Last week the 2020-21 Tampa Bay Buccaneers players and coaches were awarded their Super Bowl LV rings. Shortly after that, Tom Brady took to social media and posted a picture of himself wearing his seven Super Bowl rings.
Like most lifelong Patriots fans, I had mixed emotions seeing our former quarterback getting another ring. Sure, we were all happy for him and sad that he won the big game wearing another team’s jersey.
This weekend, I talked with my 24-year-old son about that picture. He had an excellent observation about Tom Brady that I hadn’t considered. Like me, my son is a lifelong Patriots fan. I mentioned how truly unique it was to see a player like Tom Brady go to another team and win a Super Bowl in his first year.
My son simply said, “excellence attracts excellence.” He reminded me of all the great players that joined the Buccaneers shortly after Brady announce he would be signing with the team. He also reminded me of how many notable players came to the Patriots over the years for that very reason.
Great players are attracted to great leaders Click To TweetThe truth is that great players are attracted to great leaders. This is true for football and business.
If you think about it, football is a lot like business. Winning a Super Bowl or building a world-class business takes an entire team. One quarterback or leader can’t do it alone. So it only makes sense that you will be more effective as a team if you can attract and retain the best players.
In close to 30 years of business leadership, I have seen countless examples of great leaders attracting the best talent. For example, my first boss out of the Navy was an R&D manager who had several great engineers who had followed him to several different companies.
The same thing happened to me when I started my manufacturing company. I was shocked by the number of talented people who sent me their resumes with the intent to leave their safe, corporate jobs to be part of my small company. In fact, one employee turned down a job offer to join the Ford Motor Company as a design engineer so he could be part of our team.
Excellence attracts excellence, but the opposite is true as well.
Bad leaders repel great employees Click To TweetIt’s not that bad leaders attract bad employees; it’s more like bad leaders repel great employees. A recent Gallup poll of more than one million U.S. workers concluded that the top reason people quit their jobs was because of a bad boss. More than 75% of employees who voluntarily left their jobs did it because of their boss.
Despite what you think of Tom Brady, he’s a winner. And he keeps winning because he attracts and retains talent.
If you want to have a winning organization, you need the best players as well. You will attract those players when people know you are a great leader. People want to work for someone they know that will treat them with respect, listen to their ideas, and help them become the best version of themselves.
If you want to become a better letter, you need to keep developing your leadership skills. One way to do that is by reading books like my bestselling new leadership book All in the Same Boat: Lead Your Organization Like a Nuclear Submariner.
[Photo credit – Tom Brady’s Twitter Feed]