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So today we're talking to President Jim Tressel, the president of Youngstown State University and the former coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes.
So, for those of you that don't know him, let me tell you a little bit about President Tressel.
Tressel is essentially Ohio royalty. He was one of the most successful coaches in NCAA history.
229 career wins, nine national title game appearances, six Big Ten titles, nine bowl appearances, and national championships in 91, 93, 94, 97, and 2002 with the Buckeyes.
Under President Trestle's leadership, enrollment increased for the first time in five years and the university attracted its most academically accomplished freshman class ever.
In addition, the university revamped its development operations and hit record fundraising levels, announced its first Rhodes Scholar recipient, reconfigured its executive leadership organization, froze tuition for two consecutive years, and expanded its scholarship offerings.
The reason I wanted to bring President Tressel onto the show is to teach us about the keys to persuasive leadership.
He has a great book on the topic of leadership called The Winner's Manual And he's been incredibly successful as a coach and a university administrator.
And I know we can learn a lot from his experience.
So without further ado, let's jump into the interview.
Thank you so much for joining us today, President Russell.
We really appreciate it. My pleasure. So one of the main reasons we wanted to have you on the show is because you've earned an impressive national reputation for your leadership abilities.
So can you start us off by telling us a little bit about your leadership philosophy?
Yeah. I've grown over the years to have an interest in studying what leadership is and what leadership does and how one can grow in their ability to be a leader and I've come to the conclusion that many, many people think leadership is a position that you hold, whether it's president or head coach or vice president, but leadership is an action that you take to serve others.
And especially with young people, sometimes when they start to try to figure out what being a leader is They get caught up in, well, I want to be the president of the club or I want to be the treasurer or I want to have a certain role. that I have found it helpful, especially working with The age person I have, which is the college age student for the last four decades, is that you need him. continually message and help them remember that leadership is not a position or a rank.
But leadership is the action that you take to serve others who happen to be a part of whatever it is you're a part of.
And so leadership as service really has been the focus of what I believe about leadership.
As you were studying leadership and getting better yourself, what were some resources that you used to improve your skills?
I really tried to read about people that I thought had done a great job of serving obviously people who had had significant positions, So often what's fun about positions is that it gives you an opportunity to serve.
And so I like to read, especially when I was in the coaching world, I read constantly about coaches who had been highly successful, both with their one loss record, if you will, but also their impact on their students.
I like to go and hear people speak about what they thought leadership was.
I remember as a young professional in my second year, out of college and in grad school and attending a motivational institute, if you will. hearing Zig Ziglar speak and Mary Kay from Mary Kay Cosmetics speaking, Jesse Owens and Bob Richards, the old time folks. because that was 40-some years ago, and just starting to craft what I thought were the takeaways from their lives.
So I think reading and listening are critical components to developing your knowledge base and your beliefs in what leadership is all about.
So for you as a successful coach and now as a successful president, Do you think it's more the X's and O's of either as a coach what happens on the football field or as a president? the intricacies of the various departments Do you think that leads to more success?
Or do you think it's really those leadership skills that you've honed over the years that has led to your consistent success?
Yeah, I would say the latter. We always felt that the depth in which we could serve our students, interestingly enough, it many times equated into more success on the field.
The harder we worked to develop the individual and help them grow in all the phases of their life, it was not coincidental that they also became the best at playing their position or doing their role within a team.
So I think it's important to have the accountability of developing the competencies of what you're trying to teach within your, in our case, it was our team or here at the university competencies of whatever department whatever discipline a faculty member might be teaching in or whatever, that's critical, the accountability. of doing your job is very important.
But I think the thing that takes you to the next level is helping someone, serving someone to grow, in all of the phases of their life that they deem important.
Yeah, I agree. That's phenomenal. And I feel like a lot of times people miss that because they act too strategically.
And failed to really invest in the people.
So I'm glad to hear that you said that. And I'm sure the audience is getting a lot out of that, too.
In your position, I know you've had the opportunity to work with a lot of elite people.
And that's one of the things I'm sure that led to your success, but Along with that, people who are used to being top dog often have big egos.
So how have you managed dealing with people with big egos and getting them on board to your agenda?
I think one of the things, Kwame, that you need to work extremely hard on is helping people keep things in perspective and helping people understand that they individually are insignificant without every single other person around them regardless of their role or their notoriety.
And so helping people keep perspective, I think, has really been a mainstay, and yourself included, sometimes as the leader, the head coach, the president, whatever.
Sometimes you can lose perspective about your relative importance and forget about the fact that every single person that's a part of the organization or the team or the university or whatever, Every single one of their roles is important and they as humans are important.
And I have found that at times it can be more difficult with that person of high notoriety or high ego or whatever because Throughout their lives, everyone has kind of patted them on the back and told them they're wonderful. all those kinds of things.
And if that's the bulk of the messaging you're getting as humans, sometimes we believe it.
And not to say that they're not important and they're not wonderful, but to keep in mind that None of us are wonderful without everyone else.
Right. Hello my friends. Before we get back to today's episode, I want to ask you a question.
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So for you as a leader of the university and also, of course, as the leader of the Buckeyes, as the coach, you've reached some national levels of significance and, And so how have you been able to maintain your humility in a way that still allows you to lead your team in an effective way.
You know, I don't know if there's a trick to maintaining humility.
You have to believe that you are just one of the cogs in the wheel.
I don't think that you can believe that you're something special, and then develop humility.
I think that you have to have the confidence that what you add to the overall group is important.
There's no question about that, but it's really irrelevant without everyone else.
And like anything else, to teach someone something, the first thing that has to get in place is they have to believe it.
It's one thing to say, you know, that you need to be humble or that you need to appreciate others respect others, be aware of others, be compassionate to others.
One thing to say that we should do that another thing to say that we believe that.
And so it's a conversation that I think has to be constant and you have to in your own life live it because you can't ask someone to be something that you are not trying hard to be and believe deeply in.
So I think having the constant reminders and the constant message that, hey, this whole existence we have is bigger than ourselves. and my experience has been we couldn't have a great team until we realized that it was bigger than simply what being good would bring to us.
And it had to be much bigger than that. And that's part of the fun of trying to create a good working group together.
Because let's face it, the media likes to single out wonderful performances or They like to hype individuals, but you, with your group, need to make sure that while we know that the outside world is going to say, well, the only reason we were good was because of our Rhodes Scholar here last year or our great quarterback 10 years ago or whatever. we all know that whatever it was we were able to accomplish was because Everyone was important.
Right. Yeah, this is deep because like I said, I know you're dealing with big egos and this is something I think would really help. our audience too.
Can you take us a little bit deeper into these conversations?
So what do they look like? So let's say hypothetically, if we have somebody who is a coach, an assistant coach, but is coming from an all-star role as a head coach somewhere else. they're used to doing things their way so how would you approach that conversation to persuade them to see themselves as another cog in the wheel.
Well, I've always believed that the first thing that you have to do is try to get a handle on what the person's thinking.
I've always, whether it was my students or my colleagues have always wanted to know where they were coming from, what their thoughts were. what they thought was important, what their ideas were, as opposed to just giving them have that conversation, get that feeling for what someone's thinking is you can help clarify sometimes a misperception they might have.
I used to tease my players that, hey, I know you go back to the dorm every night and talk about what we should do if you were in charge of what you would do.
Tell me what that is, because I might get a great idea from it.
And maybe we should be doing that. Or I might be able to help you understand why we're doing this.
And I think once people understand why we're doing what we're doing, and have input into what we're doing, feel a part of that.
My experience has been that you have a chance to build a common cause.
Now, it's a lot easier with a small group.
You know, I used to have 100 players and a dozen coaches and coaches, creating and having those dialogues and so forth is much easier than 13,000 students and 2,000 employees. still, I think, It's really the same thing.
It's getting a feel for what people are thinking, what they believe, what they're ideas are and having that interaction, you know, to try to help grow as a group with anyone's idea, it doesn't matter whose idea it was, but also help people have a little bit more of an understanding of why we're proceeding the way we are.
And then I guess the other thing I would say is Not ever being afraid to say, hey, you know what?
The way we were proceeding might not have been the best way.
We've learned something. So maybe we need to do this or that.
This is great advice. And I'm running into a little bit of a problem here because I'm running out of space on this piece of paper from taking all these notes.
This is really good. One of the things that I really find interesting from this is that I think people have a misconception when it comes to leadership that the leader stands on high and just Barks instructions to their team and the team follows but This is really interesting to me to hear how much the team's input matters.
And how much you take the time to listen to the coaches and the players to... essentially be willing to be persuaded yourself in order to show your buy-in to the process as well.
Well, one of the phrases, and I don't know where I heard it or if I even heard it or if I made it up or whatever, I'm not sure. but I used to tell my people all the time that if you're interested in being able to influence, in a positive way, then you first have to be influenceable.
Because folks don't want to know just what you think.
They want you to know what they think. and feel as if they're being open dialogue.
We're all tied to constraints. You know, we can't have an hour discussion in between every play in a game.
We only have 25 seconds. So there obviously has to be a lot of lead up discussion as to how we're going to go forward.
We are going to have to make decisions at times when you have to make decisions.
But what's critical, I think, is that willingness to evaluate the decisions you made in a collective manner and talk about the rationale and at times say, you know what, we should have taken so-and-so's idea.
Ours wasn't the best idea. We thought it was at the time, but it may not have been, so that's our chance to improve.
And so it's not a short process because there are moments when you have to bark orders. game has to be played or a decision has to be made, it has to be made.
Hopefully there's been a lot gone into how you get to that point and just as much put into how you're going to evaluate those ongoing decisions that you have to make.
Wow, this is really, really good stuff. So it sounds like.
Earlier in the conversation, we were talking about humility, having that humility within yourself and then now, It's almost like vulnerability, being willing to admit mistakes and let other people in.
Am I reading that right? Yeah, I think that's true.
And I think you have to create an environment, again, which isn't easy, but you can't have people fearful of their own vulnerability.
If someone if you take someone's idea and then it ended up not being the best thing, then all of a sudden, You can't say, well, man, you messed this up.
You know, we don't need your input anymore because then you're going to get limited input if there's that sense.
We used to talk a lot as a staff about the fact that we were going to spend hours and hours and hours and argue and everything else.
But then when we come up with a plan, we're going to go out and we're going to do the plan.
And then we'll come back in and evaluate it.
And we're not going to keep a scorecard of whose idea worked and whose didn't.
I can't believe I took your idea and will never listen to you again.
Because if people are worried about that, they're not likely to tell you what they're thinking.
So it's an exhausting. ongoing, difficult in this day and age because everyone wants immediate results, But I think if you're going to build something long term, it can be quality. you're going to have to understand that there's going to be ups and downs and even when there's ups,
You better still evaluate what's next because Just because you won yesterday doesn't mean someone's not going to figure out a way to beat you tomorrow. there has to be that openness and, uh, willingness to put yourself out there.
Right. So with these conversations that you're having when you're getting ready to maybe persuade somebody or have these kind of high-level conversations.
How do you find yourself preparing for those?
Is there a process that you use or do you just go into it and... go by your gut?
How does that work for you? I think there's two phases of that.
One is if you're doing long-term planning, then I think you have some time to request significant input and I like to use surveys and I like to use focus groups.
And I like to create frequencies of what someone's thinking and so forth.
Then there's also the ones that are a little bit more rapid in that Sometimes you have to get a decision today and you don't have the ability to do a survey and have a long conversation and discussion and have a consensus building time and an exhaustive process.
So when I prepare for those strategic things and those things that are really going to help us shape long-term planning.
I like to get as much information and then talk it through, whether it be individually sometimes or collectively with small groups, Then there's other times where it's tough to prepare because you don't have If something new popped into the situation, a decision, something you weren't expecting or counting on or whatever. but yet there's a deadline.
That makes a lot of sense. I like the The idea of you with long-term planning using surveys and focus groups, because again, it goes back to your style of. gathering input from other people when you're making decisions.
So I appreciate that consistency there. That's Impressive.
One other thing I wanted to ask you about was conflict.
As a leader, Of course, there are going to be instances where we have to deal with conflict and difficult conversations.
How do you approach those? Is there a different approach from the way you would approach just typical high-level conversations?
You know, it's funny because you're never without those.
I think they sometimes depend upon how long you've been together.
And I think the more you know one another and the more consistency and stability you've had together, They can happen more frequently.
And sometimes when you're just in the beginning stages, of creating those relationships, creating that trust, creating that openness and willingness to be vulnerable and not being guarded and all those things. you know, it's harder.
And so depending upon how long you're together, I think determines how you handle the conflict.
I think at the beginning, you're just trying to figure one another out.
And there has to be a time when that trust develops.
And if it doesn't get there, I'm not sure you're ever going to get there.
And then the conflicts might get solved unilaterally.
But if you really can develop that relationship and and that trust, and there are so many things.
We're only in our third year here at Youngstown State, in a much larger environment than just a small team, so many more personalities, so many more opinions so much more history.
And until you really can really grow to know one another, Conflict is hard and I'm not pretending that we've got the answer to it because time is so critical.
And I don't know if you can have a great relationship that's short-term Just because we're all human.
Hopefully conflict, the longer you've been together, You can just be very transparent and open and know that's where the person's coming from.
Sometimes when you're just getting to know one another, people aren't as willing and open to be as transparent as you need to be in that resolution.
So what steps do you take to build trust with those around you?
Other than exhaustive time spent together, I don't have a quick fix for it.
I think in anything, trust gets developed a little bit more when you have a little proof.
When you come into a situation and you're trying to create that tight group, you're just going on a little bit of blind faith.
And that's blind faith is not that strong.
I think the longer you're together and you have a little proof of, how working together and being willing to be open with one another and, And I think you have to be a keen observer and a keen listener.
Well, that doesn't happen overnight. Many times when you go into a new situation, the first time you sit with someone They're going to try to get their point across, their thoughts, their wants, their needs. and see if they can quickly convince you that they've got a handle on what we need to do.
But then so is the next person and the next person and the next person, their thoughts, their wants, their needs. and see if they can quickly convince you that they've got a handle on what we need to do.
But then so is the next person and the next person and the next person, but until you've assimilated all that information, made some decisions, tested the waters, played some games, whatever And when I mean games, I mean contests, not tricky games.
Add some results. It's hard to get the total togetherness.
And that's why in sports, we always talk about, you know, where was your breakthrough win where, All of a sudden, everyone said, you know what?
We are heading in the right direction. And I am going to be more open and more faithful in believing in the total cause. you know, in this highly competitive, especially in higher ed, challenging environment, it's hard to have those breakthrough wins.
And everyone looks at a win a little bit differently.
It was easy in football. We had a game. But in a larger sense, you don't have as simple a breakthrough opportunity to develop that trust which will then lead you to be able to be more effective in conflict resolution and so forth.
That's really interesting. I was really hoping you would give some kind of quick tip, but there really isn't.
Any easy way to do it? Nope. Nope, there really isn't.
And it seems as though the key to this is consistency.
So you show up and you act in accordance to your values.
You act with integrity. And you do that consistently over time.
And that's the type of action that builds trust with the person.
Is that right? Yeah, I would agree with that.
And, you know, I think it's really important that you do and are who you said you would be, because I think all of us have been tricked. and all of us have been misled.
So I think it's really critical. If you say you're going to do something, if you say you're going to listen, then you have to listen.
If you say you're going to communicate, you have to communicate.
The problem is there's only 24 hours in the day, and that's why it takes time.
Right. This is good. This is good information.
But I know you have other things to do, so I'm going to Wrap this up quickly.
One of the things that I've seen about you and heard about you is that You are a strong believer in habits.
And so can you share a few of the habits that you believe have led to your success?
You know, I think one of the key habits is despite the difficulties that everyone faces in whatever arena they're in, the hardships you faced and whatever.
I think you have to have the habit of being grateful. grateful for the opportunities, grateful for one another, grateful for the simple freedoms we enjoy in this country.
So often we get caught up in our hardships versus our blessings.
And the habit we used to always tell our guys, you can't be happy. and ungrateful at the same time.
It's impossible. And you have to either be grateful and happy or ungrateful and unhappy. because they can't coexist.
That is good. That is good. It's funny. I remember, I've heard this before and I remember trying to set the habit of writing five things every morning that I'm grateful for.
And I remember seeing a marked difference my attitude throughout the day on the days that I did do it and versus the days that I didn't do it.
Did I do it consistently? No. I have no concerted effort to get back to that.
Well, you can't beat yourself up. It's like anything else.
It's like when you make the New Year's resolution and I'm going to lose.
10 pounds and I'm only going to eat lettuce and I'm going to do this and that and then You do it for a couple days and you fall off the wagon and then you beat yourself up for it.
You've got to understand that If you do make that decision that I'm going to be grateful, every day I'm going to, I'm going to write five things down and so forth. if you do that some of the time, that's going to help you.
If you don't do it all the time and you beat yourself up, it's not going to help.
So you have to be a little bit realistic and forgiving of yourself at times. knowing though that the more you do it, the better you'll be.
I appreciate that. That is very good to hear.
Because for me, I've... I have that habit of, one habit I do have consistently, it's a bad habit, is beating myself up when I don't reach these high standards so but like you say it's counterproductive yep Good deal.
So before you go, if you could challenge our audience to do one thing of the next week to become a better leader, what would it be? listen I love that.
I love that. It doesn't mean agree. It doesn't mean do everything you hear, it means listen.
And will do that, then I think you'll have a better chance of serving those that you're trying to lead better.
The less you listen, I think the less effective.
And again, it goes back to that old How many hours are there in the day?
You know, in technology, you know, with email and text messages and so forth all of a sudden it drains so much of your time and energy And it keeps you from doing the things that you really think you need to do to be effective serving others.
So the world has made it more difficult, ironically, with the advancements in the world.
It's more difficult to do the big things.
It might be easier to send an email than write a letter and put a stamp and walk to the mailbox.
I know that. But to do 400 emails a day takes away from a lot of other things that you that might be more impactful.
Right. Wow. This is really good stuff. Thank you so much. for joining us and sharing this information.
I appreciate it. Well, my pleasure. And it's always fun to to ask questions like that, because every question you get asked what goes through your mind is, I know I'm not doing what I'm telling you as well as I should.
It's a great challenge. to do what you believe in better than you've been doing it.
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