← The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk
The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk
681: Clark Lea (Vanderbilt Football Coach) - Rebuilding a Program, Belief as a Practice, Leading Misfits, Ownership Mentality, and Why Relatedness Is Your Edge
00:38:46
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- [00:01]
Ryan Hawk
Quickly.
- [00:01]
Ryan Hawk (Podcast Host)
Before we get to tonight's episode, I just want to say thank you so much for your support for the announcement of launching my new book the Price of Becoming. It comes out in July, but we're doing a lot of work to help spread the good word prior to launch. I'd love you to be part of my book launch team. There's a lot of pre order bonuses as well as additional things that you can get if you're part of my book launch team. You can learn more about this@learningleader.com we've moved everything to the homepage learningleader.com to pre order the price of becoming as well as take the extra step to be part of my book launch team. Thank you so much for the support pre order the price of becoming be a part of my book launch team. Go to learningleader.com to learn more. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am your host Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com now on to 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 oppone. 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 going to become a pro baseball player, and then ended up transferring twice before walking on as a football player at Vanderbilt. And Clark talks about the importance of sharing 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 imp 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.
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Clark Lee
I've become friends with a guy named Pat Murphy, who's the manager for the Brewers. Oh, and Matt Arnold's their gm. They've become like, kind of professional development partners. I'm going to go see them in Arizona and then I'm going to go to LA and spend day or two there with Chargers, Rams kind of stuff. Yeah, that's cool. Just to fill the cup, you know? Yeah, same. Same stuff.
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Ryan Hawk
So are you. Are you in Harbaugh buddies?
- [03:12]
Clark Lee
So Jesse Menor, okay. It was the defense coordinator. I hired him as D.C. here 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 Notre Dame, Chris o'. Leary.
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Ryan Hawk (Podcast Host)
Oh, my God.
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Clark Lee
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
- [03:47]
Ryan Hawk
guys are everywhere and he's the head coach.
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Clark Lee
It's really cool, man. I'm kind of entering that phase of my career where I'm starting to see kind of the sprouting out of people.
- [03:56]
Ryan Hawk
The tree is real.
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Clark Lee
Like, it's. 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.
- [04:05]
Ryan Hawk
I love it.
- [04:06]
Clark Lee
Yeah.
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Ryan Hawk
Thanks again for having us, dude. This is so cool. I actually went on a college visit here with my. One of my daughters. She's gonna go to Ohio State, but we came here and toured it. We know some of the basketball guys, too. When we got to tour and see everything, it was cool.
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Clark Lee
Where are you living?
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Ryan Hawk
Dayton, Ohio.
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Clark Lee
Okay. Yeah. That's so good, man. Yeah, It's a good place here. The school's taken off, the city's taken off. You know, it's just kind of got 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 Candice Lee, our ad, is phenomenal. Their leadership is kind of open in pathways for us. And it's cool to come to Vanderbilt.
- [04:48]
Ryan Hawk
Now, I was going to say we were talking earlier, I said I would bet of all the places Vanderbilt would be, maybe the hardest to win because of how good the school is. 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.
- [05:14]
Clark Lee
It's nuts. Yeah, that is like, there are really critical partnerships there. First of all, the way the team stitches into campus is so important. We don't go out and recruit, you know, valedictorians. It's not that we don't recruit valedictorians, it's just the makeup of our roster is diverse and they have different backgrounds. 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 tenants 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, it's like a circle, right? And all those roles define who we are. But development in one area is development in all areas. So to come back to the education part of it here, there's an area of established excellence that you become a part of and you belong to as a part of this team. 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 going to survive like you're going to thrive here. 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.
- [07:21]
Ryan Hawk
You don't just flip a switch. That's the funny thing. You go to leadership development stuff and it's supposed to help you at work. And it ends up, because I do some of this, it ends up making you a much better, more present husband and dad. And this idea that, okay, now it's time to be a leader, that's an all the time thing. It feels like this is what you're setting your guys up for, for life, is to be to demand excellence, to have high standards, to get after it, to compete, to win, right, to bounce back from losing, to deal with the tough things. And that leads me to the. When you guys didn't make the playoffs, I remember watching this video and I said it publicly, I need to talk to this guy. I need to talk to this. And 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. We're not. Because every other coach who didn't make it, I mean, crying, they're all about, look at this is not fair, right? And then the one guy, Clark Lee, saying, we are not victims in this process. What was your mindset during when all that went down? You guys didn't make the playoffs, but you were on the cusp once.
- [08:23]
Clark Lee
You, I think as you've done this long enough and I, you know, I'm 44, I'm 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. 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. I, 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 a playoff caliber team, you know, and I, I still believe that, but we did not do enough. And so that press conference came after a team meeting. That team meeting was bowl announcement. And so just like anything, I mean, we don't want to live two ways. The authenticity of this. You need to be able to cut yourself open and reveal yourself. And the players understand exactly what to expect. And then when they hear you talk to the media or talk out in the world, it's the same message. And so driving into work that afternoon, I was thinking about what I needed to hear. You know, having gone through this experience of going out and politicking for our positioning, what is it that I need to hear right now? And it came back to this idea that this is actually exactly where we're supposed to be because there are no mistakes. So once you accept that, you say, okay, so then we're not victimized by this. This is actually something that is meant for us and it's going to deliver us and it's going to drive us further. And then you think about the echo chamber that your team exists in where everyone is telling them and teaching them to be victims, you know, and again, I say that it's just the nature of the world, right? How have you been slighted? And so I just wanted to be really clear when I sit in front of the team that this is the ground we stand on, this is who we are. Let's be really proud of what we accomplished, but let's also acknowledge that we'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 the message of the team. And then I just flipped around and said the same thing in the press conference. And the hope was that it set a tone for us internally. Right. To have our rudder in the water and to be heading in the direction we wanted to go. We didn't cover enough ground to beat a good Iowa team in the bowl game, but I'm still really proud of that group and, and I think there's just a lot to learn from all of it.
- [11:57]
Ryan Hawk
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.
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Ryan Hawk (Podcast Host)
Right.
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Ryan Hawk
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.
- [12:24]
Clark Lee
Yeah.
- [12:24]
Ryan Hawk
Leave and eventually find your way here as a walk on, earn a scholarship as a football player. Now here you are back running the
- [12:32]
Clark Lee
show as the head coach, 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, 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, to, 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 met my wife, you know, where we got married, where my oldest son was born, where my daughter was born, where my youngest was born, the experiences along the way, the highs, the 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 this job in particular. It's been personal evolution. For me, that's allowed for program evolution, meaning 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 major league baseball player. That is what I thought God intended for my impact in the world to be. So like any kid, I was chasing that. And to be honest, what happened to me? I went to Birmingham Southern my first year. It's a really great program. I made great friends there, great head coach. 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 going to get emotional talking about it because it's hard. I see the pain of a 20 year old who has no idea what's going on around them. I had a coach there, Dave Jarvis, who had the courage to sit with me and say, you have one shot at this. I want you to, 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. You run through a wall. So, yeah, 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 coaching career.
- [17:28]
Ryan Hawk
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?
- [17:42]
Clark Lee
So brotherhood is the most overused word. Family's overused. I mean, in weird ways, you know, in sport and you see this. 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 or 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 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.
- [18:44]
Ryan Hawk
And belief is a practice. And I sense this when I've. Again, I've been watching you coach for a while now, and you've been someone I wanted to talk to because it seems like that is the type of coach that I would have wanted to play for when I went to college. And what about this belief that it feels like you. Your players believe because their head coach believes.
- [19:07]
Clark Lee
So this one's been really important to me, the guy who was crazy enough to, you know, I don't know, four years ago, say that we're building the best program in the country? And I think everyone laughed at me except for the people that were here internally. Like, we spent a lot of time on.
- [19:22]
Ryan Hawk
Did you believe that when you said it? I did.
- [19:24]
Clark Lee
Of course. I would not say anything that wasn't.
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Ryan Hawk
Sometimes you say something because you want. It's aspirational. It doesn't mean you're lying. But as a leader, sometimes you see some CEOs or whatever, they'll say something because they want it to be true. They believe it could be true someday. But is it actually now? I don't know. But at the moment, you said this is actually real. This is happening as we speak.
- [19:46]
Clark Lee
Yeah. I think the. 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. To try to speak things into existence that aren't on your heart, you know, and what I. What I'd learned over the course of my career about really good football programs is it does take a lot. You can't do it on your own. There has to be. And I mean, I've learned, 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 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 at here is you have to go beyond the words. And I think belief, again, is a word that's overuse. As the head coach at Vanderbilt, I can't take people into this program that don't believe in the shared vision of what could be. That means I don't spend a lot of time recruiting. I want to be super transparent and reveal who we are, and I want to make sure the person coming in Whether it's a coach, player, staff member, knows how hard this will be and that they agree to it. Now, that forms a powerful covenant. Belief is not something you feel. It's not something you visualize. It's not something you say. It is a practice. So belief will show up in your actions, habits, and behaviors. There's no one that's going to say to you, oh, I don't believe in it, coach, but I can watch you and I'll see the level of belief that you have. Take this and apply it to the individual and say, all these guys want to play in the NFL and they should, you know, and I want to be the best coach to have ever done it. Okay, whatever. I mean, we all have those egos and those aspirations, but what are the things that I'm doing that reveal the level of belief I have as a player, my ability to reach the NFL? How far am I willing to sacrifice? If the belief isn't there, Your tolerance for sacrifice won't be there. You know, you're going to see kind of the base level, the entry fee, and you're going to hope that it happens. When we take belief into a practice, you make it happen. And so I don't need people to tell me, we don't need to be the best at talking trash about, you know, where this thing's at. We need to be the best at actualizing it day in, day out, in the way we work.
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Ryan Hawk
What are some of the things that you sacrifice to hopefully become, like, the greatest who's ever done it?
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Clark Lee
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 and to form meaningful partnerships along the way and 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? You know, I don't have to be bigger, faster, stronger in my role anymore, but I need to suffer. So, you know, what is my, again, tolerance for suffering with respect to getting in the weight room and training, with respect to my eating habits, my social habits, Am I willing to sacrifice? You know, when you get to the point in life where you can do what you want after hours, what you'll notice really quickly is if you spend Too much time socially, in the evening, your morning is compromised. Well, for me. Did you ever water ski?
- [24:32]
Ryan Hawk (Podcast Host)
Yeah.
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Clark Lee
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.
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Ryan Hawk
I'm kind of literally on the edge of my seat because, like, where's he going with this?
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Clark Lee
So literally, this. I don't know, it was like 8 years old or something. I get. You get in. You jump in the water. Yeah. And you put the skis on, and they're like those rubber boots.
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Ryan Hawk
Yeah.
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Clark Lee
Okay. Once you have your skis on, you're buoyant, so you can actually be in a seated position there. They throw the rope in, you grab the handlebar, and they pull the boat out and the line's taut. And then you put your thumb up and they rev the engine, and here you go. And, like, the thing I remember so vividly, my dad saying to me is, make sure before you give the thumbs up that you get your skis up, that if they're parallel or pointed downwards, the image is so clear, like, you're going to go up and over those skis and just be dragged in the wake of the boat. Well, there can be nothing more true about a leader because once I get in the building, my time belongs to everybody else. So I have to have my skis up in the morning. If I'm late at night and drinking and whatever, you know, I'm not going to be able to have that time in the morning to prepare myself to be what I need to be for others. There's 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 us special.
- [26:06]
Ryan Hawk
What's the head body? Head body. What does that stand for?
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Clark Lee
Yeah, so this is Mickey Rourke. So the movie, the Fighter. Yeah, but beyond the movie, like, if you look, go. And I had to go back and look at some of his fights that were represented in the movie, and 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. Head, body, head, body. The sequence is just saying, you're getting your ass kicked. Don't deviate from the plan. Don't forget how we prepare for this or what we plan for. Head, body, head, body. So we use it as a. And as an expression. It's a mantra for us that puts you in the present. It says, no matter what's happened, I'm not going to focus on what's come before. We're not going to forecast. We're going to be right where our feet are, and we're going to 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.
- [27:35]
Ryan Hawk
We were 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 is coach Mike McDonald. He just won the super bowl, and he said two of his primary roles, there's lots of them, but two of his primary roles are chief alignment officer and chief reminding officer. What do you think when you hear that?
- [27:55]
Clark Lee
First of all, Mike's amazing, and I feel grateful to be connected with him in very kind of orbiting ways, But I just. I'm so impressed with what he's done. I saw that that was sent to me, and I think that is so profound and deep and so embodies what these positions are. And we use the spear as a. 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 in particular. One of the things I kind of recognized early 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?
- [28:44]
Ryan Hawk
Yes.
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Clark Lee
Okay. How old are your kids?
- [28:46]
Ryan Hawk
19 to 11.
- [28:49]
Clark Lee
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 is going to be defined by the classroom experience, period. Good teachers make for good experience. Poor teachers make for challenging experiences. For me as the head coach, I can say whatever I want to say. If that is not taken into those tightest echo chambers, the classrooms, the position groups, and reinforced and then driven into behavior, we're going to lose alignment and lose focus as a program. That's a watered down. Now I've got to be really clear 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. You know, 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 in, 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 like everyone walks the same, everyone talks the same, everyone wears the same stuff. And I think we, you know, in our era, we celebrated coaches that had these. It's like the military uniformity is kind of how we grew up with it. Like in the south, it was. Football was part religion, part military, you know, but that's not actually performance. Now we can eliminate distraction by having standards and expectations. But, you know, why do I care about length of hair? Why do I care about whatever, what, 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.
- [31:53]
Ryan Hawk
One of those personalities is your quarterback. And all this stuff's great, but if you don't have a good one of those, it makes it a lot harder. And you know, he's gone now. Going on to the NFL. But what was it like at the beginning of your recruitment or at least the conversations you had with Diego Pavia when he decided to. You guys both decided like, yeah, you're going to come here and potentially be our starting quarterback.
- [32:15]
Clark Lee
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 win championships. And you go back to belief as a practice. I had spent a lot of time trying to convince a lot of people of what was possible at Vanderbilt. And that felt like the first time that someone was meeting me right where I was. And so that set a course for what became just such an amazing relationship. And I learned a lot from him. You know, he has helped me learn how to be myself and not hold it too tight. He has challenged me in ways where I have to really think about what's most important because the world doesn't need a watered down Diego Pavia, you know, and. And when he's at his best, he's being himself. Now it's also important that we have boundaries and that to be 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. What a just amazing. Part of the. The story of this program's growth has been his competitive fire spirit. And maybe most importantly, in the deepest impact made with his ability to make connections, the quiet connections in the locker room.
- [34:06]
Ryan Hawk
And I read that he played a role because you guys are like these scrappy upstarts, right?
- [34:11]
Clark Lee
Gritty.
- [34:11]
Ryan Hawk
But he played a role in getting. Is it the five star who's coming in?
- [34:15]
Clark Lee
Oh, yeah, right.
- [34:16]
Ryan Hawk
And trying to get his potential replacement. That guy's still got to earn the job.
- [34:19]
Clark Lee
Sure.
- [34:19]
Ryan Hawk
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 world doesn't. Now, five Star quarterbacks are saying, I want to go to Vanderbilt when I could go anywhere in the country. I mean, what a journey that is.
- [34:34]
Clark Lee
Yeah, we, 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. And what I mean by that is that choice in and of itself is the acceptance of a challenge. It's the acknowledgement of certain things that are really important, other things that aren't as important. That sounds like a misfit to me. You know, the world will judge the decision based off what could have been other places. The misfit ignores the external and tends to the internal, you know, so as we elevate our people, we don't ever lose our identity. And as long as we're true to who we are, the people we accept in this program will quickly get in lockstep with where we're moving.
- [35:35]
Ryan Hawk
Awesome, coach. I really appreciate it man.
- [35:36]
Clark Lee
This is amazing.
- [35:38]
Ryan Hawk
I appreciate you having me on. This is so much fun. Thank you so much.
- [35:41]
Clark Lee
No, are you kidding me? This is such an honor, man.
- [35:48]
Ryan Hawk (Podcast Host)
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 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 Coyle 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 2 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 slighted. They beat six ranked teams. They had one of the best offenses in the country. Their quarterback, Diego Pavia, finished second in the Heisman voting. The committee could have put them in, but they didn't. And Coach Lee refused the victim narrative because victim mentality, even if it's justified, kills progress. The second you say, ah, they screwed us, you give away your power. You stop asking what you could have done differently. You stop getting better. 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 a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of the Learning Leader show with Coach Clark Lee. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that and you also go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts. Rate the show, hopefully five stars. Subscribe, subscribe to it. Write a thoughtful review. By doing all of that, you are giving me the opportunity to have such cool events like going down to Nashville and talking with Coach 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.
- [38:33]
Clark Lee
Can't wait.