Vince Lombardi as a Leader

Vince Lombardi once stated, “Leaders aren’t born, that are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work” (Belliotti, 2008, p.8). Lombardi was a very successful National Football League coach. He defines a true leader in the coaching world through his hard work and dedication to making each individual player and the team as a whole better through transformational leadership.
According to Peter G. Northouse, a leader is someone that has the ability to inspire and create change that allows others to follow them. They display confidence, determination, intelligence, integrity and sociability (2010, p.5-21). These concepts that are relevant in the workplace are also the same in sports. As a …show more content…

Davis said that Lombardi truly cared about achieving the goal, and that no one worked harder than him towards achieving that goal. He also displayed an incredible amount of intelligence about the game of football; Lombardi knew every team and their strengths and weakness and had a plan to succeed. Lombardi also believed in his team so much that they began to believe in themselves and he knew how to motivate each of his players in different individual ways. And lastly, Davis says that Lombardi always kept the bar high; he raised the pride of his team as they rose to the challenges. (Manning & Curtis, 2003, p.25)
The second factor of inspirational motivation describes leaders that inspire and motivate followers by providing them with meaning and challenges that work towards the shared vision of an organization. In the book, The Art of Leadership, former player Willie Davis explains how Lombardi motivated the players on the team when he played for him. Davis says that Lombardi would either get the team so mad that they wanted to prove something or they would fear being the one guy that did not pull his weight. For example, when the Packers had already clinched the divisional title one year they still had one more game to play, but that the game really didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Davis said that Lombardi sat in the locker room trembling and told the team how much he wanted to be in their shoes and play the game for them because this game was