by: Bob Briner & Ray Pritchard
    
     My first jobs were coaching in high schools, long before I did anything but dream about the career in professional sports that came much later.  An executive position with the Miami Dolphins may seem a long way from coaching at a small high school in the Flint Hills of Kansas, but - because the principles learned in those small schools were similar to those necessary for success in professional sports - it wasn't really that far.
     As a high school coach, I learned that when you have no paid staff and depend entirely on volunteers, it is very important to choose those volunteers carefully.  One key to a high school coach's success is the student manager.  Get a good one- a fully committed one - and many of the logistics of running a high school sports team can be handled without your involvement.  A smart manager can be a coach's eyes and ears among his players in away that no one else can.  A good student manger is vital to running a good program.
     A wise old athletic director - one of my first bosses - told me never to choose the most attractive, or popular candidate for the position of student manager, particularly not one popular with the girls.  Rather, he recommended selecting the smart but shy, introverted kind who failed to stand out in any area.  His theory was that this type of kid (who had almost no fired and no other claim to fame) would b so grateful to you for plucking him out of obscurity that he would work like a  beaver with unfaltering loyalty.
     This great advice provided my teams with a succession of super student mangers.  An important corollary is that these students, given a little attention and allowed to be on the edge of the spotlight, often blossomed into terrific student leaders in other areas.  My old athletic director could well have learned his selection theory from Jesus.
     In choosing Matthew, a despised tax collector, Jesus certainly went against conventional wisdom, looking far beneath the surface of Matthew's unpopular profession to teach us quite an important leadership lesson: a wise leader builds his or her team very carefully.  Choices are made not on appearance and appeal but on deeply, prayerfully considered values.  One of the selection criteria should be considering who will  most appreciate being chosen.  Jesus visited this theory again in the parable of the forgiven debt (Luke 7:41-43) - the one most forgiven loves the most.
     By choosing Matthew, Jesus showed that a leader should consider diversity when building a team - all kinds of diversity, particularly diversity of talent, temperament, and experience.  A less thoughtful leader puts together a homogeneous team of look-alikes who may also think alike because of their similar backgrounds and experiences - a much weaker team than one build with diversity in mind,.  We often think  that diversity weakens a team when, in fact, the opposite is true.  Men like Matthew and Peter (a tax collector and a fisherman, respectively) should have been at each other's throats - imagine a longshoreman having to work with an IRS agent.  But Jesus saw something in these men and wasn't afraid to choose them both for the same team.  Only a great leader would risk that; only an extraordinary leader could pull it off.

May Quote


Vincent Lombardi
Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.