Kneeling before Standing — What Colin Kaepernick Can Teach the NFL and its HR Team About Leadership and Effective Employee Experience Design

Intro: Terence Latimer is a digital marketer and entrepreneur based in Los Angeles. He’s the founder of 360° platform Food Tribe, a startup that works with restaurants and food brands to develop better relationships with foodies.

Terence has 10+ years working with startups on everything from sales development, digital marketing campaigns, to launching new products.

Follow Terence @ kingterentius

Alpha Leadership: Leading From the Back

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned during my 12+ years experience working in startups, is that real leaders lead from behind.

In my humble opinion, too often do startup founders, heads of state and organizational leaders wait to being the process of listening to their employees — until it’s too late.

Leaders are a special breed — individuals who have chosen to admonish the anonymity of following in exchange for the spotlight of leadership.

To have their choices and actions second guessed and scrutinized at all levels.

To embrace self-doubt and insecurities in the pursuit of improving the lives of others.

The best leaders, are those in which leadership is thrust upon them. Individuals who are content with their day to day lives, and whom have had to lead, based on circumstance or due to a void.

In my experience, the leaders who crave leadership, don’t normally work out for the best.

Leading a team means sacrificing your own needs, wants and desires in exchange for the collective good.

At their best, leaders are individuals whom improve the lives of those they’re leading, whether modestly or at scale.

At their worst, leaders are those who take those who they’re responsible for down a path of failure and destruction.

A high stakes game.

No one ever really knows where a future decision or choice is going to lead those that are following.

It’s almost impossible to guess which of our choices and actions are going to work out for the best, or to the detriment of the collective.

Which is why the best leaders have the ability to lead and to follow.

To learn how to maximize the use of dissenting voices while trusting their own instincts and capabilities.

In 2014, Simon Sinek released a book titled, “ Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Do not.”

While I haven’t read the book yet, its been on my “to read” list for quite some time. I’m constantly looking for ways to improve my own skills as a leader, and you should too.

Sinek writes, “…the true price of leadership is the willingness to place the needs of others above your own. Great leaders truly care about those they are privileged to lead and understand that the true cost of the leadership privilege comes at the expense of self-interest.”

Which for many of is, pretty damning .

Too often, leaders take the mantle of leadership due to self-interest — whether its for personal development, financial gain, or something else.

Which is why those leaders who reluctantly take the mantle, are the best.

Those who aren’t interested in leading because there’s nothing in for them.

Sports Meets Politics Meets Business

Leaders who lead to due circumstance — whether through nomination or because no one else will take the helm, indicate future success by their willingness to engage and encourage the use of dissenting opinions for the betterment of the group.

Which is why Roger Goodell and the NFL have some learning to do.

Like many of you, I’m excited about this upcoming NFL season.

If I’m being perfectly honest, the past 3 years have been a challenge for me in terms of choosing whether or not to support.

I’m a fan at the end of it all — But I’m no pacifist.

Outside of player health issues, the NFL has been a political landmine in recent years.

Whether its Donald Trump dumping political fuel onto the fire, or Colin Kaepernick starting a revolution by choosing to take a knee, the game has been polluted (or exposed) for what it is — a direct reflection of societal and cultural issues in America.

The competition of the game is what drives my fandom: reminders of the days playing pop warner football in Pacific Palisades, learning what it takes to go from boy to man.

Sports are great because they teach things like teamwork, leadership, and pushing yourself.

To learn how to win with grace and lose with pride.

So the issues outside of those things, have recently, prevented me from fully embracing the game.

Kaepernick Takes a Stand

While fairly outspoken, I’ve learned over the years to keep my opinions to myself unless I was prepared to defend them.

So like most you sports fans that are out there, I wasn’t too sure how I felt about the current political meets sports climate.

For those of you who are unaware, in 2016, former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick did something which at the time, seemed relatively innocuous: he chose to sit on the bench during the National Anthem of a preseason game.

What many of us didn’t know at the time, was that this with Kaepernick’s version of a protest.

A silent protest to growing reports of police brutality against people of color.

The first two instances of his protest weren’t even reported on by major media outlets.

It wasn’t until the third game of the preseason did it become an issue. An issue which spread like wildfire.

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick said, via NFL.com.

“To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

The outcry was immediate.

Everyone from sports journalists, to players to political incumbents had an opinion.

Opinions ranged from fanatical support to unmitigated hatred — the gamut ran wide.

Players from opposing teams joined in the protest — and the story began to pick up steam.

A generation of players who grew up during the time of intersectionality — influenced by the Information Age and access to technology.

Technology which exposed an underlying truth: sometimes, our system, just isn’t fair.

Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland — stories of black people who didn’t get their fair shake in our justice system.

What’s different between now and other times in history though, is the invention of smartphones.

Employee Experience Design Defined

Powerful devices designed to make connecting with one another easier — social justice warriors had begun capturing those moments of unfairness in real time.

Local stories of police brutality and often times murder, began to amplify — bringing attention to themes that cross borders, boundaries, and hearts.

Employee experience design is defined as, “the application of experience design in order to intentionally design HR products, services, events, and organizational environments with a focus on the quality of the employee experience and organizationally relevant solutions.”

In a nutshell, it means creating opportunities and experience for employees based on the quality of the experience of the employee in conjunction with company wide goals or initiatives.

By focusing on the experience of the employee, organizations have the ability to create a culture which doubles down on what I believe is their most important resource — their people.

If you’ve never worked for an organization in which you felt like your opinion doesn’t matter, you should count yourself lucky.

One of the reasons why I wanted to start my own company was because of the lack of influence I had in the direction of both my career and the path in which the company was going.

Historically, company leadership has come from the top down — with a small executive team focused on identifying goals, strategy, and implementing policy in the hopes that these “trusted” advisors would lead us all to the promised land.

Like Ronald Reagan’s trickle down economic policies of the 1980’s — we’ve seen a failure of leadership in recent years.

Silicon Valley and Wall Street providing the most colorful versions of these failures.

The 99% — as they’re so lovingly called, have proven time and time again that self interest usually rises above the noise of the crowd.

Even the greatest organizations who leveraged a hierarchical approach to leadership have faced their fair share of challenges.

High employee turnover, toxic work environments and class action lawsuits are some of the more recent examples we can look to when analyzing the success (or failures) of Silicon Valley’s elite.

Employee experience design has rises out of both necessity and research.

It turns out, our leaders don’t know everything.

A Difficult Balance: The Art and Science of Leadership

Employees — those individuals on the frontline, responsible for engaging with customers, dealing with vendors and putting together the process of manufacturing and fulfillment, typically know how to do their jobs better than leaders do.

Diving further, research has shown that when employees feel as though their own personal development is a vested interest alongside the development of the company, they typically are more fulfilled, stick around longer, and create more happy and healthy customers.

I think we can all agree being an authority, whether your president, a member of the armed forces, or simply a neighborhood teacher, is not an easy thing.

Leadership, requires you to be held to a certain standard, which might not seem fair.

My thoughts on the matter though, are that leaders are leaders for that precise reason — to provide a public example for what we should be, and what we should not be.

The statistics show that a lot of our police force tries to do the right thing.

The bad apples though, dominant headlines as a result of behavior that we’ve collectively agreed to be appalling.

From an outsider’s perspective, the thing that frightens me most regarding these high profile examples of police brutality against people of color are a few things.

• Perceptions of fear regarding historical (and inaccurate) portrayal of black people
• The fraternity culture which prevents irresponsible people from being held accountable
• The vilification of people whose opinions run counter to yours

As an entrepreneur, I understand the importance of objectivity.

If decisions were based purely on my gut reaction to things, my guess is, I’d fail more often than not.

Data then, becomes paramount to decision making. To be able to look at the numbers and to make informed decisions.

To be fair though, there’s a certain human element required to decision making as well.

It could be instincts, it could be body language, or it could be an person’s ability to read people, but numbers don’t necessarily paint a complete picture.

Like all things, leadership requires both a mastery of an art and a science.

When it comes down to an issue like policing a population, its a high stakes game.

America has more gun violence than just about any other country in the world.

We incarcerate more of our population than ANY other country in the world.

A justice system in which many ways is archaic and corrupt, oftentimes, we ask our local law enforcement to go above and beyond their pay grade — serving as both judge, jury, and executioner.

Whether thats be design, necessity, or what I believe to be a lack of proper resource use, a distrust of law enforcement has remained constant with peoples of color since the days of Jim Crow.

Now, I don’t want to get too far off base, however, I’d be remiss to note that the implications stem from money in politics, and politics as it relates to creating policy.

My thoughts on the matter are that it’s our responsibility as voters, to fight against that distrust by voting out shady politicians and corrupt officials.

To speak out against policies we disagree with, and in some ways, sacrifice ourselves, so that the the next generation of our populace, has it a little bit easier than we did.

Which is why I applaud Colin Kaepernick.

I believe in a lot of ways, he knew his professional sports career was over after making the choice to kneel that day.

POAB

He sacrificed endorsement deals, multimillion dollar contracts, and what was probably a dream of his since childhood, to dismantle (or at least bring attention to) a system of unfairness. A system that we should be appalled at.

Funny enough though, he hasn’t said a word about it since.

Last year, a few weeks before my annual fantasy football draft, I was struggling.

POAB (or Pissed Off And Black) has been one of my favorite mantras this past year.

To remind me of the experiences of my forefathers and to remind me who I am.

And as someone who was pissed off and black, I had a choice to make: was I going to boycott the upcoming NFL season?

Was that the best way to speak out against the collusion which prevented Colin Kaepernick from playing the game?

Should I speak up with my wallet? Or was there another way? I wasn’t sure.

The straw that broke the camel’s back for me, at the time at least, was Kaep’s silence on the matter.

He wasn’t SAYING anything.

Outside of his initial protest, he sat back in silence, not saying anything against a kooky president who sent bizarre tweets his way.

Against billionaires who controlled his financial destiny.

Or in support of the countless players who continued his legacy by joining his cause.

Which pissed me off.

The black political leaders I grew up respecting — Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers were personal heroes because they did the exact opposite: you couldn’t shut those guys up if you paid them.

So while I respected Colin and the beginnings of a political and social movement, in a lot of ways, his message was lost on me due to his lack of leadership on the issue.

So when a friend of mine asked me to join in on a boycott of the NFL — I asked, “Why?”

What was the point? What was the desired effect?

It didn’t seem, at the time at least, that there there was any real answer.

So like many of you, I watched games, I cheered for the players, and I turned off the TV during the commercials.

That was my protest.

I didn’t pay to attend games. I didn’t buy any merchandise.

I kind of sat in the middle, not moving forward, and not moving backward.

A time I suppose, to reflect.

And I wonder, if that was Colin’s desired effect. To allow his actions, and his example, to provide you with the freedom to come to your own conclusions.

To ask yourself, “who am I angry with?” And most importantly, “why?”

The questions you seek answers to are most likely indicative of the work you need to do on yourself.

Your responsibility then, is to seek your own answers and not to have them spoonfed to you.

People: Your Most Important Resource

So while I was ultimately disappointed when last year’s NFL players decided to take what felt like a shadow deal, I was even more impressed this year when I heard players were going to continue the fight.

A few players decided that merely throwing money at the issue wasn’t enough — it was time for the NFL and America, to take a long hard look at itself and reflect on what our values truly are.

The best run companies are companies who value their customers and their workers above all.

Understand your customers and you can create a value proposition that lives far beyond your current customer base.

Understand your employees, and you’ll have customer service representatives who delightfully meet your customers needs.

Using the NFL as an example, if the league understood that their customers and their employees were their greatest resources, I believe they would have made some choices and decisions in a manner which respected both parties.

I previously wrote how today’s millennial viewer are literally changing the way we consume media.

In addition to devices like the smartphone, fans have a new way to engage with their favorite players through channels like social media and in person events.

So while the NFL was busy focusing on television deals and sponsorship opportunities, their fans were growing up without them.

Which was a missed opportunity.

NFL players, at a bare minimum, are fans of the game.

Oftentime these players grew up watching their favorite players, guys like Barry Sanders, Jim Brown and others, and chose to model their game, and their lives, after them.

Which is why its such a shame that Roger Goodell, the NFL board of directors, and the league of owners, have been so reluctant to engage with their players and to ask “why?”

• “Why are you protesting?”
• “Why should we care?”

And most importantly, “how can we support you?”

Instead, they chose to create policies to reinforce the status quote.

Fining players for refusing to stand for the anthem, and threatening to suspend others.

Good employee experience design is about eliminating borders and leading by listening.

What’s Next?: A League in Transition

Poor employee experience design then, is about doing first, and asking questions later.

A toxic environment in the making, and which many have guessed, have started to affect the NFL’s bottom line.

Colin Kaepernick still does not have a job in the NFL.

While his win record, his accomplishments and his athleticism aren’t that of the elite quarterbacks in the league — he certainly was better than anyone the Browns had on their quarterback rotation last year.

If not an NFL starter, the man deserves the #2 job at a bare minimum.

Yet he doesn’t have it.

He’s had to proceed with a collusion lawsuit against the NFL alleging that they are conspiring against him in order to prevent his message from moving forward.

To prevent what they perceive as a threat to what they value: money.

Their actions in my opinion, show that things like player safety and integrity come second to what matters most, keeping the machine alive so that advertisers remain happy and the money keeps pouring in.

What they didn’t count on though, was a changing of values.

Millennial players who grew up believing that shady corporations and those who value the bottom line above all, are no longer welcome in our society.

So when the NFL announced a policy this past offseason which required all players to stand during the national anthem, I was pleased to read an ESPN headline which read, “ Dolphins’ Kenny Stills, Albert Wilson kneel in protest during anthem,” this NFL fan couldn’t have been happier.

A protest to the establishment which said, you can’t silence our voices.

Which is what America needs. Which is what the NFL needs: civic engagement and dissenting voices.

Not to silence with policy and rules. Not to write a check and hope the issue goes away.

But to update their viewpoints.

To understand that the old ways of doing business, just aren’t going to fly anymore.

To understand that their people, the players, their fans, are what’s going to allow them to stay in business.

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Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com on August 16, 2018.