Visionary Leadership and Competitive Kindness; Guest - Tom Wistrcill, Big Sky Conference

This episode focuses on a key characteristic of Competitive Kindness, the vision-driven encourager that actually drives results. Dr. Clark hosts guest Tom Wistrcill, who serves as the Commissioner of the Big Sky Conference and also on the NCAA Men's Basketball Committee (March Madness).

Tom shares the how to lead with vision and drive leaders to work together to accomplish greatness. He further shares the impact of attitude, effort, and offers the best leadership advice that he has received. He even throws in a strong Van Halen shoutout.

The movement continues…

Transcript

Vision

Guest: Tom Wistrcill, Commissioner Big Sky Conference

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to the Competitive Kindness Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Clark. What if the way you lead could change lives, not just results? We're building a movement, proving you can compete relentlessly for championships while elevating everyone around you. This is your competitive edge. Each episode will share stories and strategies to help you make an impact that lasts. So, if you're ready to win the right way, you're in the right place. Now let's get rolling. Let's talk vision. Not the kind you laminate or catch phrases you put on a wall, but the kind that wins championships while capturing hearts and minds. Because vision at its core is about capturing the hearts and minds of the people that you lead and serve. So they become the best version of themselves, and your organization becomes the best version of itself. That's the work. I've had the opportunity to serve along championship level coaches, national champions, conference champions, from different sports, different temperaments, some calm, and some so intense that your heart rate on your Apple Watch ratchets up when you think about being around them. But they all ask the same question. Will this help us win a championship? Today. No caveats, not eventually, not when resources improve, not when circumstances get easier, and if the answer was no, eliminate it. Change course. If the answer is yes, lean in. That question isn't about tactics, it's about identity, it's about vision. Because neuroscience tells us something important. The brain is wired for meaning. When people understand who they are and what they're moving toward, dopamine increases, which motivation strengthens and focus sharpens with dopamine. When vision is unclear, the amygdala, the threat detector, activates. Cortisol or stress rises. People protect themselves. Silos form. Energy fragments. You don't lose culture overnight. You lose clarity. Vision organizes energy. And here's where the leadership responsibility comes. You must define what championship means. Is it trophies? Is it academic excellence? Is it community impact? Is it integrity under pressure? It's all of them. But you have to articulate it. Because if you don't, and you don't define a championship, it will get defined for you. Usually by the scoreboard or social media. And neither one is a great long-term strategist. Once it's defined, then comes the real work, encouragement. Championship coaches that I've been around didn't just demand more, and they certainly don't build fear for the sake of showing power or authority, they demand a championship standard to consistently reinforce identity. That can look like diving for a loose ball in basketball. That's championship effort. Correcting below the line behavior, blaming, complaining, or defending. Whether it happens on the bus, saying something like this, that's not who we are. They connect behavior to belief. Social science shows identity-based leadership is exponentially more powerful than rule-based leadership. People don't just want to follow standards, they lean into what they are actually becoming. This is the challenge to become. Encouragement is belief spoken consistently enough that it shapes behavior. And this is where the vision-driven encourager comes in. Being a vision-driven encourager is an outward manifestation of the inward commitment to lead with competitive kindness. Competitive kindness is the internal conviction that we will uphold the standard of excellence relentlessly and we will honor human dignity in the process. The vision-driven encourager is how that conviction shows up publicly. It sounds like clarity, it looks like alignment. It smells like high standards delivered with belief. It feels like you are building something special. Vision captures the mind, it gives direction. Encouragement captures the heart and it fuels effort. When both are aligned, people don't just comply because they have to, they commit because they want to. Communities don't just observe from afar, they rally behind you. Research on the collective identity shows us that when people emotionally connect to a shared future, they invest more, their time, their energy, their loyalty, and their resources. People rally around meaning. They sustain around belief. And here's the edge. Vision without kindness becomes pressure. Kindness without vision becomes nicety. But vision plus encouragement plus standards, that's accountability without fear, intensity without toxicity, excellence without dehumanization. Organizations don't drift toward their best, they drift toward comfort or chaos. Sometimes both at once. Building championship organizations and people with a championship mindset and effort requires intentionality, alignment, an unshakable belief that the best is yet to come, and relentless commitment to building the standard of excellence individually and collectively. Because vision builds champions in our organizations, our communities, our homes, and in our hearts. Vision through competitive kindness builds alignment so powerful that people become more than they thought they could be together. That's the vision driven encourager. That's competitive kindness in action. So as we learn from our guests today, listen to how championship identity gets defined. Listen for how leaders capture hearts and minds. And listen for how encouragement isn't fluff. It's fuel. Our guest today is Tom Wistersill, the commissioner of the Big Sky Conference, and a leading national voice in college athletics. With over 30 years experience, Tom has served as a Division I athletic director at Akron, a senior executive at Learfield within the Big Ten Conference, and currently holds influential roles on the NCAA Men's Basketball Committee and the College Football Officiating Board. Known for his visionary approach to media exposure and revenue generation, he's been a visionary voice for the football championship subdivision through record-setting growth and significant industry change. Welcome to the Competitive Kindness Podcast, Tom.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

Hey, great to be with you, Rob. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

I was trying to remember the first time we met, and I think it's been well over a dozen years when you were at the Big Ten at that point. So we've known each other quite a while, and I've always had a ton of admiration for who you are and what you do. And so happy to have you on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

Thanks for having me. I think it's awesome that you're doing this. And I'm always impressed about people that lean into their passions and do something about it. It's easy to talk about, it's harder to do stuff. And so I applaud you for doing something like this that's not only important to you, but should be important to all of us. And raising attention to this is really important. So I think it's fantastic, Rob.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Oh, thanks, Tom. All right, let's jump into this. You've led both as an athletic director and as a conference commissioner during what most of us would argue the most disruptive eras in college athletics. So when everyone and everything around you is changing, what does it take for a leader to create vision that people can actually trust?

SPEAKER_01 8:57

Wonderful question, Rob. And vision is such an interesting term, right? Because it's looking past today into the future and trying to organize groups to get towards common goals. And when I think about myself and the work I need to do, I rely on two core things that are really important to me. One of them comes pretty easy and naturally to me, the other one I have to work on more. And the one that comes a little more easily and naturally to me is just really good, strong communication. I've always enjoyed people. I've always enjoyed sitting and talking and learning about them and talking to them about their dreams and goals and how I can help them and those types of things. And communication is such a key component to any job in any industry, but certainly in ours and college athletics, it's so important because what we do is very visible, uh, both internally to our staffs and student athletes, but then externally to the fans, to the alumni, to the donors, the media, that type of thing. So that communication piece is it served me well. I continue to lean into it and spend a lot of time communicating with our staff, communicating around our conference. The second part is really being honest with people. And I think that's harder for us to do is that really honest and true communication because sometimes you hurt people's feelings. And that comes back to the relationship you have with them, that you can be honest with them. And it doesn't mean you're always right. I preface a lot of times by saying that with people. You have to be really honest to yourself, really honest to them about the health and strength of your organization. And that can help carve your vision out because I think people appreciate honesty versus somebody beating around the bush or passive aggressiveness and that type of stuff. That people just try to avoid confrontation. Confrontation doesn't have to be negative. It doesn't have to be we're yelling at each other, we don't like each other. It can be let's address the issue that's right in front of us. Let's tear down the walls and be honest with each other and find ways through it. It's kind of a long answer to your first question, but those two things are really, really important to me.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

Yeah, and you mentioned sometimes that truth can hurt. It's it goes back to emotion, right? And a lot of leaders talk about vision, but not everyone inspires that that belief or that emotion of belief. So for you, what's the difference between vision that sounds good and a vision that people can truly rally around?

SPEAKER_01 11:24

You just have to be genuine. People appreciate the honesty if you have that relationship and they know you care about them. It's one of those things where people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And so you have to be genuine. You have to be who you are. You can't pretend to be, hey, today I'm gonna be this type of leader. Yeah, it doesn't work that way. But it's like you got to be true to yourself and your upbringing, here, the who you are coming up in the business forms you as a person and the mentors you're around. It's just really important that you're able to be genuine. Then I think it's how you lead the group in that I like to praise publicly, like when we have our staff is be like, hey, Joe, you did this really well. Appreciate your work on that. I had a couple of people reach out to me that noticed this, those types of things. But then when you need to have corrections or you need to be critical about something, do that in private, one-on-one. And so I think that's able to help push your vision through. It's all about being clear and concise and working it that way.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

So let's walk into the boardroom here. You've led in so many different facets. So I'd love to hear your different perspectives on this. When you're leading independent, strong-minded leaders, presidents, athletic directors, coaches, student athletes, how do you bring people with different priorities together in alignment under one shared vision?

SPEAKER_01 12:47

It's not easy, but I guess that's why we all have jobs, right? Is uh is to try to solve difficult problems there. But I've always been a big believer in, and I think everyone has to decide for themselves what works for them. What works best for me is face-to-face communication. Better than a phone call, better than an email, better than reading it on social media. I've found that I'm at my best and can be most effective when I'm sitting across from somebody, whether it's over a cup of coffee or it's at lunch, or it's sitting in their office and talking, it's shared experiences together. It's being together face to face. So I think that number one still has to remain a priority. Then in recent years, what I found was really successful, and really, it was the only positive thing I found from COVID was as a conference at the Big Sky, when we were going through that, we had our presidents meeting every week. We had our ED's meeting sometimes two, three times a week. And so you have this shared connection with these people working through these incredibly challenging times that let's face it, it was a bad deal for everybody. Nobody would look back and say, oh, that was a lot of fun. But that, but this we gained a lot from that. I gained a lot as a leader and learned a lot about the people around our conference because we're spread out over eight states. We're not close together. But those shared experiences, those difficult times, that melded us together. That made us so much stronger. We could have really good heart-to-heart communications as leaders uh because we went through those shared experiences together. It's kind of like when you were a football player, Rob, and you hated those summer workouts. But if 5 a.m., getting up at 5 a.m. and the dead of winter to lift weights, but it brought you together as a team closer. And I felt that way about us as well. And to me, that's why I'm on the road quite a bit in our league. I travel a lot to our campuses because I feel like if I'm visible and with them face to face, I can help them be better at what they're doing, be better. We're better as a conference, I'm better as a leader. It takes the effort and focus in that area, I believe, to drive it forward.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

College athletics is a pressure cooker, right? So in this high performance environment, pressure and criticism are common. What have you learned about how great leaders encourage others in a way that builds confidence instead of complacency?

SPEAKER_01 15:11

Yeah, there is a lot of pressure out there, and it's increased. There's so much visibility day-to-day. I feel like when I listen to people criticize coaches, right? It's like we hired a new coach, and then their first year they didn't win. Let's get rid of him. Let's okay, wait a second. What are we doing here? So slow down, take a deep breath. One of my mentors, Joel Maturi, who was the AV of Minnesota, who I worked for a while and still is a good friend and mentor. He used to always tell me, you never get too high, never get too low. And maintain that middle ground, be that duck, right? Puddling hard under the water, but calm in on the exterior. And that's how you have to handle those things. That's how you have to handle that pressure. But this day will pass. There will be new troubles tomorrow, those types of things. But you just have to continually work on that. You have to lean into the relationships that you have and find guidance there when pressure gets difficult. I also think that you have to be confident enough in yourself, be able to tuck your ego aside and know when to ask for help. And that's something I think I've gotten better at over time. I think when we're all young, we think we we have lots of answers. I think as we get older, we realize we didn't have a lot of answers then, and we don't have all that many more answers now. But that's where you work on your relationships and the people you know around the industry, and also your close confidants and friends that are looking out for your best interests. That's how you find your way through the difficult times because there's another one coming today, tomorrow, they're just keep coming. That's the nature of this business, like you said, right now.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Yeah, there's a lot of self-awareness you just shared there. Maybe let's delve a little bit deeper into that. How do you prepare yourself personally when the ego needs to be in check or you need to make changes or realize you don't have all the answers? What are some things that you do?

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Well, I think over time I've learned that I have a very specific set of skills that I feel like I'm really good at these few things. I've also realized now, after 32 years in this business, I am not good at these. There's a list of things I am not good at. And but I know what those are. I have a very clear vision for what those are. So I think taking that personal assessment of yourself is really important as a leader. And you have to know how to lean into those things that you're good at and use those to help move everybody forward, move you forward, all of that stuff. And then you got to surround yourself with people that are really good at your weaknesses. And then to and you got to be honest with them and the team of, hey, here, I'm good at this, you guys are all good at this, let's work together, we're gonna be awesome together. But again, you got to take your ego aside because we'd love to say we're all great at everything, but we're not. And uh so that's just something I think I've gotten better at over time. If 20 years ago, when I was 36, if you asked me this question, I would have said, I'm probably great at everything. I could do it. I'm at least uh I'm at least a B plus in everything. And now I say, hey, great, I'm an A in these areas and I'm a solid C in these areas, but I know that. And like I said, that's why I know when to ask for help in those areas that I'm not greedy at. And that's a sign of intelligence is asking for help. The opposite is not intelligent, thinking you know everything. That's where the ego gets in the way. And and it's okay to ask for help because, like I said, none of us are A-level in everything. So that's how I play into that, Rob.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

Great. And as you've built that internally now, let's talk for leaders who are wanting to become better encouragers. What are a few simple ways to intentionally lift the people around you?

SPEAKER_01 18:47

I've said forever, I didn't make this up, but I know for 30 years I've talked about the only thing that I can control that you can control every morning is your attitude and effort. And so I lean into those two things every single day. I wake up and think, what can I do today to make it a great day? Not just for me, but the people I'm gonna interact with, the people I'm gonna work with. And so I think it is an attitude. You got to have that. You got to have kind of that inner drive to not only want to be good and great, but to make a difference around you. And uh, and so I lean into that a lot. And I think that's important for me. I like to have a smile on my face. I want people to know that for us in the big sky offices, yeah. I want everybody to know, hey, it's gonna be a great day. How are things going? What's happening over here? Hey, good work on that. I want to lead with a smile, bring some joy around what's going on. But but like I said, I think that people appreciate it if you understand them and talk about their families and what's going on with this and ask their opinion on something. Again, I think they feel more involved and bought in when that happens. So that's the external side of it. That internal side of it is back to my first point, which is you have to decide, okay, I'm gonna I can control, I can't control a lot, right? I don't know what's gonna happen today. I don't know what phone calls are gonna happen or other things, but I know I can bring a great attitude to it and tremendous effort. And if I bring those two things every day, I found that I have more good days than bad ones.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Incredible. All right, so this is a weird question when you're at the top here. I'm of the belief that the big sky is the best FCS conference in America, and I think you'd agree.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

I would 100% agree and have lots of data to back it up.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

That's right. There you go. So when your career's over in the future, hopefully way down in the future, when people look at you and you reflect back on the impact you've had, what do you hope people say about you and how you've impacted their belief in themselves and what they're capable of?

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Yeah, you're right. Hopefully that's a long ways off, Rob, but I think it's more like an emotional feeling, right? I just I'd want them to think, hey, I enjoyed being around Tom, working with Tom, working for Tom, because I brought a positive attitude and tried to do things the right way. I was true to myself. I wasn't fake, I wasn't one person one day and one day the next. I was very consistent in how I did things and cared about them, cared about the group. I was honest enough to say everything's not cherries and rainbows, right? And there's days where things suck and you gotta find ways around it. And that's life, right? Some days things are gonna go well and some days they're not. But how you respond to those are really important. A job's a job, right? We all get paid to do a job and support our families and those types of things. What I love about the work we can do in college athletics is we can make a difference to young people's lives. You were a student athlete, I was a student athlete, and the difference that college athletics made for our lives. And if I made a difference in some of those along the way, that would be wonderful. Um, because that's what still motivates me every day is what can I do to help the student athlete? To the Big Sky Conference. And our schools feel the same way individually about what they're doing. And if there's something like a legacy last, like I said, hopefully that's along the lines of those things.

The Fast and Friendly Five

SPEAKER_00 22:10

Tom, we're going to shift gears here. So this is a segment that I like to call the fast and friendly five. So I'm going to ask you five quick questions, no long pauses, just gut answers. You ready? Go for it. Let's go. All right. Number one, your go-to hype artist or song when you need a boost.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

I love some old school Van Halen. Give me some original Van Halen with David Lee Roth.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

Strong. What's the popsicle? What a song, though. Is there one that you just go to?

SPEAKER_01 22:41

You're gonna laugh. You're gonna laugh. I I love running with the devil. Yes. I think that song just rocks. So again, I'm a music guy. I listen to music all the time. I guess I could have named third, I could name 30 songs and 30 artists right now, but you that was the first one that popped into my head when you said fire up.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

Fantastic. All right, number two. Your go-to movie when you need inspiration.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

The favorite movie in the family is Step Brothers. I don't know how inspirational it is, but here's what I found. I found no matter what mood you're in, if you're laughing, you can't possibly be upset about something. And uh those two and step brothers make me laugh every single time. So it's not like Chariots of Fire or Miracle or anything like that. But for me, gimme Step Brothers, I'm gonna laugh, and that's gonna change everything.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

Did we just become best friends? Yes, we did. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

You want to go in the garage and play and do karate?

SPEAKER_00 23:39

There we go. All right, number three. One or two books that have impacted who you are.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

I'm a huge John Gordon fan, and he's my favorite author. Heard him speak a few times as well, listened to his podcast. He has a series of books. He's probably, I don't know, 18, 20 books out there. Easy reads, 150 pages, something like that. I always tell people start with The Carpenter. And it's that's my go-to star book with him. But I've read pretty much all his books, and they are they are wonderful books about how you can get better, your impact on other people, and it really makes you think. And what I love about it is that I'm on a plane a lot. So you can knock off the whole book from getting to the airport, sitting, waiting for my plane, on the plane. You can knock off that 150 pages. Big John Gordon fan, and suggest anyone, they'll get a lot out of reading his books.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

Hey, he's a great person, too. He's come and spoken to a few of the schools I worked at. Great guy. All right, number four, best leadership advice you've received.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

I don't remember where I heard this from, but I have said this to student athletes, coaches, our staff for years. And it's this phrase never wrestle in the mud with pigs. You both get dirty, and the pigs like it. So what I mean by that is when somebody rips on you on social media, it's easy to say, I'm gonna fireback at them. They want you to do that, they want to pull you down into the mud. So the hardest thing to do, but the right thing to do, is to rise above it and say, I'm not gonna wrestle in the mud with those people. So that's my favorite saying. I've repeated it many times. Never wrestle in the mud with pigs. You both get dirty, and the pigs like it. So that's my favorite leadership advice.

SPEAKER_00 25:36

Fantastic. When you think of a leader who is both kind and effective, who's the best leader that comes to your mind and why?

SPEAKER_01 25:46

So I mentioned Joel Maturi before, who was the AD at Minnesota, AD at Miami, AD at Denver University. Joe's in his early 80s now, still lives in the Twin Cities. He was very impactful to me in my career because no surprise, I'm a type A personality running 100 miles an hour go. He taught me to slow down a little bit, look at things a little differently, again, never get too high, never get too low, to focus in on the student athletes. That if the hard decisions you made as an administrator, you, me, all of us in college athletics, if you lay your head down at night, knowing you did right by the student athletes, that's usually the right decision, and you'll sleep good. And I've had great mentors and both my parents were involved in athletics, and I always knew I'd do something in sports. I've always been involved in it with lots of great coaches and mentors and leaders, and I've been very fortunate. But Joel's words always hold true to my heart because it helped help me to get more balance in the way I worked. So he's the first one that comes to mind when you ask that question.

Closing Comments

SPEAKER_00 26:49

Thanks, Tom. You survived the fast and friendly five. Nice. That's awesome. Hey, we're gonna close this up, but before we do, would you offer to our listeners advice on how to lead the right way?

SPEAKER_01 27:05

Yeah, I think a little bit of the summary of a couple things I touched on earlier about really being honest with yourself. And sometimes that's hard. Of I called it the old P chart, right? You have your pros and cons of any big decision. And if you put yourself on that chart, and what are you really good at and what are you not good at? And I remember coaches years ago, I'm listening to people talk about how don't spend much time trying to make your weaknesses great because they're probably just not going to happen. So if you're a D in something, you could spend all your time trying to get that to a C, but what did you gain? Why don't you take your A and make that an A and supplement that C or D around you with great people? And so I would say best leadership advice I can get anybody is lean into your strengths and keep making those great because you're pulling people and organizations along with you. And the other parts of it, being honest, and again, you got to tuck your ego aside there because sometimes it's hard to tell yourself you suck at something. But we all do, we've all got a list of things and find ways and people to make that not a negative to the organization that you're in. So that to me, that's the best advice I would give someone right now is being, like I said, it's really taking that hard step of being honest with yourself and saying it's okay that I'm not an A in every part.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

Thank you, Tom. This has really been inspiring. I really appreciate your insights, your thoughts, and of course your friendship. So thank you so much for being on the Competitive Kindness Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

It was great to be with you, Rob. Thanks for what you're doing, and I wish you well.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

Thanks for tuning in. If today's episode got you fired up, please check out the book Competitive Kindness, Winning the Right Way. Available on Amazon. Join the competitive kindness movement by sharing this with your friends, family, and colleagues. Also, I would love to connect with you, so please share your thoughts or stories with me on LinkedIn or on X. My handle there is at Rob Clark10. Remember, dare to lead differently. Dare to be kind.