your own right. It’s to identify, support, and build up the people who don’t want to be on the outside looking in. Who want to win and to be great like you do, but don’t yet have the tools.
The teams who advance through the NBA and NHL playoff gauntlet over the next two months are filled with force multipliers who’ve had these hard conversations and found success. We can learn from them. We can have the same conversations with our own co-workers, teammates, family, and friends—on top of the conversations of empowerment and acknowledgement.
I promise you, if you can have these conversations and surround yourself with as many force multipliers as possible, you will set yourself up for a life full of wins.
