The Leadership Shift No One Talks About
Last week I had the chance to spend some time with the Ironton High School football team as they prepare for their 2025 training camp. If you’re not familiar, the Fighting Tigers are the defending Ohio Division V state champions. They have an incredible football history, having produced many players on to major college football despite being a school of roughly 400 students.
Per capita, it’s going to be hard to find a school this size that has produced as much football excellence as the Ironton Fighting Tigers
Ironton is in the middle of one of the hardest parts of high performing organizations. The fight to maintain excellence after tremendous success.
When you are coming off of a successful state championship run, and many key performers and key leaders have moved on - it will put strain on any team or organization.
There’s a whole new performance mindset opened up when an organization is the “defending” ______.
It’s time for others to transition into roles left unfulfilled by departing contributors. When the confetti is all picked up, the parades are over, the rings have been passed out and it’s time to get back on the horse, it reveals the five modes of flourishing personal leadership in all of us.
Flourishing Leadership 101 - Know Your State
I believe every performer operates in five distinct modes. They’re not fixed like a personality or character trait. We move in and out of them everyday as we relate to life.
They start in our mindset, impacted by our level of internal well-being and ultimately produce in us a mode of operation we behave in.
Mindset + Health = Behaviors (Leadership Capacity)
From the state champion Fighting Tigers to the Kansas City Chiefs, every team has a collection of individuals operating in one or more of the five modes of flourishing personal leadership.
A stealer finds a way to steal the collective experience and make everything about themselves. They operate out of scarcity, fiercely recruit other team members to join them, and withdraw their energy when things don’t go their own way.
A coaster operates from careless complacency. They’re apathetic, have lost (or never had) true drive or motivation to be great and have come to view the team experience as merely a social gathering. They’re not ruffling feathers, but they sure aren’t adding much either. They live to fulfill the minimum requirements of the team.
A riser is an emerging talent with a clear growth mindset. They want to achieve their full potential in the service of others. Often they are the best followers first, showcasing detailed discernment in who they follow and hitch their wagon to. While not fully in a leadership capacity, they have a different look in their eye, and every coach I know is excited to see life unfold for the risers on their team.
A server is where leadership really starts. Servant leadership is more than just lending a helping hand here and there, it’s learning the way of life that begins to think and behave in ways that conflict with our own self-interests. It’s the beginning of broadening our perspective to see beyond ourselves.
A broker is a master of influence and leading people. They serve as an intermediary between the people they lead and a life changing, transformative experience. They are arranging deals every day. The only titles they want are “Hope Broker”, “Transformation Broker” “Meaning Broker” “Service Broker.” Their commissions are not material, but the inner satisfaction of lives influenced and a life well lived.
The Transformational Transition
Your team may be facing the exact challenge the Ironton Tigers are facing. The need for new leaders to step up and operate in a Server Mode when they’ve spent the bulk of their career in Riser Mode.
I’ve come to believe one of the hardest transitions in the life of a high performer is to go from a riser to a server.
It’s taxing. Take a close look at their definitions side-by-side.
A riser is an emerging talent with a clear growth mindset. They want to achieve their full potential in the service of others. Often they are the best followers first, showcasing detailed discernment in who they follow and hitch their wagon to. While not fully in a leadership capacity, they have a different look in their eye, and every coach I know is excited to see life unfold for the risers on their team.
A server is where leadership really starts. Servant leadership is more than just lending a helping hand here and there, it’s learning the way of life that begins to think and behave in ways that conflict with our own self-interests. It’s the beginning of broadening our perspective to see beyond ourselves.
What keeps us from moving from Riser Mode to Server Mode? Here’s 3 reasons (non-exhaustive).
1.) Server mode actually costs us - We actually have to begin to think about things beyond ourselves, our personal process and our own success
Many emerging talents spend all their energy solely on getting themselves proficient, competent and excellent in their roles. That’s no easy task! But the more excellent we are in our craft, the more the group begins to look to us for leadership. “Lead by example” can only take you so far and that perspective is the top end capacity of riser mode.
Another level of flourishing leadership is beyond that barrier where we can begin to have a greater impact, but it comes at a cost. Time and energy must get diverted when we begin to step into servant leadership. It’s not just about our own routines and processes anymore, it becomes about the collective group.
2.) Server mode stresses us out - We have to wear the weight of leadership.
It was much easier to just live a high performing regimen that supports personal goals and call it “leading by example.”
I have yet to see a “lead by example” individual stressed. In fact, “leading by example” often becomes the perspective of an individual unwilling to take on the true responsibility of leading.
What “example” are we talking about here?
Show up on time
Lift the weights
Run full effort on the sprints
Never miss a practice
Give full focus during film study
Listen to the coaches
Live the right lifestyle on the weekends
Is that list leadership? Or the basic standard of behavior required for the ALL members of any high performing team?
Is simply fulfilling the standards of the team considered leadership? Maybe?
What would be the example set if we raised the standard to describe and define “servant leadership” ?
I’m confident it would be all of the above list plus much more.
3.) Server mode is uncomfortable - It requires adding new skills, learning new strategies, deploying new tactics. It’s out of our comfort zone.
You mean I have to speak in front of the group now? I have to hold people accountable? I have to concern myself with logistics outside my normal scope and vision? I have to be critiqued now?
Stepping into the next phase of leadership is wildly uncomfortable. The best leaders have created a tolerance for life outside their comfort zone. They make living out of their comfort zone look so easy, that some people confuse them for “natural leaders.”
There’s nothing natural about servant leadership - especially in high performing athletic environments. It’s only made possible to the degree a person is willing to be uncomfortable.
The emerging leaders for Ironton football are presented with the same opportunity as many other successful teams and organizations. It’s “next man up.” But great teams like Ironton aren’t just looking to replace the statistical impact of key contributors last season, they are looking to replace the leadership impact of key contributors last season. Something as difficult (if not more difficult) to replace.
It will only be done when the next wave of leaders make the shift from riser to server.
This feels like a burden at the time, but when we look back, the most profound seasons of our lives and leadership development were often the ones that required us to step out of our comfort zone and level up.
What a tremendous opportunity for the risers of the Ironton Fighting Tigers.
And us all.
Stay The Course,
