November 27, 2004
Leadership - it's the key to success
or Show me some Love
By Ray Mileur
In response to Brian Walton's article, Veteran Leadership Can Be Overrated, I'm compelled to respond, in defense of leadership and it's role in the success of the 2004 St. Louis Cardinals.
The key to success in any organization lies in it's leadership. This is especially true on a baseball team that faces a grueling 162 game schedule each season, even before it reaches the playoffs.
To dismiss the value of leadership or to imply that it follows success rather than is the key ingredient of success to me reflects a lack of understanding of the role of leadership and human behavior.
Let me define leadership and what the role of a leader on the St. Louis Cardinals would be.
First leadership is not a position or a title, it is it is what we do. I saw a poster one time that may have said it best - "Leadership is Action, not Position."
My basic philosophy of leadership is based on three guiding principles;
- A good leader gets people to believe in him and a great leader gets people to believe in themselves.
- A great leader develops more leaders and not followers
- LOVE, I use the LOVE management system that I designed.
A leader may not necessarily be the Team Captain orthe most veteran player, rather it is the player who on a daily basis that continually develop and exercise a number of performance behavior, skills, and knowledge in accordance or in line with the team's values, to include team loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service/sacrifice, honor, integrity and personal courage.
A team leader must be able motivate and inspire players to give it their best for the good of the team.
(Notice I did not say, their contract).
I mentioned LOVE as one of my guiding principles of leadership. I have developed a leadership management program that I called LOVE and I think it was the elements of LOVE that led the Cardinals to a NL Championship.
What is LOVE? Love is an acronym for the words Leadership, Ownership, Values and Enthusiasm.
I'm called upon on a regular basis to go into companies & military organizations, to evaluate and provide guidance in areas of leadership, management and organizational effectiveness.
Recently after just about five minutes with a military unit, a Major asked me how long will it take me to evaluate their unit?
My response was, "I'm done."
The Major exclaimed "How can you be done you just got here?
It's easy when I walk into a place, I'm looking for LOVE and on that Saturday morning I didn't see any.
It took me 45 minutes to tell the Commander, what I had observed in just 5 minutes - at the end we had another Commander who now believes in LOVE.
Looking for LOVE? Here is what I'm looking for;
L - Leadership - Is it present? - Is it effective? - Is there a vision? - Is there defined goals?
O - Ownership - Has everyone accepted ownership of the organization's mission and their individual responsibility?
V - Values - Is there core values that guide and direct the organization?
E - Enthusiasm - Are we having fun yet? Is there even the opportunity to have fun?
For the record, even with the presence of Matheny, Williams, Rolen etc., there was a big breakdown in leadership within the Cardinals organization in 2003.
What happen in 2004 that made the difference?
Here is what we saw that I think made the difference in 2004 and it was LOVE.
- Leadership - We saw LaRussa communicating more effectively with his players this season and giving them room to contribute and act like leaders. Like I said we want to build more leaders not just followers. We want people to believe in themselves not just us and I think that was perhaps the key factor this past season. Perhaps it was in 2004 when LaRussa went from having a team that believed in him to a team that believed in themselves.
- Ownership - We saw players accepting ownership for the team's performance - after the first month of the season we did not hear all the excuses for poor performances that I got tired of hearing last season. Even when we lost the World Series in four straight games, I was proud to say the Cardinals didn't come out and make up a bunch of poor excuses for the team's failure. That's combines two elements of LOVE right there - Leadership & Ownership, that is accepting responsibility for success and failure.
- Values - We saw team values being demostrated on a daily basis. Players giving it their all, doing their job, making the sacrifices and putting it on the line. Talk about personal courage? How about the plays Edmonds made in centerfield this season, risking injury? How about Woody Williams putting it on the line at the beginning of the season, when he probably should have waited another month? How about Chris Carpenter coming back and giving 110%, risking injury and his career? How about Jason Isringhausen with his shoulder and hip problems but still playing? The same for Albert Pujols who couldn't hardly run by the end of the season or Tony Womack who was hurting in the playoffs. Values - we saw it in the form of the Cardinals paying respect and honor to our opponents in success and failure. Remember shaking hands with the Dodgers, well the same respect was due to the Red Sox when we lost the World Series and we paid them respect by not making excuses for failure.
- Enthusiasm - But we also saw the Cardinals having fun and you know what, they were having fun even during the first month of the season, when they struggled. It helped having guys like Tony Womack, Reggie Sanders, Ray King on the team that made it fun to be at the game, I'm sure in the dugout and clubhouse. And yes even Ray Lankford who came back and wanted to play, not so much for the money but just for the love of the game.
What we saw this season with the St. Louis Cardinals was LOVE - Leadership, Ownership, Values & Enthusiasm and that's the bottom line and that was the key to success.
My concern with the loss of Williams, Matheny & Womack is that we lost some key ingredients to the success of the Cardinals in 2004 and I don't see the replacement parts filling the void in 2005.
Will the Cardinals survive in 2005 without them? Yes.
But don't underestimate or undervalue the contribution that these players made to the team in 2004, because they were key ingredients to the team's success. It just didn't happen or came about after the team started winning.
For sure don't underestimate the value of leadership, because it was the key to the Cardinals success in 2004 and it will be again in 2005.
In 2005 - I'll be looking for thing called LOVE.
