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 learning leader show.

I am your host, Ryan Hawke.

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Now onto the night'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.

During our conversation, we discussed Clark's journey

of going to college to play baseball,

thinking he's gonna 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.

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 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 Brewerers,

and Matt Arnold's their GM.

They become like kind of professional development partners.

I'm gonna go see them in Arizona

and then I'm gonna go to LA and spend a day or two there

with Chargers Rams kind of stuff.

Yeah, that's cool.

And just to fill the cup, you know, same stuff.

So are you in a hardball buddies?

So Jesse Menner, it was the defense coordinator.

I hired him as DC here of 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,

I hired as an entry-level assistant at a day in 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.

And I got some kind of inner in that phase of my career

where I'm starting to see kind of the sprouting out

of people.

Your tree is real, like, 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, 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 one of my daughters.

You're gonna go to Ohio State, but we came here

and toured it.

We know some of the basketball guys too

and we got the tour and see everything.

It was cool.

Where are you living?

Oh, they know how.

Okay.

So that's so good, man.

Yeah, it's a good place here.

We, the school's taken off, the city's taken off, you know,

it's just gonna 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 can't necessarily are ADUs phenomenal.

Their leadership is kind of open in pathways for us.

And it's cool to come to Vanderbilt now.

I was gonna 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

at a place where you still have these super high academic

standards.

I know you went here, so there's some 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, 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, validatorians.

It's not that we don't recruit validatorians.

It's just the makeup of our roster's 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 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.

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 seeing each person as 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.

We are in the business of training these guys

how to engage on our campus 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 gonna survive,

like you're gonna 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 in one area is development in 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 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.

And that leads me to the, 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 this,

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 said, we are not victims in this process.

What was your mindset during when all that went down,

you guys didn't make the playoffs,

but you were on the cusp.

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

and I, you know, 44, 20 years in 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.

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'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 or 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.

It 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 them.

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 bull announcement.

And so just like anything,

I mean, we don't want to live two ways.

The authenticity of this,

you need to be able to cut yourself open

and reveal yourself in 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.

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,

your team exists 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.

Well, you'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 their mind.

We need to play better football.

You know, that's been the object the whole time.

So that was a mess 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 want to go.

We didn't cover enough ground to be

to good eye with 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 world, right?

Even the left tackle gets all the money.

The fullback's just kind of like,

ah, yeah.

Don't know where to put that guy.

Let's just have him go ram his head into linebackers.

Right.

Yeah.

So, 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.

Yeah.

Leave and eventually find your way here as a walk on,

earn a scholarship as a football player.

Now hear your back running the show as they 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?

How do you coach a team and 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.

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 experience is along the way,

the highs to 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 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.

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 in 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 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.

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 majorly baseball player.

That is what I thought God intended

for my impact on 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.

We won the NAI 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.

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 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 gotta have a fresh start.

So I transferred to Belmont 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 in the slide up

in front of the intake group,

I'm gonna 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 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.

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 for my coach group.

Yeah, I could see why I was walking through the locker room

and looking at things you have,

hanging up, VU, FB, Warrior, Discipline, Respect, Spirit.

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.

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 and community.

It's a deep respect, like a foundational respect.

That's relatedness.

And Martin Shaw wrote a book that I read a couple of 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,

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,

I mean, 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 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,

well, I don't have four years to go 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 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.

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 everything.

They'll say something because they want it to be true.

They believe it could be true someday,

but is it actually now, I don't know,

at the moment you said this is actually real.

This is happening as we speak.

You know, I think the phrasing is important.

We are building the best.

And so that means it's, you know, we're early stages,

but I think it's really dangerous to try to speak things

into existence that aren't on your heart.

You know, and what I learned over the course of my career

about really good football programs is it does take a lot.

And you can't do it on your own.

There has to be, and I, I mean, I've learned,

you know, 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.

You know, relatedness is our edge.

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.

The same is true belief as 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 overuse.

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

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 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 in the shut.

And I want to be the best coach to have ever done it, okay?

Whatever.

I 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'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 where this thing's at.

We need to be the best at actualizing

and day and day on 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 be a part of something that's meaningful

and purposeful to form meaningful partnerships

along 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 being a leader.

I mean, this is about growth, about challenge.

Are you willing to go to the hard places?

I don't have to be bigger, faster, stronger in my role anymore,

but I need to suffer.

So what is my intolerance for suffering

with respect to getting in the wayroom and training

with respect to my eating habits, my social habits?

Am I willing to sacrifice 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.

Yeah.

I'm kind of literally on the edge of my seat

is like, where's he going with that?

So literally this, I don't know, is like eight years old

or something, you get in, you jump in the water.

Yeah.

And you put the skis on.

And they're like those rubber boots.

Yeah, okay.

Once you have your skis on your buoyant,

so you can actually be in a seated position there.

They throw the rope in, you grab the handlebar

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's 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 gonna 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 gonna be able to have that time

in the morning to prepare myself

to be what I need to be for others.

They're 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.

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.

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.

His head body, head 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 gonna focus on what's come before.

We're not gonna forecast.

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

and one of the guys, I actually just saw a video this morning

I wanted to ask you about it.

His 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?

Personal 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 really 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, OK, 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's

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 water down.

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

There's nothing worse than 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 a one.

And the reminding part 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?

So I think I had this idea in my mind of being a head coach

where everyone walks the same, everyone talks the same,

everyone wears the same stuff.

And I think in our era, we celebrated coaches

that had these, it's like the military uniformity

is kind of how we grew up.

In the South, it was football as 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 hair?

Why do I care about whatever, what shirt someone's wearing?

What I care about are their habits,

papers 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 in 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.

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.

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 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 that 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.

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 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 relationship.

And I learned a lot from him.

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.

And when he's at his best, he's being himself.

Now, it's also important that we have boundaries

in that to be effective, 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 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 the 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 replaced

when that guy still got to earn the job, 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,

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.

And we do that intentionally like,

and that came from some team building work

we were doing in the summer,

from Brian Longwell, one of our linebackers.

When, as, 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.

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, you know?

The world will judge the decision based off

what could have been other places.

The misfit ignores the external,

intense 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 lock step with where we're moving.

Awesome.

Coach, I appreciate it, man.

This is amazing.

No, no, no, I appreciate you having me

and this is so much fun.

Thank you so much.

Are you kidding me?

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

Yeah.

Yeah.

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.

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 two 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 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.

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

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 Podcast,

Rate the Show.

Hopefully five stars subscribe to it.

Right 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 on a daily basis and for that.

I will forever be grateful.

Thank you so, so much.

Talk to you soon.

Can't wait.