Pats coach talks leadership at BC

New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, who led his team to Super Bowl Championships in 2002 and 2004, spoke about his views on effective leadership, teamwork, and success and answered numerous questions from a standing-room only audience in Power Gym last Tuesday evening.

Pat McQuillan, a professor in the Lynch School of Education, played football and lacrosse with Belichick at Wesleyan University in the early 1970s. McQuillan said that last spring, he and several faculty members in the history department wanted to initiate a speakers' series that was engaging and unusual for college students.

"I wondered if people would want to hear Bill Belichick speak about, obviously, football, and then combine that with leadership and management," said McQuillan.

Belichick did just that when discussing his several pointers for finding success in job searches during and after college. Belichick, a 1975 graduate of Wesleyan, said that students and athletes should pursue a career for the right reasons.

"If you're thinking about job opportunities, I would not take the job that pays more than the other one," said Belichick. "That's the wrong reason to take it. Do something that you really love. If you can find something you love to do, it makes it easier to come to work everyday regardless of what you are getting paid."

The coach said that many people have asked him about the chemistry of his Super Bowl champion teams, especially in the age of free agency. Belichick said he adopted a one-die-all-die philosophy when he worked as a defensive coordinator, where instead of punishing one player for making a mistake, he would punish the entire team for one person's miscue, such as jumping offsides. As a result, his defensive unit would begin to coalesce and help each other out to limit the mistakes.

Belichick recalled a situation in training camp in August 2003, around the eighth or ninth day of camp when the players began to grow tired of getting yelled at, of the coaches, and of practicing in general. He said that if offensive tackle Matt Light could catch three consecutive punts, he would cancel the next day's practice.

"If you ever wanted to see a team come together, that is a good situation to see it," said Belichick. "We put Matt Light out there. Light's trying to catch punts, [wide receiver] Troy Brown is telling him to put his hands here, and [wide receiver] Deion Branch is showing him how the ball spins and where it'll come. You talk about a team coming together over one guy catching punts, that's one of the ways teamwork can help come together."

Belichick's philosophy is each player and coach is accountable for the team's leadership. He looks at leadership as one's attitude and performance on a daily basis. Likewise, Belichick said that not every leader is the star athlete who will stand in front of the team and tell them what to do.

"When a player comes to work in the morning, he is prepared, ready to go, ready to improve as a player, ready to help the team, alert, awake, and has a good attitude," said Belichick. "You couldn't have any more leadership than that. That's what a true leader does, and believe me, some of the best leaders on the New England Patriots would never ever in 100 years stand up in front of the team and say, 'Oh guys, we've got to do this or that.'"

He said that poor leadership emerges from poor preparation, lack of interest, and most of all, from making excuses. A team that lists excuses after a loss is a team that lacks leadership.

"The only thing we care about is the result," said Belichick. "If the result is a function of an excuse then you have no leadership, no team, and no ability to improve because everything is rationalized by something that went wrong."

Belichick seemed to strike a chord with students. Leigh Sutcliffe, a Patriots fan from Wellesley, Mass. and LSOE '06, said she enjoyed the way the head coach related his ideas to a college audience.

"Even though he was talking about football, he spoke really well and related it to issues we could really understand," said Sutcliffe. "He talked about teamwork and leadership really well because in order to be a leader, you don't have to be that guy standing in front of the whole team. For example, in college, you can be a leader without being the leader of a specific club or campus group."

McQuillan said he thought Belichick's hour-long appearance at BC helped his fans to see beyond his image broadcast by the Boston media.

"I thought he just did a really nice job," said McQuillan. "People get this impression from the media that he's really aloof and impersonal. One of the nice things from [Tuesday night] is that people got to see that image is not an actual portrayal of him. Obviously, his job is to win football games. Therefore, he's not going to be forthcoming with the press all the time."

Rob Crane, A&S '06, echoed McQuillan's thoughts.

"People don't really get to hear much from him thorugh the media, so it was a really good opportunity to see him up close," said Crane, a lifelong Patriots fan. "It was great how the fans got to ask him questions that they wanted to ask him."

As for Belichick's views on the Boston media, he said he greatly respects their work and knows that the people covering his team are the best in their profession.

"The Boston media are the top people in the news business," said Belichick. "They're the top people. They cover the NFL because they have risen to that level."

And the current media focus in the NFL deals with Belichick's next greatest test, the NFL draft on April 24 and 25. He compared the annual draft to a college final exam, where preparation becomes the key. With the unpredictability of potential draftees and moving draft choices, the coaches and team personnel have plenty of studying ahead.

"You study all semester for your final exam," said Belichick. "You cram for it the week before. We don't know what questions will be on the test. We don't know who is going to be available but we try to do all our preparation and react to the situation as it comes to us."