Posts Tagged ‘Tim Tebow’
John Elway for Manager of the Year? March 21 2012 7 responses
While fans of Tim Tebow will likely vehemently disagree, I’d have to put John Elway, executive vice president of football operations for the Denver Broncos, in the running for manager of the year. And not just NFL manager of the year; anybody’s manager of the year. Let me be the first to acknowledge that I enjoyed Tebowmania and Tebow Time as much as anyone. As I wrote here during football season, I thought Tebow and his coach Jon Fox did a masterful job of figuring out how to use his skillset to maximum advantage. For most of their run together, Elway came across as the wet blanket at the party. He was polite but sparing in his praise for Tebow because he couldn’t see a long-term plan for winning with the guy. Elway may have been right or wrong on that call. We won’t know how it plays out for the Broncos on that front because Elway went out and got himself Peyton Manning this week.
In moving Tebow aside for Manning, Elway did what a lot of managers have to do or at least should do. In his assessment, he had a good guy working for him that he didn’t think was going to work out over the long run. Especially with the pressure from Tebow fans in Denver and across the country, it would have been easy for Elway to keep Tim, let it ride and see what happened. After all, things could get better. (How many times have you heard that in performance management discussions?) Instead, Elway decided to make the move and go out and get the best quarterback available for his team.
Here are three lessons from Elway that I think managers should keep in mind for the next time they face a talent management dilemma:
Tim Tebow: A Leader Who Inspires, Puzzles and Scares People December 12 2011 7 responses
It’s not often that I write about the same subject twice in less than a month on this blog. Even though I wrote How to Set Your Tebow’s Up For Success just three weeks ago, I’m making a brief exception this afternoon. After the Denver Broncos made yet another comeback yesterday in the last two minutes of regulation and then overtime against the Chicago Bears, Tim Tebow has moved from a national sports story to just a flat out national news story.
For as many people who are inspired by Tebow’s leadership, story and faith, there may be as many who are puzzled by him or are scared of him. I say that for two reasons.
First, from a pure football standpoint, there are a lot of professional commentators who are having their faith in their conventional wisdom challenged. As I noted in the November post on Tebow, to set a guy like him up for success, you have to challenge the conventional wisdom. In any field, not just sports broadcasting, the people who have a lot invested in the conventional wisdom will get angry and scared when it’s challenged. It takes a lot of leadership to go up against that successfully. Kudos to Denver coach Jon Fox and Tebow for doing so.
Second, there aren’t many people who are more upfront about their religious faith than Tebow. When the announcers on yesterday’s game were saying things after the Broncos win like “if you weren’t a believer before this game, you almost have to be now,” I kind of wondered if they were talking about football or faith. The inexplicable can certainly puzzle people. From a pure football standpoint, what Tebow and the Broncos have done the past couple of months is rather inexplicable. It does feel bigger than football. What is it exactly? I thought Frank Bruni gave as good an answer as anyone in the New York Times yesterday when he wrote:
“For Tebow that state of mind comes from his particular relationship with his chosen God and is a matter of religion. For someone else it might be understood and experienced as the power of positive thinking, and is a matter of psychology. Either way it boils down to stubborn optimism and bequeaths a spark.”
Whether you love him, hate him or are scared of him, it’s almost impossible to deny that Tim Tebow is a leader who gets results. What’s your take on how he does it?
How to Set Your Tebows Up for Success November 18 2011 one response
He did it again. On Thursday night, down 13 to 10 against the NY Jets, Tim Tebow quarterbacked the Denver Broncos to a win in the last five minutes of the game. He’s done that so often this season that fans have named the closing minutes of the game Tebow Time. The highlight of the most recent episode came when, on third and four with about a minute left in the game, Tebow picked up on a Jets blitz and ran the ball around the left side and into the end zone for the game winning touchdown.
He’s having a pretty good season for a guy who many thought might be put on waivers a few months ago. Tebow was so far down the Broncos depth chart that for awhile he wasn’t even their third strong quarterback. While he had led Florida to national championships when he was in college and won the Hesiman trophy, most of the experts thought that Tebow’s playing style was not cut out for the NFL. Those experts included the new Denver head coach, Jon Fox, and their legendary head of football operations, John Elway. Both of them had a lot of the “he’s a fine young man” sort of praise for Tebow but didn’t express a lot of confidence in his abilities. Tebow kept working in practice, riding the bench in games and the Broncos started 1 and 4. With no better options, Fox decided to play Tebow five weeks ago and now the team is 5 and 5 on the season.
Week by week, Fox and his staff have made adjustments in the game plan to take advantage of Tebow’s strengths. You have to give them credit for that because a lot of coaches wouldn’t. There are a few things that executives and managers can learn from the Denver coaches about how to leverage the strengths of talented players who don’t fit the mold. Here are three ways to set your own Tebows up for success.
Scott Eblin is an executive coach, speaker and author of 
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