Have you ever heard of Reggie Rivers? I suspect you are most likely to be familiar with that name if you are a Broncos fan. Reggie was the keynote speaker at a conference that a number of us are attending in Denver. I must say, he gave the best keynote I've heard in probably the last 12 months. He was funny, engaging, educational, and was able to relate to every person in the room, football fan or not. Even the AV support staff were engaged (I sat in the back of the room, right in front of the AV staff so I could hear them responding to questions and laughing throughout the talk).
Reggie talked about leadership and teamwork concepts that we've all heard before. What was novel was how he used his experience as a Denver Bronco to illustrate concepts. He talked about innovation, trust, consistency, and effectiveness as the attributes that contribute to one team standing out above all others. Reggie described the need for all players to feel empowered to act, not only owning the problems but recognizing the responsibility to provide solutions rather than waiting for someone else to do so. I learned about the importance of the powerless position coaches who lead without authority and coach things that cannot be achieved with natural talent, alone. As a Gator, it was particularly interesting to get the insider scoop why it is that Tebow, perhaps the greatest college player of all time, didn't make it in the NFL. Despite his incredible talent as an individual, his ‘scrambling' translated into an unpredictability that prevented other team members from doing their job.
The rest of the sessions, well let's just say I must have done a poor job selecting from the options. But I managed to complete one merit review this evening, and I am optimistic that I will make better selections tomorrow. I plan to spend much of the day talking about capacity funds – those are the federal funds that are the source of salary and benefit funds. While it is exciting that NIFA competitive funding appropriations increased for FY19/20 (appropriated, not allocated), if the tradeoff is reduced capacity funds, we have a problem. We'll see what I learn.
Katherine Soule is a speaker on Wednesday! I head back to Sacramento Wednesday and don't plan to be back in Denver any time soon.