Evan Burk Brings a Fresh Viewpoint to Creating Connection and Leading Millennials
Watch Evan Burk’s workshop presentation “Creating Connection: How to Lead and Motivate Millennials”
This is an interview with WinningEQ founder Marc Stcherbina leading up to Evan Burk’s presentation at the LA Work Summit on January 23, 2020
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Marc Stcherbina sits down with speaker, author, and former NFL coach Evan Burk to discuss the changing face of business leadership, why the younger generation are looking for connection above all else, and how leaders can best create it.
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The Parallels between Coaching Athletes and Coaching Business Executives
Marc Stcherbina: Evan you spent 12 years as a football coach at the highest levels of College and NFL, what are some of the parallels between coaching athletes and coaching business executives?
Evan Burk: Both coaches and executives are operating in what I call the high-performance business. The same issues and challenges that every sports team is facing are real problems that every business is facing as well. Challenges such as getting everyone aligned to the vision of the organization, dealing with limited resources, or developing resiliency as individuals and as a team. These are all real issues both business executives and coaches deal with every day in relation to their teams. If you run a professional or college sports team, in particular with football because there are so many more people involved, these are all mini-organizations with sometimes 50 to over a 100 people involved in the day-to-day activities of the team. That a lot of moving parts, a lot of egos, and lot of potential for something to go wrong, just the same as running any business.
There is also a lot pressure involved. The goal of any for-profit business is to make money, and there are obvious pressures inherent with that in terms of sales and operations. If you struggle to remain profitable as a business or exceed expectations of the shareholders, the executives are going to be replaced - plain and simple. Coaching athletes is the exact same at the higher levels of competition. This is the high performance business. You are going to be asked to perform at a high level in the critical moments of the game. If an athlete can’t perform in those moments, a coach is going to replace them, or that coach is going to be replaced.
I have been fortunate to work with a lot of leaders in football, and I am absolutely convinced that the very best coaches I’ve had the good fortune to work with could easily transition to running a business, because at the end of the day you are dealing with people.
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Transitioning from Football to Working with the Leaders of Professional Esports Teams
MS: You have now transitioned to working with teams and Managers in the e-sports industry, how is the experience for you as a coach?
It’s both exciting and challenging, and I love it. It is exciting because it is a relatively new industry and it is certainly an exciting time for the industry in terms of the growth that it has experienced over the last 4-5 years. I also really like working with young leaders. I have an interesting path where my whole career, since I started coaching at 19, has been dealing with young leaders, so I feel very comfortable there and it is work that excites me.
At the same time, dealing with esports coaches and athletes requires a completely different set of leadership skills than it does working and coaching with athletes from traditional sports, and especially football. Typically, football players are very assertive and boisterous personalities. They are used to being challenged and yelled at, and being coached hard. Esports is different. Most athletes and coaches will not respond the same way as they do in traditional sports, so I am continuing to learn and develop my own leadership skills with how to best relate and motivate them, and what I found is authentically connecting with them, and connecting them to the work they are doing is what has been most successful.
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Motivating Millennials and Understanding their Worldview
MS: The nature of e-sports seems to have you working with the younger age range of the Millennial population, how do they see the World and what motivates them?
Esports does tend to skew to lower ages in terms of other professional sports, and that has been an interesting challenge to address in my work. I think young people today, and this applies outside of esports as well, are media-savvy, are extremely comfortable with muli-tasking, and place an incredible value on authenticity. I know that last part sounds counter-intuitive for a generation that grew up with social media and the internet where nothing is as it seems, but that may also lend itself to why younger people in today’s world are looking for something real.
In terms of motivation, I believe it is all about connection: connection to their job, the people, the boss, the mission of the organization. I think we all desire that feeling of connection in whatever we are doing. For younger people, this connection is even more important to their overall satisfaction and drive to succeed. They want to a leader they can relate to, who is human and authentic. And I believe they also want to feel like they are making in difference in their work and that they feel connected to a greater purpose.
As a leadership coach, I tell the executives and teams I work with that this is not easy. You have to put the work in as a leader. In today’s world, younger people do not feel the same sense of loyalty to organizations as previous generations, so it is vital that leaders understand they need to spend the time to connect to the younger team members. This starts with actually having real conversations and getting to know people. I know that sounds simple, but it’s surprising how inconsistent this is among the teams I've worked with. Once your people buy into you, they will buy into your systems and your way of doing things. But it all starts with that connection on a human level.
Working with Emerging Leaders to Elevate their Leadership Skills
MS: You work with many young business owners and managers, some still in their early twenties, what do you experience as some of the gaps in their leadership skills?
Everyone has their own personality and style as a leader, so when I work with leaders I want to meet them where they are in their leadership journey, and chart a path for ongoing skill development and improvement. I think this is certainly an area that young leaders struggle with. Today’s world is incredibly fast moving and everyone wants things to happen fast, but that is not how success happens. You have to work at it. You have to have patience. People love to point to people’s success and think it just happens, but fail to focus on the incredible work it took for that person to be successful. I don’t care who it is, it takes lots of hard work to be successful, and that is something I think young people don’t realize right now.
Another area is just having a resilient mindset. Having the ability to focus on one thing and not let anything distract you from the task at hand. This is a multi-tasking generation. They are very aware of what is being said on social media about them, and I think a lot of them struggle because they are too sensitive, and because of this, they tend to overreact each failure. Failure is part of life. Everyone fails, but the true test of great performers and teams is the ability to bounce back, learn from your setbacks, and ultimately thrive in the inevitable adversity each of us faces every day.
I’m really big on celebrating the small wins. It is one of the primary focuses in my work with teams and young leaders. Creating a culture of the small win is so important because you have to build that foundation, for both yourself and your team. It may have been just one practice, or even just one technique we've been practicing, but regardless, that a small win, a slight edge we are gaining on our competition. I always tell the teams I work with, “You can not win a championship today. You can only have a great practice today.” Once teams understand that success is the accumulation of all those small wins, when you have teams fully focused on the process, that is when you can really start to build a high-performance culture.
Sharing a Fresh Perspective on Leadership and the Value of Connection in Building a Winning Team Culture
MS: It is an honor to have you as a speaker at the LA Workplace Summit Evan, how does the event align with your personal and global vision?
It is certainly an honor to be included! To be able to share the stage with this group of impactful leaders is a privilege for me, and I appreciate you having me at this event.
The LA Workplace Summit is really an extension of the conversations you and I have been having for a long time about how interchangeable the lessons from our athletic careers are to audiences. The skills needed to run any sports team are directly transferable to running a business. I hope to bring a fresh perspective on leadership and dealing with your team, particularly about how to connect to people, connect them to their work, and connect everyone to an overall vision.
