When I ask a guest to finish the sentence “wealth is…” I usually hear money, or time, or freedom. Tex McQuilkin went somewhere else. He’s going into his seventeenth year of coaching in a small town, and his answer was the kid who comes back three, four, five, six years later. The strong handshake from dad, the hug from mom, and the kid catching him up on where life has taken him… and then a thank you. He summed it up in three words.
Relationships are everything.
Tex McQuilkin
Tex is the founder of Captains and Coaches. He builds what he calls social emotional leadership in teen and college athletes, and in the coaches who lead them. And the reason I wanted him on What Lasts has very little to do with sports.
The plays are the easy part
Every business owner I’ve ever sat across from knows the line Tex used about coaching.
…programs, plays, all that stuff is easy. People are hard.
Tex McQuilkin
I’ve heard the same thing in ministry and I’ve heard it in business. It would all be easy if it wasn’t for the people. The strategy is the easy part. The plan, the structure, the playbook… you can hire people for all of that. The hard part is the people across the table understanding each other well enough to actually run it.
That’s true on a lacrosse field. It’s just as true in a family that’s building something.
Are you modeling what you defined?
Tex teaches leadership the same way he teaches movement in the weight room. Define it, model it, shape it, reinforce it. And the question he put to every leader listening was whether you’re actually modeling the definitions you set for your team, your company or your family. Because anybody who has kids knows they’ll turn it around on you the first chance they get.
Here’s what hit me. Most families never get to the first step. Nobody sat down and defined who they are, what they value, how they handle a hard conversation… so there’s nothing to model and nothing to reinforce. The kids learn it anyway. They learn it by watching. Whatever the parents do when the money gets tight or the business takes a hit becomes the definition, whether anybody chose it or not.
A bad guy, or a guy who sometimes does bad things
A few years back I had the opportunity to hang out with Jerry Jones during a draft. He said there’s a difference between a bad guy and a guy who sometimes does bad things. He was looking for upside potential and a high motor, and when he brings somebody in, he’s navigating whether they’ve ever had anybody who could speak into their life.
Tex lives that difference every season. He’s very against coaches shaming kids, and he put the difference in two sentences.
Guilt is like, man, I made a mistake. Shame is I am a mistake.
Tex McQuilkin
Shame traps a kid on the wrong decision. Tex walks them back to the fork in the road where the decision got made, so the next time they’re there they know exactly how it felt and who it affected. I wrote more about what that means for families in a separate post.
Coach needs a coach
When I asked how a leader forgives themselves for the mistakes they’ve already made, in the locker room or the board meeting or at home with their kids, Tex’s answer was compassion. And then he said something every business owner needs to hear.
Coach needs a coach.
Tex McQuilkin
The person at the top of the household, the business or the team is usually the one with nobody pouring into them. Nobody sees their own blind spots… that’s how blind spots work. Somebody outside has to be able to see what you can’t.
Tex has spent seventeen years being that person for kids who needed one. What he’s built shows up years later in a garage weight room full of former players, and in a young man who had real conflict with the team in high school and came back to coach beside him.
That’s what lasts. The plays are easy… the people are the work.
Find Tex and his work at captainsandcoaches.com. This episode was recorded when the show was called F’d Up Wealth… Faith, Family, Financial freedom and Fun.