Tony Dungy | Tips for Life, Teamwork and Success | Positive University

[Music] hey Cody thanks so much for being with me hey John now this is gonna be great I'm really looking forward to it so this is positive University we talk about ways to stay positive I was curious how do you stay positive I think to me John it came from my mother and she always used to talk about life being a movie and you don't know how the movies gonna end you have to wait and see how it plays out you can take a photograph at any point in time it can look great or it can look terrible but she always used to encourage does hey we're taking a snapshot and it might not be the best right now I'm going to be exactly what you want but let the movie play out don't get too concerned that this photo is going to define your life and so when you go into a particular challenge in that moment is that the perspective that you have it really is that it's just a single moment it's not going to define you if it's great if it ends up being a Super Bowl win enjoy it but know that you still have more life to live if it's a disappointment don't let it knock you down don't let it stop your path because you still got a long ways to go and you don't know what's going to happen I think that's the great thing about sports that's what sports teaches you some of our best victories we played the New England Patriots to get to Super Bowl 41 we were only ahead one minute in the whole game but it was the last minute and that you know we look back on and wow what a great game we don't even tell people we were behind for 59 minutes great so you have a new book coming out with Nathan Whitaker it's called the soul of a team talk about that book and why it's so important yeah Tyndale came to us and they wanted to do something on teamwork and there's a lot of things out about how to put together their winning team whether it's an athletic team a business team a school a family and so we thought you know we could use some of the lessons we've learned from the Athletics some of the lessons from the Bible kind of tailor them together and show people this is how you put together a winning team and so it's I think it's going to be great and I would give some great examples I'd call it the soul of a team you know we kind of were coming up with anachronism trying to let people know what it's all about and so being selfless being one being United and then the L is having a life purpose bigger than the team itself and so that kind of lets people understand if you want to put together a winning team you've got to have something that connects everyone the Eagles we know when the Super Bowl and a lot of people don't know that they had a really strong bond of faith a lot of those guys were believers and they believed together some guys came to faith on that team can you talk about that and how important is that is that what connected 19 it is what connected that team and it was tremendous I was actually I had the privilege of being there for two weeks for NBC we were leading up to our Super Bowl broadcast so I was following the NFC I watched them in their first playoff game and then in the championship game and getting to be around those guys and they had something a bond that had brought them together that allowed them to play the some was greater than the combination of the parts and I you know in our broadcast I predicted they were gonna win and everybody Harrison especially my partner oh you're right there's no way they can beat the Patriots they're not talented enough but it was more than Talent you saw this energy that's coming together and it really was built around their Christian bond you what makes a team want to fight for each other you know there can be any number of things but it takes that one thing and as a head coach or a leader that's what you want to bring into it we've got to incorporate something that captures the imagination and energy of everybody and sometimes it's their goal of doing something for the city and your fans sometimes it's an individual person you can get a player injured and if everybody says gosh we've got to win for him but usually there's something that ties everybody together that is even more than just your individual goals and and for them and I think it was their relationship with Christ and the fact that they wanted to be able to go after the season was over and say here's the reason we were so successful we had this common bond looking out for each other playing for each other but doing it for more than just ourselves doing it for Christ's love that does your book the soul of a team does it share how to prescription is it a is it affable as its stories from your experiences describe the book a little bit it is we kind of talked about it and said you know if we it's hard to do it in a kind of lifelike fashion because there's some stories that you just don't want to tell it wouldn't put people in good light but if we used it as kind of a fictitious story with some things that you might recognize this that way we could do it tell the good and the bad the positives what to do and things to avoid so yeah it is a very much prescription base if you want to build a winning team here's five things you need to do here's five things you need to avoid that's awesome so I love to ask people the Triple H Hero hardship highlight so who's one of your heroes on your journey through life I think my biggest heroes were actually my parents growing up we were born I was born a little small industrial town in Michigan Jackson Michigan my mom and dad were school teachers and their view of life was who can we help and I think that's why they wanted to go into teaching they would get thousands of young people that they could help on their journey and my dad grew up in the depression he grew up in the segregation era fought in World War two came back too and got his degree and went to Washington DC because he wanted to teach in segregated schools he wanted to give kids an opportunity that weren't getting the best opportunity he wanted to help them my mom taught English but she taught Shakespeare and public speaking because she wanted to have access to everybody in the school and she didn't want it to be a situation where you had to get a certain grade if you wanted to learn about Shakespeare or you wanted to take a speech class you could take it from her and I still get letters from people today tell me hey your mom helped me this way your dad did this gave me confidence that I can learn science and they were just special and their whole thing that they passed on to us their job as teachers they felt like was to help all their students get a's and so when i got into coaching that became my kind of mantra i want to help all my players become all pros and if you look at it that way that you're helping someone as opposed that you're the boss or you're in charge it gives you a completely different attitude and because of that they were they were my heroes i love that my son is 18 he's gonna college next year will you like that as an 18 year old were you thinking that way as an 18 year old you know slowly I was getting it from my mom and dad it probably didn't come across to me until later on when I started coaching but very much I played quarterback in high school in college and I kind of felt like that was my job to set everybody else up to make my teammates better to help them play better and I did get that from my parents and people don't know you an incredible basketball player as well that was recruiting I like basketball John that was that was my sport that's what I wanted to do and the football really came later but I just enjoyed sports my dad gave me that love he took me to games he gave me that opportunity to kind of explore different sports and be around him and I loved him for that so what was it defining moment in your life it's a hardship that you faced that how'd you become who you are today my biggest hardship I went probably 20 years in life with out many disappointments wanted to play sports I was got a scholarship to Minnesota I got a chance to play four years at quarterback at a Big Ten school we you know never won state championships or Big Ten championships but I was always doing well and enjoying it at the end of my senior year I thought I was going to get drafted and play quarterback in the NFL and I didn't get selected in the draft kind of you know right where we are now last week's NFL Draft brings I'm sitting there waiting waiting waiting the phone never rang and I thought my career was over and it was very very disappointing I remember walking around campus and saying lord I just don't understand this how could this happen to me how could I not get paid but the next day the Pittsburgh Steelers called and they said we don't want you to play quarterback but we'd like you to come and play defensive back for us it was disappointing because I had trained so long to be a quarterback but I said I want to play with the best so I'm gonna go there and see what happens and it was really God looking out for me I went there spent 10 years with Chuck know who I think was the most fantastic coach in NFL history I got around some Christian athletes we had a ton of strong Christian believers on that team learn how to be a championship team but learn more about being a man and growing up and it was just the perfect situation for me I didn't know it at the time but God was training me to be a coach that's powerful what did you learn about accepting your role on the defense rather than being a quarterback you know I had to learn that all of a sudden I wasn't the focal point I wasn't the best player but I learned it's kind of what I talked about in the book that the goal once I got to Pittsburgh was to help the team win it wasn't about what I could do with the accolades I was gonna get I was just a small part of this big machine that was trying to win a Super Bowl and it was fun it was awesome to know that if we had this goal every day when I came to practice it wasn't just me getting better I've got to do my role and do my part to help us win a Super Bowl and it was fantastic at that point did you everything you'd be this hall-of-famer never did I was the 47th guy as a matter of fact I can remember the last cuts my rookie year and I'm sitting to my hotel room waiting for the phone to ring for them to tell me to come over and turn in my uniform and my playbook and it didn't ring and I went back to work on Monday and like I'm still on the team my uniform still in the locker and it was it was just sensational but I always felt I was going to be kind of a utility man bit part player I did end up getting traded two years later getting cut and just thinking well you know I had a fun career I got a Super Bowl ring but that was the end of it and then coach Noah called me back and said I'd love to have you on our staff I think you've got a way to connect with players you've got a knowledge of the game I think you'd be a good coach and then serving 15 years as a as an NFL assistant coach climbing the ladder feeling like I'm learning things but I could really put something together if I ever got a chance but didn't seem like that chance was going to come getting to Tampa been here six years and turning them into a playoff caliber team but then getting fired so you had these disappointments and you're never sure how it's going to turn out but again it was just the Lord's plan to to move me to Indianapolis and that Super Bowl win and then one of the interesting things the the feature writer for the Tampa Tribune Martin fennely he called me after I was selected to the Hall of Fame and he said I'd love to do a story on you the last story I did was 15 years ago when you got fired and so from being prior to the Hall of Fame just shows you how the Lord takes care of it's amazing and when you were firing you ever imagine that you would be winning a Super Bowl didn't think that was gonna be the case I was wondering you know what is God trying to show me in this am I supposed to stay here in Tampa but get in another line of work another Avenue maybe it's ministry different thing or do I continue on in this football career and where is that going to be Jim Irsay the owner the Colts called me a couple of days later and he said I want you to be our coach we've got to connect with the fans we want to win no question about it but we've got to build a fan base we've got to connect with the community I think you're the perfect person to lead our team and that just hit me so hard that was exactly what I wanted to do my wife and I said this is the place and we had a beautiful seven years there a lot of wins a Super Bowl some fantastic times and something I could have never predicted the amazing journey I know it's time to play the what if game but if you were playing today would you have been a quarterback today I think so when I played that the creative guys the smaller guys there really wasn't a market for that and now I look and see what Russell Wilson Baker Mayfield now is the first pick in the draft 5.11 which was my size and people were saying oh you're too small you're too short to play I think we've got a better idea how to utilize those players so maybe I would have gotten a chance to play quarterback but it may not have turned out this way exactly God has a plan so what's what's one of your your highlights that you've had on your drain oh there have been many but which one that stands out huh gosh a highlight obviously went in the Super Bowl standing on that victory podium looking out and seeing all of our fans celebrate our players with their families and their kids and saying you know what this wasn't just a win for us not just the 53 guys in the locker room this was a win for the city of Indianapolis for our organization for our fans it was just a tremendous feeling that was one of the highlights of my career I think my other highlight was standing in front of my first team in Tampa and saying men I'm here I'm your new coach I'm here to help you win a Super Bowl but more than that we want to be good citizens we want to transform the city of Tampa and then looking back and seeing guys like Warrick Dunn who built homes for single moms and helped them get started Derrick Brooks has a foundation where he's now got to charter high school and help so many kids move on in life and go to college and to see that those guys really did hear what I was saying and they took the challenge of it's more than just winning we've got to contribute to the community and I think that's a highlight also and two big highlight what some what a success means you I know you're really being about significance more than success so what does success mean to you you know I tell our player I used to tell my players all the time success to me is doing everything you can do with the skills and the gifts God gives you so if God gives you this much and you maximize it then to me you're being successful you can do a ton of things but maybe you didn't do everything that God would have allowed you to do is that really success no you just wrote on someone else's coattails you did a lot of things but you weren't really as successful as you should have been it seems like in the past a lot of guys weren't very vocal about their their faith but more more players and coaches are more vocal what do you think about that I think it's awesome as I said we had a strong group of Christian Athletes on the Steelers and not many people know that when I tell those stories people say Oh Pittsburgh Steelers a Steel Curtain I didn't know that and we had a ton of guys like that I don't think the media really went after that side of the story too much we probably weren't as vocal but I think what happened Reggie White really made it okay to speak about your faith and say you know what I'm a great player and I can speak about Jesus Christ and I can do it in a way that is not gonna turn people off it's gonna just be telling Who I am and when that happened I think that gave people more boldness he gave the media more of a sense of hey we can accept this we can look at the other side of Reggie White not just the player but the person and I think since then in the last 10 or 12 years it really has given guys the okay to say you know what I am going to talk about my faith and I am going to be bold well you were one of my heroes and the Steelers where my team actually I rooted for you I remember going to the Jets game I lived in New York made up a sign the Steelers and Noll will win the Superbowl sign that I made go into that game so our last question Tony what do you excited about going forward in the future I'm really my wife and I are really just trying to figure out where does the Lord have us what can we do to help people and make an impact in this kind of later season in my life I've had a chance to mentor young athletes for 30 years and I did that and that was fun how can I now step out of that athletic realm and help young people whether they're athletes are not help them grow help them look at you know how can they chase their dreams but keep the Lord first and know that you know that has to be the biggest part of the team that you're on so I'm looking forward to that I've had a lot of chances to to speak to people in the last couple of years and I'm hoping to do even more of it I need to be really busy managing your son Justin's broadcasting career doing that what was that like to see him do all these interviews during the Superbowl he did an incredible job got a ton of media attention but it was well deserved because he was better than a lot of the pros it was so unbelievable because he's always been into sports and and since I started broadcasting that's given him an opportunity to just say what about this what about that if I could meet this guy or whatever so he got to spend a lot of time around the Eagles he got to go to the Super Bowl he interviewed Justin Timberlake for the halftime show he interviewed the Commissioner all these players and he had a wonderful time but I was able to take him in the locker room after the Eagles won and we went to see Nick Foles and Carson Wentz and they were actually in the training room just off to the side and they were kind of at a prayer service and just talking about how wonderful this was going to be to be able to share Christ with people who were looking at them as Super Bowl champions and so for him to see that and in the midst of everything all the fun he had broadcasting all the attention he got but to see these Eagles players say you know what the most important thing was we did this the right way we did it for the Lord it was pretty special Tony Dungy thank you so much you're a blessing to the world and I really appreciate you spending time with me today hey John thank you for having me on the podcast [Music]

Channel: Jon Gordon

Views: 7,737

Keywords: tony dungy, jon gordon, positive university, positive u, podcast, jon gordon podcast, positive u podcast, leadership podcast, teamwork, life tips, success, adversity, nfl

Id: drTXH13xNPA

Length: 19min 25sec (1165 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 21 2018