The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 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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Starting point is 00:01:00 Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learning leader. Now on to tonight's featured leader. Clark Lee was hired 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 turnarounds 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.

Starting point is 00:01:47 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 then 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.

Starting point is 00:02:10 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 at this. 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 has done. We talked about all of that and so much

Starting point is 00:02:41 more. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Clark Lee. I've become friends with a guy named Pat Murphy, who's the manager for the brewers. Oh. And Matt Arnold's their GM. They've become like kind of professional development partners. I'm going to go see them in Arizona, and then I'm going to go to L.A. and spend a day or two there with Chargers, Rams, kind of stuff. Yeah. That's cool.

Starting point is 00:03:06 Just to fill the cup, you know. Yeah. Same stuff. So are you in Harbaugh buddies? So Jesse Minner. Okay. It was the defense coordinator. I hired him as D.C. here of year one.

Starting point is 00:03:18 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, I hired as an entry-level assistant at Notre Dame 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.

Starting point is 00:03:46 And now the guys are everywhere and he's a head coach. It's really cool, man. That is awesome. I'm kind of entering that phase of my career where I'm starting to see kind of the sprouting out of people. Your tree is real. Yeah. 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...

Starting point is 00:04:04 I love it. Yeah, thanks again for having us, dude. This is so cool. I actually went on a college visit here with my... Oh. One of my daughters, she's going to go to Ohio State, but we came here and toured it. We know some of the basketball guys, too, and we got to tour and see everything. It was cool.

Starting point is 00:04:17 Where are you living? A Dayton, Ohio. Okay. Yeah. That's so good, man. Yeah, it's a good place here. Yeah. The school's taken off.

Starting point is 00:04:25 The city's taken off, you know, it's just kind of... get a really cool chancellor who is super aggressive about what he thinks this can be. And the best part is athletics is within his vision, you know. And so Candace Lee, R. AD, who's 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.

Starting point is 00:04:58 that's what's crazy to be able to do it so quickly at a place where you still have these super high academic standards. I know you went here, so there's a sum of that as 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.

Starting point is 00:05:14 It's nuts. Yeah, that is like 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 roster is diverse, and they have different backgrounds.

Starting point is 00:05:33 The experiences with school are different, and we have to be able to kind of flex the boundaries a little bit to feel the best possible team. And one of our kind of core tenets is 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.

Starting point is 00:05:59 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, 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,

Starting point is 00:06:18 because if I'm doing this, I'm not doing that. But instead, seeing each person as like a, it's like a circle, right? and all those roles define who we are, but development in one area is development in 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.

Starting point is 00:06:42 We are in the business of training these guys how to engage on our camps at a 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. Like, you're going to thrive here.

Starting point is 00:07:02 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 in one area's development in all areas. It becomes a part of us building an effective program. You don't just flip a switch.

Starting point is 00:07:22 That's the funny thing. You got a leadership development. and it's supposed to help you at work. And it ends up, because I do some of this, it 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,

Starting point is 00:07:38 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. And that leads me to the, when you guys didn't make the playoffs. So I remember watching this video, and I said it publicly, I need to talk to this. guy. I need to talk to us. You said, there's no one's fault except our own. We had our opportunities

Starting point is 00:07:58 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 at, 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 and you guys didn't make the playoffs, but you're on the cusp? once you, I think as you've done this long enough, and I, you know, I'm 44, I'm 20 years then 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.

Starting point is 00:08:38 Part of it that's central to me is that the idea that the joy we can experience and this is equal and opposite to the pain we can experience, meaning 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 depths of that pain can be excruciating. And I'm talking about competitive pain. I've experienced that here. It can be personal pain too.

Starting point is 00:09:02 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. 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

Starting point is 00:09:26 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 and 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 a playoff caliber team you 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.

Starting point is 00:10:05 The authenticity of this, 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 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.

Starting point is 00:10:42 So once you accept that, you say, okay, so then we're not victimized by this. 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 that your team exists in where everyone is telling them and teaching them to be victims. 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 let's also acknowledge we've fallen short, and that is no one else's fault. And Vanderbilt football doesn't need

Starting point is 00:11:24 to complain loud enough to get someone to change their mind. We need to play better football. You know, that's been the object the whole time. So that was the 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 in the direction we wanted to go. We didn't cover enough ground to beat a good Iowa team in the bowl 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

Starting point is 00:12:07 world, right? Even the left tackle gets all the money. The fullback's just kind of like, ah. Don't know where to put that guy. Let's just have him go ram his head into linebackers, right? I appreciate that, yeah. But how much of your story, and feel free, like, I'd love to hear your mindset as you go to college to play baseball, leave, and eventually find your way here as a walk on, earn a scholarship as a football player. Now here you are back running the show as the head coach. So I share all of it. How do you coach a team and make sure that your personality shows up on the field?

Starting point is 00:12:38 How do you coach a team ensure that you can have impact? They have to know who you are. As a position coach, it's 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.

Starting point is 00:13:08 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 image is of me as a kid, you know, and I take them through high school to college to... Wow, really? Oh, yeah. I want them to know who I am and where I've come from.

Starting point is 00:13:28 And then I take them through my career journey, and it gives me a chance to talk about where I met 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, 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.

Starting point is 00:13:52 I've got images that kind of described 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 won our first SEC game since returning, I had 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.

Starting point is 00:14:28 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, and this job in particular, it's been personal evolution for me that's allowed for program evolution. I mean, I had to change, and change is hard, change is painful. These are things we talk about 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. I mean, my kids are around all the time. My wife comes out to practice.

Starting point is 00:15:09 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. 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

Starting point is 00:15:30 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 my first year. It's a really great program. I made great friends there. Great head coach.

Starting point is 00:15:46 We won the NIA 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 yips.

Starting point is 00:16:03 I mean, it was a mental block. Wow. And part of that is because I was holding it too tight. So it's like when you get so obsessed with the 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 to Belmont here in Nashville. And as it turns out, you know, the lesson there was,

Starting point is 00:16:27 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 in the slide up in front of the intake 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 him.

Starting point is 00:16:54 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 fullback, you don't have those fine motor skills. You're not dealing with throwing, catching. But like you said, as a fullback, you run through a wall.

Starting point is 00:17:16 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 coaching career. Yeah, I could see why I was walking through the locker room and looking the things you have hanging up. VU, FB, warrior, discipline, respect, spirit.

Starting point is 00:17:36 There's all of them I want to get to, but one of them was relatedness is our edge. What does that mean? So, Brotherhood is the most overused word. Families overused. I mean, in weird ways, you know, in sport, and you see this. Sure, sure.

Starting point is 00:17:50 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,

Starting point is 00:18:29 depth and understand one another and 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 depths 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, again, I've been watching you 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 And what about this belief that it feels like you, your players believe because their head coach believes? So this one's been really important to me, the guy who was crazy enough to, you know, I don't know, four years ago say that we're building the best program in the country.

Starting point is 00:19:15 And I think everyone laughed at me except for the people that were here internally. Like 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 wasn't. Sometimes you say something because you want, it's aspirational. It doesn't mean you're lying, but as a leader, sometimes you see some CEOs or whatever. They'll say something because they want it to be true.

Starting point is 00:19:36 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, I think the phrasing is important. We are building the best. And so that means it's, you know, we're early stages.

Starting point is 00:19:52 but I think it's really dangerous to try to speak things into existence that aren't on your heart. And what I'd learned over the course of my career about really good football programs is it does take a lot. You can't do it on your own. There has to be, and I mean, I've learned a lot since being in this role about how important leadership is ahead of me. But yes, I believed it. I knew that we were on our way in some ways, but also that there was 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. Relatedness is our edge.

Starting point is 00:20:37 Well, 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 to 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. us, the same is true belief as a practice. And I think what I'm trying to kind of get out here is

Starting point is 00:21:27 you have to go beyond the words. And I think belief, again, is a word that's overused. As the head coach at 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, whether it's a coach, player staff member 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 it coach but

Starting point is 00:22:19 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, you know, 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

Starting point is 00:23:03 people to tell me, we don't need to be the best at talking trash about, you know, where this thing's at we need to be the best at actualizing it day and day out in the way we work. What are 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 that because 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, I want to be a part of something that's meaningful and purposeful and to form meaningful partnerships along the way and relationships. But anyone who is on an aspirational journey makes any number of sacrifices.

Starting point is 00:23:46 And so I don't know if this is unique to being a leader. I mean, this is about growth, about challenge. Are you willing to go to the hard places? You know, I don't have to be bigger, fast, or stronger in my role anymore, but I need to suffer. So, you know, what is my, again, tolerance for suffering with respect to getting in the weight room and training

Starting point is 00:24:08 with respect to my eating habits, my social habits? Am I 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.

Starting point is 00:24:32 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 is like where is he going with this? So literally this, I don't know, it was like eight years old or something. I get, you get in, you jump in the water. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:24:55 And you put the skis on. And they're like those rubber boots. Yeah. Okay. Once you have your skis on, you're buoyant. So you can actually be in a seated position there. They throw the rope in. You grab the handlebar.

Starting point is 00:25:07 And they pull the boat out and the line's taught. 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 saying 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.

Starting point is 00:25:44 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. Their sacrifice, right? All of this stuff to me is a part of it. And it's also joyful. You know, I don't see sacrifice as something that I have to do. It's like, man, this is actually what makes this special.

Starting point is 00:26:05 What's the head body, head body? What does that stand for? Yeah. So this is Mickey Rourke. 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. I mean, it's amazing. A guy that was counted out time and time again and was able to find ways to win.

Starting point is 00:26:30 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. He, it's head body, head body. The sequence is just saying you're getting your ass kicked.

Starting point is 00:26:58 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 a and 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 gonna focus on what's come before, we're not gonna forecast.

Starting point is 00:27:19 We're gonna be right where our feet are, and we're gonna 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, tree and one of the guys, I actually saw a video this morning, I wanted to ask you about it,

Starting point is 00:27:41 is coach Mike McDonald. He just won the 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? First of all, Mike's 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 and 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 recognized early on, which was really hard, is it didn't matter what I

Starting point is 00:28:35 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.

Starting point is 00:29:00 So no matter what is on the wall or what the tuition is or what the campus is, looks like the culture is going to be defined by the classroom experience, period. Good teachers make for good experience. Poor teachers make for challenging experiences. 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 focus as a program. That's a watered down. Now, I've got to be really clear and setting expectation. And 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

Starting point is 00:29:45 the feeling of what I'm saying isn't showing up in the behaviors. It feels 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 A1. And the reminding part of of it is how tired you, I guess you can never tire of driving the standards and behaviors. 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?

Starting point is 00:30:23 So I think I had this idea in my mind of being a head coach where like everyone walks the same, everyone talks them, everyone wears the same stuff. And I think we, you know, in our era, we celebrated coaches that had these, it's like the military uniformity is kind of how we grew up with it. Like in the south, it was football was part religion, part military, you know? But that's not actually performance.

Starting point is 00:30:47 Now, we can eliminate distraction by having standards and expectations, but why do I care about length of hair? 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 and guiding them into driving accountability within their spaces.

Starting point is 00:31:22 And then what I can't do is not let the program breathe a little bit. So 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.

Starting point is 00:31:53 One of those personalities is your quarterback, and all this 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 Diego Pavia when he decided to 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 flinched.

Starting point is 00:32:35 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 win 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 at 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.

Starting point is 00:33:05 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 watered down Diego Pavia you know and and when he's at his best he's being himself now it's also important that we have boundaries and that to be a We have to, without conflict, there's erosion. So you got to fight for those boundaries. And 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 a,

Starting point is 00:33:52 what a 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 room. 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, is it the five-star who's coming in? Oh, yeah, right?

Starting point is 00:34:16 And trying to get his potential replacement. That guy's still got to earn the job. Sure. Right? But so, like, you guys, initially, when you get here are these scrappy upstarts, who knows what's going to happen. You know, you have belief,

Starting point is 00:34:25 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, We use the word misfits around here. And we do that intentionally.

Starting point is 00:34:38 And that came from some team building work we were doing in the summer from Brian Longwell, one of our linebackers. When as we were kind of story sharing in smaller groups, he commented that, oh, wow, we really are a group of misfits. 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, other things that aren't as important. That sounds like a misfit to me.

Starting point is 00:35:11 You know, the world will judge the decision based off what could have been other places. The misfit ignores the external and tends 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

Starting point is 00:35:30 will quickly get in locked up with where we're going. and locked step with where we're moving. Awesome. I appreciate it, man. This is amazing, I'm sorry, Bob. No, I appreciate you at me, and this is so much.

Starting point is 00:35:39 Thank you so much. Oh, are you kidding me? 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. If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learningleader.com.

Starting point is 00:35:57 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

Starting point is 00:36:26 every once in a while? This is also some stuff that Dan Coyle writes about in the culture code. In fact, you should say it so many times that your team may make. 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 is 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, said, that's no one's fault except our own. We are not victims. Vanderbilt had legitimate reasons

Starting point is 00:37:14 to feel slighted. They beat six ranked teams. They had one of the best offenses in the country. Their quarterback Diego Pavia finished second in the Heisman voting. The committee could have put them in, but they didn't. And Coach Lee 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.

Starting point is 00:37:43 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 again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message. telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Coach Clark Lee. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to

Starting point is 00:38:11 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 to Nashville and talking with Coach Clarkley and doing what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 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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