We don’t stop playing because we grow old;
we grow old because we stop playing
George Bernard Shaw
The recent Netflix Untold series, Swamp Kings, follows the tenure of Coach Urban Meyers and the Florida Gators. From challenging begins through national championships and disappointing failures.
Coach Meyers had a fantastic record, winning two national championships in four years and everyone thought they would win a third in the 2009 season.
Ultimately, they would come up short and there is plenty to learn from that.
Play
In the early seasons, there was a sense of play. It was very serious and in my experience, many coaches, especially Div 1 coaches might have a hint of psychopath on them.
Meyers would work his players until people he didn’t like quit. This fostered a certain type of individual.
The work was crazy but there was a sense of enjoyment and fun. They were working towards something. There was hunger and optimism.
Fear
In the 2009 season, Coach Meyers talks about not being able to sleep. Constantly worried they might lose.
Players interviewed talked about how they felt they dodged losses rather than won games.
The idea was not to win games, it was trying not to lose them.
They had lost all the fun in what they were doing and they were petrified of losing.
Make It Fun
The goal in all of their seasons was to win the championship, but the process was very different. Running towards something is very different from running away from something.
As Frank Herbert wrote in the Dune book series, “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.”
Your job as a leader is to make it fun. How do you go from fear to play?
Be process-orientated. The outcome will happen because of a number of decisions, some in your control, and some out of your control. If you fixate on the outcome and forget about the process to give yourself a chance at the outcome then you have already lost.
The journey of improvement was the fun part, then they won the championship and the weight of winning changed their enjoyment of the process.
Figure out what you want to happen and make it as easy as possible for your team to improve to achieve that without burdening them with the requirement that they do.
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Luke McMeeken-Ruscoe 
That was a good one Luke, thank you
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Thanks Evan. Everyone gets so serious as if this crisis is any more or less important than the crisis that happened last week which wasn’t actually a crisis at all, just maybe slightly more urgent than everything else. We do way better when we play.
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