Back when I was fighting crime, an elder, wise and experienced sergeant explained his view on the idea of self-promoting. You know, that which we do to bring ourselves into the spot light so as to be looked upon favorably for the furtherance of our careers. Put simply, he said, “When you become a sergeant, you stop promoting yourself and start promoting your men.”

As a beat officer you’re out there doing the job and loving most every minute of it. However, after a while you might want to experience something more than patrol. So, you start putting in for special assignments or task forces. You get one or two here and there and five or seven years down the road you think you want to be a supervisor, a sergeant. The process is the same, you go before a board and list your accomplishments, you tell them about yourself and why you should get the job or the promotion. Basically, you spend 30 to 40 minutes bragging about yourself. That’s cool, that’s what they want to here.

So, now you have the promotion. You’re a supervisor running a squad. At this point your focus is all about the squad. Making sure the vet’s are looking out for the rooks, insuring that their reports will get cases charged with the D.A. and that squad stats are at expected levels. Yes, cops keep stats, not quotas. Every time one of your guys does a good job it is a reflection of your leadership. Every time your squad leads the department in arrests, recovered stolen vehicles or whatever, it is a positive reflection of you and your leadership. And, when one of your squad promotes or gets a special assignment, it’s noted that he is one of your guys.

The same is true of coaching gentlemen. We all promote ourselves to advance our coaching careers as we move from an assistant line coach, to line coach, to offensive coordinator, to head coach. But, when we get that head coach position how many of us stop the self-promoting and start focusing on our staff? Just like with your players, the key is in recognizing your talent and putting that talent in the place where it can benefit the team the most. Then you coach them on their position, or in the case of a coach, their job. Part of your responsibility as a head coach is the development of your staff. The better your staff, the better your program. The better your program, the more recognition of your program and by association, the more recognition of your own talents. After all, it’s your program, your staff.
Take a look at the programs/staffs of Bill Walsh or Mike Holmgren. Can you count the number of head coaches in the NFL or the NCAA that came out of those coaching staffs? That alone speaks volumes on the leadership they tutored under. And, do you think for one minute either of these great coaches was afraid of their assistants getting some attention? Do you think these coaches feared the promotion of their assistants? What greater compliment than for the teacher’s pupil to become the teacher? The knowledge that this new star, rising on the football horizon, is one of your own. When you become a head coach, you stop promoting yourself and start promoting those around you.