The Humble Champion; Guest - Jeremy Foley, Florida AD Emeritus

This episode focuses one of the three foundations of Competitive Kindness, the Humble Champion. Dr. Clark hosts guest Jeremy Foley (Athletic Director Emeritus, University of Florida) who is considered one of the most successful athletic directors in modern college athletics history.

Jeremy offers insights into culture, ego, combating complacency, and leading with heart.  His championship insights show why his teams thrived under his leadership while showing ways that he has grown throughout his leadership journey. 

The movement continues…

Transcript

The Humble Champion - Dr. Clark

Guest: Jeremy Foley, AD Emeritus Florida

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. The humble champion. Feels like a contradiction, right? We've been conditioned to think that winning requires an ego, that you need to cross the line from swagger to arrogance, and to be the alpha in the room. I propose a different way. Now, humility is tricky because the moment you say you're humble, you're automatically considered cocky, right? I sure hope not today because at the risk of this paradox, we're going to explore one of the three foundations of competitive kindness, the humble champion. The humble champion is someone who's confident and relentless in pursuit of championships, while also being self-aware enough to put the team first. Their wins aren't personal trophies, they're the opportunities to elevate everyone around them. I love this definition by faith leader Gordon B. Hinckley, who said humility is not about thinking less of yourself, it's about thinking of yourself less. That's the championship mindset that separates leaders who help the members of their organization become the best version of themselves while winning championships in their sphere of competition. The foundation of competitive kindness. I worked with a two-time national championship winning men's volleyball coach who was destined for the Hall of Fame. While I was watching a women's volleyball match, he took an entire two sets to sit down with me and explain the strategies of a game on a level that I never could have unlocked on my own. He could have easily dismissed me, but instead he took the time to teach me. No posturing, no ego, just kindness, curiosity, humility, and intense passion for his sport. That's a humble champion in action, winning and lifting others. In my twenty five years of college sports, I found that there are three keys to becoming a humble champion. Number one, you conduct an accurate self-assessment. We all have strengths and blind spots. This assessment is about honestly understanding your strengths and weaknesses. A humble champion doesn't overinflate their abilities or hide the existence of their blind spots. They know what they can contribute and where others can add more value. An accurate self-assessment allows you to make decisions based on reality, not ego, and it models humility for your team. Simultaneously it's about focusing on your strengths, not just your blind spots. Imagine if you're driving a car and just staring at your blind spot the whole time, yeah, you do that, and there's disaster waiting right in front of you. Lean into your strengths and surround yourself with others whose strengths are your blind spots. Two, cultivate appreciation of others. Genuine recognition is a performance multiplier. A humble champion sees the contributions of others around and celebrates them authentically. This isn't strategic flattery. This is about creating an environment where people feel valued and motivated. When your team knows that you see their work, they step up in ways that ego driven environments rarely achieve. When you are genuinely excited for others' success, you will find joy. Teddy Roosevelt said it well, comparison is the thief of joy. If your ego is so wrapped up in comparison, you'll lose the joyful opportunity to genuinely celebrate in the success of others. All parents know this, seeing someone you love and care deeply about thriving is truly one of the greatest joys in life. three, be teachable. Staying open to learning, feedback, and new ideas is what keeps a humble champion ahead. Leaders who believe that they have all the answers stop growing, and they limit their team's growth as well. Teachability fosters adaptability and encourages collaboration. It says to your team, your perspective matters, and we're all learning together. There are simple practices that make these keys real. When your team achieves something instead of saying, Thanks, I led this, say, I'm grateful for the work this team has done, and here's who made it happen. That small act builds trust, loyalty, and engagement faster than any speech or memo. Humility doesn't mean passive, it's quiet confidence. Super Bowl champion coach Tony Dungey called this quiet strength. It's competing fiercely while helping others perform at their best. Research shows that humble leaders create twelve percent higher performance outcomes and forty percent higher staff retention. In other words, win more and keep your team together with humility? Sounds pretty great, doesn't it? Even without that research, you can feel it. People lean in, trust grows, ideas flow, and teams perform at a level that ego alone can't achieve. If you want to start practicing this championship mindset, reflect on these questions. Where does ego show up in my leadership? When was the last time I said, I don't know, or I was wrong? How did I share credit for a recent win? Who on my team could teach me something if I just asked? A humble champion doesn't just perform, they elevate others while pursuing excellence. And that's how teams grow, innovate, and sustain success. Competing this way isn't easy, but it's the kind of leadership that builds trust, loyalty, results at last, and your competitive edge. Humility is not a soft skill, it's a strategic advantage. Becoming a humble champion transforms your performance and the performance of everyone around you, while also helping your team feel valued. Their success will reflect very positively on you. So there's no need to stroke your ego. Build their confidence instead. Ryan Holliday said, Ego is the enemy, giving us wicked feedback disconnected from reality. It's defensive precisely when we cannot afford to be defensive. It blocks us from improving by telling us that we don't need to improve. Then when we wonder why we don't get the results we want, why others are better, and why their success is more lasting. Destroy the damaging ego by becoming a humble champion. This is a lifelong process of detaching to conduct an accurate self-assessment, cultivating appreciation of others, and being teachable. I invite you to become a humble champion, and let's learn from one now with our upcoming guest. Today's guest is one of the most accomplished leaders in the history of college athletics. For 25 years, Jeremy Foley led the University of Florida athletics, building a culture that produced 27 national championships across multiple sports. During his tenure, Florida achieved something that no program has from the modern era, winning a football national championship while also capturing back-to-back men's basketball national championships. Along the way, Foley was named National Athletic Director of the Year by both the National Football Foundation and the Sports Business Journal, and served on the NCAA Division I Management Council. What truly defines his legacy isn't just the championships, it's how they were built through humility, alignment, and an unwavering commitment to people and culture. Today we're diving into leadership, culture, and the lessons behind one of the most successful eras in college sports history with Jeremy Foley. Jeremy, welcome to the Competitive Kindness Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

Rob, it's a pleasure being with you. Thank you so much for the invitation.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Everyone's got a story. So what's a defining moment or a story from your life that shaped who you are as a leader?

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Rob, you know, I think the one that may be the most meaningful really changed my life, changed my leadership journey was when I came out of Florida in 1976 to do an internship. And then I got hired full-time in 1977. And really over the next 10 years, I got promoted almost every single year, more responsibility, different titles, more money, new contracts, more responsibility. So I rose up to where I was the number two person in the whole organization. It was smaller than it is now. But you had an AD and you had a senior associate AD, which was me. So I was just a kid from New Hampshire who wanted to work in sports. And so I'm working in sports at one of the best universities in the country, and I'm doing exactly what I wanted to do and having incredible success. And it was sometime, I think in the fall of 1986, a guy that knew our program, did business with our program, went to the University of Florida, obviously knew me, called me up and said, Jeremy, I better come down to Tampa and have a lunch with me. And I said, I'm glad to do that, Leonard. And I drove down there because he was a good friend and a good dude. And we had a nice lunch, and after lunch was over, he said, Jeremy, you've done a great job in Florida. But until you learn how to treat people better, you'll go no further. And I was really taken aback. I said, Leonard, what are you talking about? Because I've never heard that in my life. He said, People don't like working for you. You don't treat them well, you cuss at them, you don't respect them, you don't trust them. Kenley, you created a bad environment up there. And I was 33 years old, that's a pretty hard thing to hear. And I kept getting those promotions, so I didn't have the benefit of leadership podcasts or leadership courses or anything. And I just really taken aback. And long story short, I drove home, and the closer I got to Gainesville, the worse I felt because I realized he was right. I'd like to tell you, I changed over in the 80s. I didn't because it's hard for a leopard to change his spots, but it became really important to me. And so the lesson that I finally learned and became part of who I was as a leader, and hopefully part of our culture was we're gonna learn how to treat and value and respect people. It's pretty simple when you reflect back now on a career. I may have been the atletic director, I may have been quote unquote the leader. You're not leading anybody. If you don't have people following you, if you look behind you and there's nobody there, and there's nobody behind me because I didn't value them, I didn't treat them, I didn't listen to them. It was one way to do things, it was my way. And that guy taking that time allowed me to realize that leadership is about investing in people, knowing people, learning about people, and trusting people, mentoring people. Obviously, we have to make decisions and the buck stops with us and all that type of stuff, but again, none of us are doing this alone. And once I've realized that you're gonna value people and understand that their contribution organizations are just as important as yours, then I think that's when I finally learned what this leadership journey was all about.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

From that powerful conversation, you built one of the most successful cultures in college athletics. What were the key principles behind creating a true culture of champions at Florida?

SPEAKER_01 12:42

First and foremost, one of our core values is respect and teamwork. And we're all in this thing together. We were going to care about people, invest in people. And first of all, because you're in the business, we also know because you're familiar with my career, we're far from perfect. We didn't make every decision that was right. I'm sure there's some people that ended up working for me that for whatever reason didn't enjoy that experience. But it became important for them for us to try to make everybody really enjoy it. And not where we became everybody's friends. We were going to do things a certain way. I used to tell people we wanted to be a little different, and not in an arrogant way, but we were going to be different in terms of how we invested and cared about people. And how invested and cared about every single athlete. We had 21 sports, and obviously football had to win, and football was going to get the headlines, and football made all the money, and nobody wanted to win football more than I did. But if you came and played women's golf in Florida or women's tennis or men's track, we would talk about all the time. If you came to Florida, these athletes could have gone anywhere in the country. Therefore, if they come to our place, we need to invest in them, know their names, be around them, go to their games, go to their matches. And same way with coaches. So it just became something where that became part of our DNA, the people part of it. I'm a big believer in what I call walk-around leadership. All of us are busy and all of us can sit in our offices all the time. And obviously, I had a job to do too. And obviously, I had to be in my office a lot. It was really important for me to get out and around and visit people, say hi to people so that they could see me as just a regular human being and I could get to know them as individuals. That was part of it. I think another thing we did, Rob, and was really important to me is that Florida for the longest time was the program that people used to say wait until next year and what if and sleeping giant, all that type of stuff. And that frustrated all of us or frustrated me because we knew we could be better than that. We knew that we could be good in a lot of things. Heck, for the decade of the 80s, we were on NCAA probation twice in both football and basketball. So we need to be better than that. So we talked about excellence in everything we did, not just winning games, you know, how we dressed, how we acted on the sidelines, how we acted downtown, how we acted to eat towards each other. I think to be great, you have to message that constantly. And so we did. But I also hold people accountable to it early on in my career. I made some difficult coaching decisions that on the outside people go, What are you doing? This individual just made the NCAA tournament or just won this number of games. And and it's not that I take pride in turning the lights out on people and making tough calls. We were just okay. I had trouble being just being okay, and I always had trouble being okay. So I think like anyhow's culture doesn't change overnight, you know, establish who you are overnight, but little by little, we demanded certain things, we became a certain way, and I think that's the culture we built. But again, the linchpin to our culture was how we invested in all sports, not just monetarily, how we invested in people and not just what we paid them every other Friday, how we invested in coaches. And if people know that you really care about them and you're invested in them, I think they go the extra mile. I think great things can be achieved.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

Let's continue on the people front here. That investment and who you bring into your team matters so much, having the right people on the bus. So when you're hiring coaches and senior administrators or other leaders, what specifically did you look for to ensure that they'd strengthen and not disrupt the culture?

SPEAKER_01 16:09

That's a great question. And obviously, hiring people is the most important thing we do, and it's not a perfect science. You don't have a thousand if you did, you'd be the guru, royal gurus. What you try to do, though, is I talked earlier about Florida One to be a little different in certain ways. And again, different, not saying better, but we also did things a certain way, so we were trying to hire people that were one of us, we'd say. And again, it comes across as an arrogant throne, but it's not. We did things a certain way. We valued all people, we valued all sports. We wanted people that had incredible high energy and passion, you know, for their job and for the profession. And you might say, doesn't everybody have that? No. Some people it's just a job. We wanted people who just care what was on fire about doing their job, and it wasn't about how much money they're getting paid. So the most successful coaches we hired. I would hand them the term sheet and they go, fine, when can I get a phone so I can start recruiting? Thank you so much. How much will my assistants get paid? When can we get going? When can I get them here? That's what you were looking for, and that's what we tried to find. Obviously, you wanted people to get along with other people. I hired a coach once, and two weeks later they're having a fight with our women's soccer coach, and that's not how we did things in Florida. I'm not talking about a physical fight, but they're arguing about something. And again, you can disagree, reasonable people disagree. We're all in this thing together. I wanted people to realize that it wasn't about individual programs, individual egos. It was about the University of Florida. So you're looking for that type of person. And we hit it on the nose a lot of times. And when we didn't, although we thought we did, it's because they weren't a fit. They weren't one of us. And you know something? When you hire someone who's not a fit, it eventually doesn't work out. It doesn't make anybody a bad person. Sometimes it just doesn't fit. And fit is such a nebulous term. I know that, but I always thought there's one thing that I might be able to bring to hiring people at Florida was I've been there. That's the only place I ever worked. So I knew the university, I knew the culture, I knew the place, I knew what it took to be successful. So again, that's what you're looking for. And another thing I think we did a good job is we weren't afraid to take a chance on people who it wasn't always about the resume. Because resumes are just a one-time deal. If you can look at a really talented person that may not have been in the business that long or have that much experience and try to project in your mind where they're going to be in five years, then their resume is going to look a whole lot different. I just think that when you hire a person like that, you have an incredible amount of will too because they realize you might have taken a chance on them. Again, and also you can indoctrinate them into your culture real early because they haven't worked a whole lot of other places. Again, it's not a perfect science. We didn't do it all perfectly, but more often than not, we hired people who came in and sustained our culture, enhanced our culture. And not only were they successful, they helped enhance the brand.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

As your success grew as a department, how did you intentionally keep ego from creeping into the department and undermining what you've built?

SPEAKER_01 19:02

Yeah, it's also a great question. And I can tell you way back in the day, I when I graduated from college, I went to a small college in upstate New York. And before I went to grad school, I took a year off and I ended up being an assistant lacrosse coach at Hobart College, where I played. And I worked for a guy at Hobart back then in D3 school at an incredibly successful program, national championship program. And the coach I worked for, named Jerry Schmidt, was all American of John Hopkins. And I can remember that every time I thought I was doing a good job, he would jump me about something. Every time I would feel satisfied, I would get in trouble for something. Or the I's weren't dotted exactly, the T wasn't crossed exactly going, are you kidding me? But it always kept my head on a swivel and it became part of my DNA. So when we were having success, I was petrified of what you were just talking about, complacency. You need to read Jack Welch's book from GE. He talked about things that kept him up at night when GE had it going was complacency. So we worked on it. When you have success, you got to have more of an edge than you did when you were trying to build it. And you have to hold people even to a higher standard. You have to jump people maybe even more. Not that we didn't enjoy it, but you can't say that it used to scare me to death, Wanna. We won the back-to-back in basketball and then two out of three in football. Everybody's descending on Gainesville and talking about how wonderful we were. And that's all fine and good. I learned a long time ago. Someone told me when I first became AD, when people applaud you, enjoy it, but don't quite believe it, because it's all fleeting. And we had to be smart enough to know that. And so we stayed on edge. We worked hard not to be complained. It's human nature to let things slide. And you cannot succumb to that. You have to be extra vigilant, more so than anybody else, because that's the human nature for coaches, athletes, especially this day and age with social media, having the ability to weigh in and tell people how great they are immediately. But it has to be intentional on the part of the people in leadership roles to protect against it. And that's what we tried to do. Here's the other part of that conversation. If your goal is to be great, and your goal is to do it again and again, and you have to keep that edge, you have to keep that pedal down. You cannot allow yourself to be complacent.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Yeah, so that edge is so critical. So twofold question here. How do you take care of those who you lead to keep that edge? And then how do you take care of yourself to keep that edge?

SPEAKER_01 21:22

It has to be intentional. You've got to talk about it. And when you see a little slippage, I think it's all human nature. When there's a little slippage, that's okay. We just went back to back. We took two out of three. We'll win in here. Yeah, we'll be okay. Not that big a deal. It's a very big deal. I think the accountability responsibility of the chair becomes even more paramount when you're having success. And you have to be extra attentive. You have to pay attention. I would say you have to be even more when something slips a little bit. And you have to call people on it. It's called holding people accountable. It's one of the traits of leadership that is not talked about a whole lot and is. Zero fun because people are going to say, well, hey, ease up a little bit. We're doing well here. Life is good. That is all true, but you can't have that attitude. So, in my opinion, you know, I gotta have people around me who buy into what I think in terms of edge accountability, because I can't message it for everybody. They're overseeing other people, they're overseeing other sports. And so everybody has to buy in, but you have to continue to message that. From a personal standpoint, how you maintain that involves constant self-evaluation. When you put your head down at night, instead of thinking about this game that you won or this championship you won, I think about what can we do better? How do we screw that up? Why are we not that good here? Or why didn't we do it back to back? What happened? I remember once we never won the directors' cup at the University of Florida one year, you know, we finished second by 20 points. I can remember saying, what could we, what could I have done better than maybe those 20 points could have been picked up somewhere? I challenged my coaches about that too. But it's not just the coaches, we're all in this thing together. Self-evaluation is a tool for leaders, is always valuable. Sometimes you look in the mirror and you're and that's why a lot of leaders don't like to self-evaluate. But going back to that experience at Hoborough College, as much as I enjoyed whenever we had success, I was always looking for the problem coming somewhere else, trying to find where we weren't as good as we could be. And it becomes a little relentless and a little fatiguing, but also that's how you keep the program at a certain level.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

After all that incredible success you had throughout your career, the national championships, conference championships, the 80s of the year. And if you had that opportunity to talk to your 33-year-old self again, what would you say now?

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Oh, sorry. I would say, Jeremy, you need to put your ego in the closet, you need to bury it. Because your ability to be successful for your organization to be successful is for you to have an incredibly talented and inspired workforce that buy into what you say, but who are smarter than you, so you need to listen to them. Just because one day you're now the AD or going to be an AD didn't make you the smartest guy in the room. This is a collective effort. Any successful organization is a collective effort. I was never afraid to make a decision, but sometimes I always just make them on my own. So I tell my 33-year-old people, you need to slow down a little bit. You need to surround yourself some really quality people. You need to understand what their goals and visions are, and you need to lean into them. Let them help the university become a very good athletic program. At the end of the day, the AD gets all the credit when it's all said and done. And I can tell you right now, and I've said it a thousand times since I retired, without those folks, we have zero success. In fact, Rob, the first major coach I ever hired as athletic director, I've been AD for three or four years. I hired Billy Donovan. And two years, three or four years later, we're playing for the national championship, and we're getting ready to rock and roll there. And because I thought that was my job to go hire all the coaches, and I hired this guy the first time at bat in the majors, I hit a grand slam. I thought I had it all figured out. And so I started hiring all the other coaches myself. And that football because Steve was still there, and we hired a bunch of coaches that were just okay. I just told you a minute ago, I hate being okay. Well, I realized I needed more people in the room to not only push back or come up with different ideas or different candidates. We hired coaches that to combine probably won 20, 20 national championships. So again, that's what I would tell myself. You can't do it by yourself, and it's got to be with people who trust you, and you trust them, and together you're gonna build something great.

Fast and Friendly Five

SPEAKER_00 25:36

All right, Jeremy, we're gonna shift gears here. This next segment I like to call the fast and friendly five. So I'm gonna ask you five quick questions, no long pauses, just some gut answers. All right. Okay. You ready? Uh-huh. All right, number one, your go-to hype artist or song when you need a boost.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

Always the Bruce Springsteen.

SPEAKER_00 25:57

The boss.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

You got a song in there for the boss?

SPEAKER_01 26:02

Oh, too many, too name. But yeah, I saw Bruce Springs team for the first time when I was a sophomore in college in 1972, and I walked out of there going, that guy just changed my life. I've probably seen him 35, 40 times since then. I'm a big music fan, so I've seen a bunch of different artists, but the go-to guy will always be the boss.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

Awesome. Number two, your go-to movie when you need inspiration.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

I would probably say The Darkest Hour about Winston Churchill, because if you watch that, now it's not amazing the type of leader he was. But I remember I was just so struck by one time he was in an room, he was so emotional, he was by himself because the pressure on him was incredible. And there's one of the greatest leaders of all time, and just shows you that leadership can be tough, lonely. But what did he do? He didn't sit there and feel sorry for himself. He walked out of the room and obviously changed the world. But it really struck me that when I watched that movie, that it's just it's the part of leadership. You got to deal with it. And again, nobody dealt it with it better. He did.

SPEAKER_00 27:02

All right, number three, one or two books that have impacted who you are.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

Good to Great by Jim Collins. Loved it. You mentioned a little bit earlier, but always helped me talk about having the right people on the bus and making sure they're in the right seats. And candidly, although it's difficult conversations, if they don't belong to the bus, you got to get them off the bus. And those are tough conversations, but again, our job is to do what's right for the organization. And I wanted to do what was right for Florida. And Colin Powell, I have great respect for the military. He wrote a book called The Leadership Call Secrets of Colin Powell. It's really good. It's easy to read, but so many situations I felt were applicable. And obviously, not Apples when he's doing all what he dealt with, soldiers and wars and battles, and I'm just trying to run an athletic program. The lessons helped. And so I used to keep that book next to my desk. And every once in a while I'd be doing a situation wondering how would Colin Powell would do with this.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

All right, number four, best leadership advice you've ever received.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

Yeah, I got it early when I got a ton of, you know, I always get a ton of advice, especially in college athletics. But I don't know. Somebody wrote me a letter when I got hired as AD at Florida, and he simply said, Jeremy, I cannot give you the recipe for success, but I will give you the recipe for failure, and that's trying to please everybody. A lot of times people get in a leadership chair and they want to think it's a popularity contest because nobody likes to be criticized. Nobody likes people not to like them. But you can't be in a chair without um disappointing people disagreeing with you, possibly friendships leaving you. But you gotta do what's right for the organization, and it can't be trying to please people. And I never forgot that.

SPEAKER_00 28:33

All right, last question: Who's the best leader who is kind and why?

SPEAKER_01 28:40

Yeah, the gentleman who started Southwest Airlines as CEO. And I remember reading the article early on in my career, he wrote that he wanted Southwest to be an organization that was known as gentle and kind. And I remember reading that, going, well, you know, obviously, he didn't get in the business not to make money. He didn't get in the business not to have one of the top airlines in the country. He didn't get in the business without having to deal with all his employees, but gentle and kind, it really struck me. And you have to make tough decisions in this business. You have to take somebody's dream away by making a change. You have to criticize somebody who's not performing the way you want them to be. You have to disappoint somebody that didn't get the promotion they wanted. All those things. It's not on all peaches and cream. But there is a way to do that, being kind and gentle. And it's called having a heart. I think leadership have heart. I think authenticity, put yourself in their shoes. It's behind closed doors. It's not emails, it's not text messages, it's not voice messages, it's looking somebody in the face and being treated the way you'd want to be. I'd like to tell you, I'm the most level-headed guy in the world. No, I'm a competitor type A, can get hot-headed sometime. And every time I do, I'm going, Jimmy, what did you do? There's no way to treat people. People respond to kindness, even when you have to give them a difficult message. And kindness needs to be something that you internalize and make it a conscious effort to be part of your leadership style, which I had to do.

SPEAKER_00 30:03

That's the core of competitive kindness that we strive to build championships every day, but how we treat people matters. You just explained it in an excellent way. Thank you, Jeremy.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

Welcome, Rob.

Closing Comments- Advice to Leaders

SPEAKER_00 30:16

So we're going to close up now, but before we do, there are a lot of listeners here, not only in college athletics, but who are in business in many countries and several cities throughout our country. What advice would you offer to them how to lead the right way?

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Again, another great question. First of all, to lead in the right way, you're trying to take a group of people, one person, 100 people, 200 people, trying to get them all in the organization from point A to point B to point C. I think a lot of people become leaders. They think it's about them. You lead people by not having an ego. You lead people to understand the organization you work for is paramount. Every decision you make has to be for the organization. Okay. And then you have to walk the talks, everything you talk about, you have to do yourself. I think to be an effective leader in this day and age, people really want to know their phone, somebody who has the moral compass pointing up north. And it goes back to walking the talk. You lead people by being authentic. Just be a real person. I go back to what I said earlier. It's because one day Jeremy Foley was a senior social AD, and the next day he's the A D. Doesn't make me any smarter. Doesn't make me any more valuable, more important, more sophisticated. No, I'm still just part of the deal. Yes, I have to make decisions. Yes, I have to do certain things that are expected of being in the chair. I have to set the tone and have plans for how we're going to do things, et cetera. But again, I think people respond to authentic leadership. What does that mean? I'll give you a great story. I called Billy Donovan once because there was some horror show going on in college basketball somewhere, some other program. Billy came out here won, and Billy treated people the right way. He talked about a true North. He's the best I've ever been around. But I called him, I said, Billy, I want to thank you for the way you run your program. And I said, I'm not talking about the wins and losses of the champion. I'm talking about the way you run it, how you treat people. He goes, Jeremy, I appreciate the call, but you just need to know, I just try to be normal. Okay. And I'm gonna rang on the phone going, yes, that's what we're talking about here. Normal people treat people right, unlike me in my early days, right? Normal people say thank you. Normal people can get angry without cussing, yelling, screaming at people. Normal people can deliver a tough message with heart and kindness, looking people in the face and putting themselves in that person's shoes by being very apathetic. So you have to be normal people because again, it's not how the outside world sees you. It's how the people inside, the people that you are leaving see you. A lot of leaders don't like to admit when they made a mistake. For some reason, it's really hard. We all make mistakes, we all made talent ready today. All right. And if I'm the AD in Florida, if I'm the boss anywhere, and there's a mistake made in the organization and the fingers get pointed, and nobody's willing to raise their hand, that's not authentic leadership. Everybody in the organization knows who made a mistake. Raise your hand, admit to it, commit to fixing it, and go on, right? So just again, be a normal dude. If you made a mistake, hold up to it, be transparent. Obviously, integrity, honesty. When you tell somebody something, it needs to be the truth. Again, I'm a big believer. A lot of people know, live in a gray area. Gray is not quite dishonest, not quite, that's a gray. I think it's always dangerous to live in the gray area. Honesty and integrity is black and white. It's pretty simple. And if you live there, and the people you work with you live there, that's a good sign for your organization. So all those traits are important. Just be a regular person and understand that this isn't easy. I think you have to spend time developing your leadership style. You have to come up with your core values that you're going to live by. And you gotta understand that also about this leadership journey. It's not like you built a stadium. We built a number of stadiums. I was at Florida, and you design it, you start it, you finish it, you open it, and life goes on. That stadium is done. Leadership is never done. You're never putting your feet up at night going, that part of my job is over, and I'm gonna go on the next thing. No, you'll deal with it from the day you get in the chair to the day you leave the chair. You gotta be willing to work at it every single day, and you gotta understand that any chance for success you have, because you have a bunch of inspired people working around you.

SPEAKER_00 34:37

Incredible. Jeremy, thank you so much for opening your heart and sharing the true humble champion and how people can lead the right way. Loved having you on the Competitive Kindness Podcast. Thank you, Jeremy.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

Thank you, Rob. I really enjoyed it and appreciate what you're doing. Leadership and kindness could be done. I appreciate you, and again, thank you for the opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

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.