681: Clark Lea (Vanderbilt Football Coach) - Rebuilding a Program, Belief as a Practice, Leading Misfits, Ownership Mentality, and Why Relatedness Is Your Edge

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Welcome to the learningliter show. I am your host Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningliter.com for show notes of this and all podcasts episodes go to learningliter.com. Now on to the night's featured leader Clark Lee was pires to be the head football coach at Vanderbilt.

After they had had their first winless season since 1890. That is right. They won zero games the year before they hired Clark.

Fast forward to 2025. They won 10 games and beat six nationally ranked opponents. It's one of the most improbable turnaround ever. So much so that I went down to Nashville to meet with Coach Lee in person sit down in their locker room and figure out how he did it and how he's currently doing it. During our conversation we discussed Clark's journey of going to college to play baseball. Thinking he's going to become a pro baseball player and ended up transferring twice before walking on as a football player at Vanderbilt.

And Clark talks about the importance of sharing his story with all of his players every year. I thought that part was really really good. And then why a senior leader needs to be quote the chief alignment officer and the chief reminding officer. All of us need to be better. And then the way Clark used belief it is a daily practice he went deep on this made me think differently about it than I ever have before.

“And I think it's something all of us leaders need to think about and then implement if we want to do something big like he is done.”

We talked about all of that and so much more ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Clark Lee.

I've become friends with the guy named Pat Murphy who's the manager for the brewers. And Matt Arnold's there GM did become like kind of professional development partners. I'm going to go see them in Arizona and I'm going to go to LA and spend day or two there with chargers rounds kind of stuff. Yeah, that's cool. Just to fill the cup, you know, same same stuff. So are you are you in a hardball buddies?

Um, so Jesse Menter. Okay. It was the defense coordinator. He hired him as deep the year year one. Jesse left here to go to Michigan to replace Mike McDonald who had gone back to Baltimore. And so Jesse and I have become really good friends. And so as a and then the guy that just got hired to be the DC at the chargers. A hired as an entry-level assistant at the end of Chris O'Leary. Oh my god. I hired Jesse because Chris O'Leary told me that I should hire Jesse and it all.

It's just tangled webs.

“And now the guys are everywhere and he's a head coach.”

It's really cool man. I guess I'm kind of entering that phase of my career where I'm starting to see kind of the sprouting out of people. Your debris is real. Yeah, yeah, at least it may not be. It's a shrub but it's like you see people that you care about having success, which is like,

I love it. Yeah, thanks again for having us there. Oh man, this is so cool. I actually went on a college visit here with my daughter. So you're going to go to Ohio State, but we came here and tour it.

We know some of the basketball guys too and we got the tour and see everything. It was cool. What were you loving? I don't know how. Okay.

That's so good man. Yeah. It's a good place here. Yeah. We, the schools taken off the cities taken off.

You know, it's just going to get a really cool chancellor who's super aggressive about what he thinks. This can be in the best part of his athletics is within his vision, you know. Yeah. And so Candice, the RAD is phenomenal. Their leadership is kind of open and pathways for us.

And it's cool to come to Vanderbilt now. I was going to say, we were talking earlier. I said, I would bet of all the places Vanderbilt would be maybe the hardest to win because of how good the school is. That's what's crazy to be able to do it so quickly.

I know you went here. So there's a sum of that. It's part of your heart. But that's the part to me that blows me away is how you're able to maintain the academic integrity as well as now win a ton of football games. It's nuts.

Yeah.

That is like, um, there are really critical partnerships there.

First of all, the way the team stitches into campus is so important. We don't go out and recruit, you know, valedictorians. It's not that we don't recruit valedictorians. It's just the makeup of our officers diverse. And they have different backgrounds.

The experiences with school are different. And we have to be able to kind of flex the boundaries a little bit. Feel the best possible team in one of our kind of core tenences. This idea that better people make a better team. And so kind of the idea is that what we're trained to think.

“Like I think what the world trains us to see is life in separate lanes or bands.”

You know, so you think like I'm a coach here. I'm a husband here. I'm a father here or I'm a student here. I'm an athlete here. I'm a son here, brother here, whatever.

So we think we can deploy excellence in those areas. Interdependent of one another.

The problem is when you live that way, you're in constant conflict.

Because if I'm doing this, I'm not doing that. But instead see in each person as like a, it's like a circle, right? And all those roles define who we are. But development and one area is development and all areas. So to come back to the education part of it here.

There's an area of established excellence that you become a part of and you belong to as a part of this team. We are in the business of training these guys. How to engage on our camps that are really high level. And this is a big city, but a tight knit community. So if you show up on time, if you turn your work in on time and if you engage the resources that are here to help you,

you're not just going to survive. You're going to thrive here. Did the professors will know you by name. It'll be a beautiful experience. And showing up on time, delivering on time and engaging resources is what it takes to be a great football player too.

So better people make a better team development.

A one area is development and all areas. It becomes a part of us building an effective program. You don't just flip a switch. That's the funny thing. You get a leadership development stuff and it's supposed to help you at work.

And it ends up because I do some of this that ends up making you a much better, more present husband and dad. And this idea that okay. Now it's time to be a leader. That's an all the time thing. It feels like this is what you're setting your guys up for.

“For life is to be leaders to demand excellence to have high standards to get after it to compete to win.”

Right. To bounce back from losing to deal with the tough things. That leads me to the. You guys didn't make the playoffs. I remember watching this video.

And I said it publicly. I need to talk to the sky. I need to talk to us. You said there's no one's fault except our own. We had our opportunities and we didn't do enough.

We are not victims in this process, which that was my favorite part. We're not victims because every other coach who didn't make it. I mean, crying. They're all about look. This is not fair.

Right. And then the one guy, Clark Lee, saying we are not victims in this process. What was your mindset during when all that went down? You guys did make the playoffs, but you're on the cusp.

“Once you, I think as you've done this long enough.”

And I, you know, 44, 20 years that now. And so I feel like I'm really starting to develop some philosophical roots. You know, this is what I believe to be true about how we do things. Part of it that's central to me is that the idea that. The joy we can experience in this is equal and opposite to the pain we can experience.

And like, what we do, and I'm talking about metaphorically or symbolically is like really dangerous. You're suspended between the pain and the joy and the depth of that pain can be excruciating. And I'm, I've experienced, and I'm talking about competitive pain. I've experienced that here. It can be personal pain too.

On the flip side of that, the joy that we get to experience together in a shared way is like unbelievable. But the entry fee is the acceptance of that. Right. I'm not guaranteed one of the other. And here's where the kind of philosophical parts come for me.

I don't have control over it, but I am delivered exactly what I'm supposed to have. So I had spent a week leading up to that press conference, pandering for my team. And that really is counter to who I am and what I do. I felt very, I felt disconnected from that. I felt, it just, it felt out of sync with how I communicate internally externally.

But I felt like it was important too because I wanted the team to know that I was fighting for him. I do believe we had to play off caliber team. You know, and I still believe that. But we did not do enough. And so that press conference came after a team meeting.

That team meeting was bowl announcement. And so just like anything, I mean, we don't want to live two ways.

You need to be able to cut yourself open and reveal yourself and the players understand exactly what to expect.

And then when they hear you talk to the media or talk out in the world, it's the same message. And so driving into work on that afternoon, I was thinking about what I needed to hear. You know, having gone through this experience of going out and politicking for our positioning. What is it that I need to hear right now? And it came back to this idea that this is actually exactly where we're supposed to be because there are no mistakes.

So once you accept that, you say, okay, so then we're not victimized by this. This is this is actually something that is meant for us. And it's going to deliver us and it's going to drive us further. And then you think about the echo chamber, your team exists.

“And then where everyone is telling them and teaching them to be victims, you know, and again, I say that it's just the nature of the world, right?”

How have you been slided? And so I just wanted to be really clear when I stood in front of the team that this is the ground we stand on. This is who we are. Let's be really proud of what we accomplished, but that's also acknowledged. We've fallen short and that is no one else's fault.

And Vanderbilt football doesn't need to like complain loud enough to get someone to change our mind. We need to play better football, you know, that's been the object the whole time. So that was a message to the team and then I just flipped around and said the same thing in the press conference. And the hope was that it set a tone for us internally, right, to have our rudder in the water and to be heading to the direction we want to go. So we didn't cover enough ground to beat a good eye with team in the ball game, but I'm still really proud of that group.

And I think there's just a lot to learn from all of it. How much of your personal story do you talk about with your team, former baseball player,

“transferring, walking on here, you're a fullback, which is like the least exciting job in the world, right?”

Even the left tackle gets all the money, the fullback just kind of like, ah, don't know where to put that guy. Let's just have him go ram his head into linebackers. So, but how much of your story and and feel free? Like I love to hear your mindset as you go to college to play baseball. Yeah, leave and eventually find your way here as a walk on earnest scholarship as a football player.

Now here you are back running the show as the head coach. I share all of it. How do you coach a team and make sure that your personality shows up on the field? How do you coach a team in the short that you can have impact? They have to know who you are because a position coach is really easy.

You know, you got 12 to 15 guys and you're you control the echo chamber, right? As a coordinator, it's a little more complicated. As a head coach, it is near impossible.

So, I never wanted to be a CEO head coach.

There are CEO elements of my job, but being open honest and exposed in front of the team is essential to my leadership philosophy. So, they know my story. I do an intake meeting with our new players every year. And that meeting usually runs right at an hour and a half. And I go the first images of me as a kid, you know, and I take them through high school to college. Wow, really. Oh, yeah, I want them to know who I am and where I've come from.

And then I take them through my career journey and it gives me a chance to talk about where I'm at my wife. You know, where we got married, where my oldest son was born, where my daughter was born, where my youngest was born. The experiences along the way, the highs, the lows, all of it. And then the kind of third part is, and then I came to Vanderbilt. And I talk about the state of the program when I got here.

I've got images that kind of describe that. And we go team one, team two, team three, team four, team five, all the lessons. I show an interview after Kentucky game year two, team two, where we want our first SEC game. Since returning, I'd inherited a losing streak that continued on in my first season. And I'm in tears after the game.

But by the time we get to that image and I've talked about the program that I took over, there's an understanding around the emotion.

Now we get why that was so powerful a moment for you.

So it's really important to me that these guys understand how personal this is.

“And truthfully, I think the gift of it all is is, and I'm done.”

This job in particular, it's been personal evolution for me that's allowed for program evolution. I mean, then I had to change and change is hard, change is painful. These are things we talk of at all the time. Are you willing to go to the hard places? Well, I don't know that I knew about that until I took this job.

But I want the team to understand exactly what makes me tick. And I share my family with them.

My wife comes out to practice. We talk about things in an open and honest way.

“And I think that that's a gateway to really meaningful relationships.”

And that's kind of been the bedrock of this program build. And as far as the actual pathway I took, I thought I was going to be a major league baseball player. That is what I thought God intended for my impact in the world to be. So like any kid, I was chasing that.

And to be honest, what happened to me?

I went to Birmingham Southern not first year.

It's a really great program. I made great friends there. Great head coach. And in the Iowa World Series, but my skills were diminishing. I was a catcher.

And I was losing the ability to receive the ball. I wasn't hitting very well. You know, I think in reflection, we didn't talk about this back then. But what I was experiencing was a yes. I mean, it was a mental block.

And part of that is because I was holding it too tight. So it's like when you get so obsessed with a long-term goals, you leverage the moment in such a way that makes it impossible to breathe. And so I thought, you know, I got to have a fresh start. So I transferred a ballman here in Nashville.

And as it turns out, you know, the lesson there was even though you change places, your problems will follow you because the skills diminished even further. And it really felt, it was humiliating. And it was really challenging to my identity.

“And I think that year was a really difficult year for me.”

And when I put that picture of me and the slide up in front of the, and take group, I'm going to get emotional talking about it because it's hard. I see the pain of a 20 year old who has no idea what's going on around them. I had a coach there, Dave Jarvis, who had the courage to sit with me and say, you know, you have one shot at this.

I want you to never have a regret.

And he allowed me to go and come to Vanderbilt and walk on. You know, as a full back, you don't have those fine motor skills. You're not dealing with throwing, catching, but what you said is a full back. You run, you run through a wall. So I was actually decent at that.

And that's what got me here. And the gift of Vanderbilt was self discovery. I kind of found myself here and that kind of set the course from my coach career. Yeah, I could see why I was a walking through the locker room and looking to things. You have hanging up view, FB warrior discipline, respect, spirit.

There's all of them. I want to get to you, but one of them was relatedness is our edge. What does that mean? So brotherhood is the most overused word. Families overused.

Something in weird ways, you know, and sport, and you see this. Sure.

And so in the times we live in right now.

One of the issues is we don't actually see each other. We don't take time to know each other. We don't take time to love each other. Care about one another. And relatedness is.

This idea, this shared experience we have. It's a sense of belonging in community. It's a deep respect. Like a foundational respect. That's relatedness.

And Martin Shaw wrote a book that I read a couple summers ago that really kind of changed my life and my perspective on this. But that's what we're cultivating here. So once we learn how to see each other at that depth and understand one another, I'd care for one another and fight for one another. We carry that as an edge in our performance.

But it's really not so much about performance as it is. The depth that we'll be willing to go and sacrifice to get where we want to go together. And belief is a practice. And I sense this when I've. I'm going to be watching your coach for a while now.

And you've been someone I wanted to talk to because it seems like. That is the type of coach that I would have wanted to play for when I went to college. And what about this belief that it feels like you. You are players believe because they're had coach beliefs. So this one's been really important to me.

The guy who was crazy enough to. You know, a lot of four years ago say that we're building the best program in the country. And I think everyone laughed at me except for the people that were here internally. Like we we spent a lot of time on. Did you believe that when you said it?

I did of course. I would not say anything that it wasn't. It wasn't sometimes you say something because you want it's aspirational. It's not doesn't mean you're lying. But it but as a leader sometimes you see some CEOs or everything.

They'll say something because they wanted to be true. They believe it could be true someday. But is it actually now? I don't know. But at the moment you said this is actually real.

This is happening as we speak.

“Yeah, the I think the the phrasing is important.”

We are building the best. And so that means it's. You know, we're we're early stages. But I think it's really dangerous to. To try to speak things into existence that aren't on your heart.

You know, and what I what I learned over the course of my career about really good football programs.

There has to be and I mean I've learned you know a lot since being as role about how important leadership is ahead of me. But yes, I believe that. I knew that we were on our way. In some ways, but also that there is going to be some obstacles ahead of us. So one of the great challenges.

And even for you to walk the hallways here and see these slogans. And I don't want to be that kind of program. You know, relatedness as our edge will relatedness. Is not words on the wall.

I mean, that is a powerful dynamic between humans.

Where it's going to be painful and it's going to require you to let your guard down and strip away your facade and to be seen. For you who you are and as a man and a young man. There's nothing scarier to us than to say what you mean. I can't hold up this facade anymore. And I have to be seen for who I am.

And the best moments of sports are the ones where. You know, whether you're pushing sleds or whatever it is, you're stripped away of all that. You can't fake it anymore. Now we're getting somewhere. So that's not a slogan.

It's a way of being for us. The same is true belief is a practice.

“And I think what I'm trying to kind of get out here is you have to go beyond the words.”

And I think belief again is a word that's overused. As the head coach of Vanderbilt, I can't take people into this program that don't believe in the shared vision of what could be. That means I don't spend a lot of time recruiting. I want to be super transparent and reveal who we are. And I want to make sure the person coming in with its coach players that remember knows how hard this will be.

And that they agree to it.

Now that forms a powerful covenant.

Belief is not something you feel. It's not something you visualize. It's not something you say. It is a practice. So belief will show up in your actions, habits and behaviors.

There's no one that's going to say to you. Oh, I don't believe in a coach. But I can watch you and I'll see the level of belief that you have. Take this and apply it to the individual and say all these guys want to play in the NFL and they should. And I want to be the best coach to have ever done it.

Okay, whatever. I mean, we all have those egos and those aspirations.

“But what are the things that I'm doing that reveal the level of belief I have as a player my ability to reach the NFL?”

How far am I willing to sacrifice? If the belief isn't there, your tolerance for sacrifice won't be there. You know, you're going to see kind of the base level, the entry fee and you're going to hope that it happens. When we take belief into a practice, you make it happen. And so I don't need people to tell me.

We don't need to be the best at talking trash about. You know, where this thing is that we need to be the best at actualizing a day and day on the way we work. But there's some of the things that you sacrifice to hopefully become like the greatest who's ever done it. Well, I want to be careful with having this. I won't become the greatest who's ever done it.

And I just hope to become the best that I can be at this. And I really deeper than that. I want to be a part of something that's meaningful and purposeful and to form meaningful partnerships on the way. And in relationships. But anyone who is on an aspirational journey makes any number of sacrifices.

And so I don't know if this is unique to be in a leader. I mean, this is a bowel growth about challenge. Are you willing to go to the hard places? You know, I don't have to be bigger faster, stronger and my role anymore. But I need to suffer.

“So, you know, what is my intolerance for suffering with respect to you?”

Getting in the way room and training with respect to my eating habits, my social habits. And my willing to sacrifice, you know, when you get to the point in life where you can do what you want after hours. What you'll notice really quickly is if you spend too much time socially in the evening. Your morning is compromised. Well, for me, did you have a water ski?

Yeah.

Okay, I went twice in my life and this is like I never lost this lesson.

So like I remember like you get in the water and if this is wrong, maybe we can just scratch it. I'm kind of literally on the edge of my seat. Because like, where is he going with that? There you go. Go literally.

I don't know. It's like eight years old or something. You get in and you jump in the water. Yeah. And you put the skis on.

And they're like those rubber boots. Yeah. Once you have your skis on your buoyant, so you can actually be in a seated position there. They throw the rope and you grab the handlebar.

And then you put your thumb up and they rub the engine and here you go.

“And like the thing I remember so vividly, my dad's hand to me is make sure before you give the thumbs up.”

That you get your skis up. That if they're parallel or pointed downwards, the image is so clear, like you're going to go up and over those skis and just be dragged in the wake of the boat. Well, there can be nothing more true about a leader. Because once I get in the building, my time belongs to everybody else.

So I have to have my skis up in the morning. If I'm late at night and drinking and whatever, you know, I'm not going to be able to have that time in the morning to prepare myself to be what I need to be for others. There's sacrifice, right? All of this stuff to me is a part of it.

And it's also joyful. And I don't see sacrifices something that I have to do. It's like, man, this is actually what makes it special. What's the head body head body? What is that stand for?

Yeah, so this is Mickey Rork. So the movie The Fighter. But beyond the movie, like if you look and I had to go back and look at some of his fights that were represented in the movie.

It's amazing. The guy that was counted out time and time again.

And was able to find ways to win. Well, he was a really effective body puncher. And some of his knockouts came from just fierce body shots. We forget sometimes that body shots accumulate. You know, these guys know this so well the team does.

There's a scene from the movie where he goes into his corner. And he's being reminded by his brother, the plan, the plan that he and his head body had body. The sequence is just saying, you're getting your ass kicked. Don't deviate from the plan. Don't forget, you know, like how we prepare for this or what we plan for. Head body head body.

So we use it as an expression. It's a mantra for us that puts you in the present. It says, no matter what's happened, I'm not going to focus on what's come before. We're not going to forecast. We're going to be right where our feet are.

And we're going to remember the plan. Head body head body body shots accumulate. You can't knock the opponent out one punch. It's meant to build this presence. And then this resilience.

“And so it's a really important part of our competitive attitude.”

We're talking before about your coaching tree. And one of the guys I actually saw a video this morning. I wanted to ask you about it. It's coach Mike McDonald. You just want to Super Bowl.

And he said two of his primary roles. There's lots of them. But two of his primary roles are chief alignment officer and chief reminding officer. What do you think when you hear that? Personal mics amazing.

And I feel grateful to be connected with him in very kind of orbiting ways. But I just I'm so impressed with what he's done. I saw that. That was sent to me. And I think that is so profound.

The deep and so embodies what these positions are. And we use the spear as a representation of alignment in our program.

“I think it's a visual of the spear has to move in one direction to be effective.”

And in particular, one of the things I kind of recognize early on, which was really hard, is it didn't matter what I said as a head coach in the team room.

That environment's not powerful enough to inspire action.

Do you have kids? Yes. Okay. How old are your kids? 19 to 11.

So we're 13, 10 and 8. And one of our experiences in schooling is the culture of a school is defined in the classroom. So no matter what is on the wall or what the tuition is or what the campus looks like. The culture is going to be defined by the classroom experience. Good teachers make for good experience, poor teachers make for challenging experience.

For me, as the head coach, I can say whatever I want to say. If that is not taken into those tightest echo chambers, the classrooms, the position groups, and reinforced and then driven into behavior. We're going to lose alignment and lose focuses of program. That's a watered down.

Now, I've got to be really clear in setting expectation.

What I say in that room becomes really powerful when the players know that it will be taken to the position rooms.

You know, there's nothing worse than the feeling of what I'm saying isn't showing up in the behaviors. If you'll fake and then you realize the reason for that is because the players aren't being held accountable to that day and day out in those rooms. So the chief alignment officer is like, man, that is a one in the reminding part of it is.

And I think the skill becomes, can we focus on the thing, we say the mission's winning. Can we focus on the things that impact winning?

“So I think I had this idea in my mind of being a head coach where like everyone walks the same, everyone talks the same, everyone wears the same stuff.”

We, you know, in our era, we celebrated coaches that had these that it's like the military uniformity is kind of how we grew up. Like in the south, it was football is part religion, part military, you know. But that's not actually performance. Now, we can eliminate distraction by having standards and expectations, but why do I care about length of air? Why do I care about whatever, what shirt someone's wearing?

What I care about are their habits, favors and what they're willing to invest.

The balance to me of the reminding part of this is, let me focus on the things that are most important.

And let me be relentless and making sure those show up. And that means I'm reminding coaches, players, staff, all of it. And I'm helping them in guiding them into driving accountability within their spaces. And then what I can't do is not let the program breathe a little bit. Performance can't be tight, it can't be restrictive, I don't think.

“And so I need these guys to bring their unique personalities and their creative energy.”

That makes it so much more fun. And it shows up on the field. And so let me remind you of who we are and what we do and how we do these things and how it impacts winning. That is my job. But then let me let you be yourself and bring your personality and help us elevate this program, not just be a part of it.

But one of those personalities is your quarterback and all the stuff's great. But if you don't have a good one of those, it makes it a lot harder. And you know, he's gone now, going on to the NFL. But what was it like at the beginning of your recruitment or at least the conversations you had with the Agapavia when he decided it. You guys both decided like, yeah, you're going to come here and potentially be our starting quarterback.

Diego's one of my favorite people in the world. I'm so impressed with him as a person, him as a competitor. When I first were speaking to him about the opportunity here, I told him he was going to have to compete and earn the job. And really, I mean, he was actually kind of the second transfer quarterback we took in that class.

To his credit, he never flenched.

That did not scare him at all. The first conversation I ever had with Diego when we were getting off the phone, he said to me in the most genuine way. Coach, I look forward to coming to Vanderbilt to help you in championships. And you go back to belief as a practice. I had spent a lot of time trying to convince a lot of people of what was possible, a Vanderbilt. And that felt like the first time that someone was meeting me right where I was.

And so that set a course for what became just such an amazing relationship. And I learned a lot from him. You know, he has helped me learn how to be myself and not hold it too tight. He has challenged me in ways where I have to really think about what's most important. Because the world doesn't need a water down Diego, Pavia.

You know, and when he's at his best, he's being himself. Now, it's also important that we have boundaries and that to be effective. We have to, without conflict, there's a erosion. So you got to fight for those boundaries. There were times where we had to come to an understanding about certain things.

And we did that. And he always always was respectful in those moments.

But yeah, what an incredible person and what just amazing part of the story of this program's growth has been his competitive fire spirit. And maybe most importantly, and the deepest impact made with his ability to make connections, the quiet connections in the locker. And I read that he played a role because you guys are like these scrappy upstarts, right, gritty.

“But he played a role in getting the, is it the five star who's coming in?”

Oh yeah, right. And trying to get his potential replacement. That guy still got to earn the job. Sure, right. But so like you guys initially, when you get here on these scrappy upstarts, who knows what's going to happen.

You know, you have belief, but the outside role doesn't now five star quarterbacks are saying, I want to go to Vanderbilt when I could go anywhere in the country. Yeah, I mean, what a journey that is. Yeah, we use the word misfits around here. Yeah, we do that intentionally. Like, um, and that came from some team building work we were doing in the summer from Brian Longwell, one of our linebackers.

When, you know, we were kind of story sharing in smaller groups. He commented that, oh wow, we really are a group of misfits, you know. But I would just, I would say this that a five star coming to Vanderbilt is not your typical five star. And what I mean by that is that choice in and of itself is the acceptance of a challenge. It's the acknowledgement of certain things that are really important.

That sounds like a misfit to me.

“You know, the world will judge the decision based off what could have been other places.”

The misfit ignores the external intents to the internal, you know. So as we elevate our people, we don't ever lose our identity. And as long as we're true to who we are, the people we accept in this program will quickly get in lockstuck with where we're moving. Awesome. Coach, I said I appreciate it.

This is amazing. No, no. I appreciate you having me. And this is so much fun. Thank you so much.

So you kidding me?

I, like, this is such an honor, man.

It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Coach Clark Lee. A few takeaways from my notes. Be the chief reminding officer and the chief alignment officer.

This is not a one time conversation. People have busy lives. They forget. They get distracted. They're doing all types of things.

The culture erodes without constant reminding. What's the one thing your team needs to hear again. And again, and again, that you only say every once in a while. This is also some stuff that Dan Coil writes about in the culture code.

“In fact, you should say it so many times that your team makes fun of you.”

That's actually a sign of a really good culture. And then practice belief. You don't necessarily have to wait to believe until you see results. Clark talked about how belief is a practice. Something you do daily, especially when others don't see the potential yet,

which something you're building right now where you need to practice belief before you have the proof. That is the job of a leader. And then after going 10 and 2 and missing the playoffs. Clark said that's no one's fault except our own. We are not victims.

Vanderbilt had legitimate reasons to feel slided. They beat six ranked teams. They had one of the best offenses in the country.

They're quarterback Diego Pavio finished second in the Heisman voting.

The committee could have put them in, but they didn't. And coachly refused the victim narrative because victim mentality, even if it's justified, kills progress. The second you say, ah, they screwed us. You give away your power.

You stop asking what you could have done differently. You stop getting better. He chose ownership instead. Quote, we didn't do enough. That keeps the locus of control internal.

That keeps his team focused on what they can control for the next time.

“And I love that that's how he handled a really tough situation.”

Once good I would say thank you so much for continuing this spread the message and telling our friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Coach Clark Lee. I think they'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. And you also go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, rate the show, hopefully five stars subscribe to it.

Write a thoughtful review by doing all of that you are giving me the opportunity to have such cool events like going down the Nashville and talking with Coach Clark Lee and doing what I love in a daily basis and for that. I will forever be grateful that you so, so much talk to you soon. Can't wait.

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