What kind of ambition does success require? By any measure, Tony Dungy has known success. As a defensive back with the Pittsburgh Steelers, he won his first Super Bowl in 1978. He went on to coach in Tampa Bay, and later Indianapolis where in 2007 he became the first African-American coach to win a Super Bowl championship.
Since retiring from football in 2009, Dungy's ambitions continue. He has served as a sports commentator with NBC and used his influence to mentor young adults. His commitment to Christ is evident in his two books, Uncommon: Finding Your Path to Significance and The Mentor Leader (Tyndale).
Skye Jethani spoke with Dungy about how calling and ambition translate on and off the field.
When coaching football, you obviously want players to have ambition. But what does bad ambition look like?
You want guys who are motivated, who want to be the best. That's the easy part. Translating that into teamwork is what takes energy. They have to keep their personal ambitions secondary to the team's goals. Bad ambition is when their goals are put ahead of the team's.
A football team's goals are easy to know—to win games. But in ministry it's not so easy. Pastors are trying to hear God's voice—What projects should we undertake? Where is God leading us? They've got to help others see those "team" goals as important.
Given your coaching style and calm demeanor, were you ever criticized for not being ambitious enough?
Oh, absolutely. I didn't fit the stereotype of a National Football League coach. If you're different and you win, people say your different characteristics are great. If you don't win, those same characteristics are the reason you're losing. When we were having trouble, they said, "If he was more edgy, if he pushed the players harder, they would win."
How did you respond?
I wasn't trying to satisfy the critics. I was trying to satisfy the Lord and my employers. And I always tell my boss you're going to get everything that I've got. We're going to win for you, but I'm going to do it my way.
You often reminded your team that football isn't the most important thing. You wanted them to keep their families a priority. Pastors would agree with you—football isn't the most important thing. But ministry isn't football …
Because they've answered God's call.
Right. How should a pastor think about the call to serve God and his family?
Pastors have to look at it like everyone else does. My calling for 28 years was to honor the Lord through football. I felt like I was doing God's work on the football field, but I still had to temper that with my calling to honor God with my family, my church, and my spiritual walk.
So pastors have to do the same thing and be careful not to get so submerged in one aspect of God's call that they ignore everything else.
That requires setting some boundaries for yourself and your staff. What did that look like for you as a leader?
Well, first it meant praying about the schedule. I passed the schedule out the first of the year and I told everyone, "Believe me, when we're off, I'm not going to be here. So you don't have to be here either."
Everyone was expected to get their work done, but I monitored guys to make sure they weren't coming in too early and staying too late. When that happened, I'd encourage them to go home.
Second, I made it clear that the door is always open to family. When kids were out of school, I told the staff their families could come to the office. When I went to Indianapolis, we had some people from the last staff who weren't sure I was serious about that policy. Then one day we were in a staff meeting and there was a crash and the noise of people running through the hall. Some of the coaches cringed and said, "What's that?" One of my long-term guys said, "Oh, that's the Dungy kids." Then everyone knew I was serious about welcoming kids into the office.
What does ambition and calling look like for you now that you're off the field?
During the last three or four years I was coaching, I had ambitions to be home more. I also wanted to be involved with young people, high school students, inmates, and those reentering society.
What role does your church have in these new projects?
Being more involved in my church was one of my reasons for getting out of coaching. During the football season you're away from church for six months. I always wanted to be involved with projects inside and outside the church. I think the most important thing is mentoring people in our church. But then we've got to take that outside our walls. If we've got 300 members in our church and everybody's doing fine but we're not having any impact on the community around us, it's not what the church is all about.
So how can we motivate young people to make a difference in school, at work, in the neighborhood? I asked myself, "How can I, now I am around more, have a bigger impact on the neighborhood and the community, not just the church?"
I'm curious. I don't see a Super Bowl ring on your finger.
I got my first ring in Pittsburgh in 1978. When the boxes with the rings came in, our coach said, "Wear them for a week. Show your family, all your friends, everybody that wants to see a Super Bowl ring. Then put it back in the box. We've got to go to work on the next one." That was the team's mentality. Some of the guys on the Steelers had four rings and didn't wear them.
When we finally won ours in Indianapolis, I told the team the same thing. "Show it to everybody. Then put it away and let's get to work on the next one."
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