Forecasting, Failure, and Football

The “Third Saturday in October” was a wild one this year, pitting #6 Tennessee vs #3 Alabama. For those who haven’t watched it with the family yet on your favorite streaming service, I’m about to spoil the ending. In what was a crazy back and forth game, the Volunteers took down the Tide, snapping a losing streak that dates back to my college days. #Success

As a Vols fan, why talk about failure, then? Let me explain…

I love analogies about as much as I love football. They resonate with me and help me learn and remember important ideas. They also help me get an idea across to others, hopefully in a more down-to-earth, practical kind of way. As I watched the field fill up with fans in Knoxville, I thought of failure and adversity and how that often precedes successes. I also thought about the importance of how we handle failure.

Failures come in all shapes and sizes. A tornado going unwarned is a big deal. It’s very visible, it can be costly, and really stings for both the person on radar, and the office team as a whole. It’s like a fumble in football. Then you have what I would consider small failures. For example, highs only reaching the 40s when you were forecasting 50s. It still matters, but it’s not as “visible” as a fumble.

For years, the Vols have put together some decent seasons with mixed success, but they could never get over that hump that was Alabama. They came close some years, but momentum has a way of knocking the wind out of you, and Tennessee has often struggled to not make mistakes and to not lose momentum. What struck me with this year’s game was how calm and collective the 2022 Volunteers squad was, even amid some significant adversity and failures. They played a great game, but there were some costly miscues. They squandered an 18-point lead in the first half, then late in the game, they fumbled the ball at their own 4 yard line giving Alabama momentum and an easy scoop-and-score. Vols fans everywhere thought ‘here we go again…’. But Tennessee didn’t go there again.

In the midst of several failures, the Vols never seemed to feel the weight of changing momentum. They picked themselves up and kept playing as hard as ever. One of the most poignant examples of this for me was when their QB (Hendon Hooker) got a rare sack. As he was being rushed, and with the pocket collapsing, he just sat down, almost as if to say, “You got me this time fellas”. He didn’t fight it, he didn’t scramble around trying to fix it, he just sat down. Then, he got right back up and went back to playing as if nothing happened. The late-game scoop-and-score gave the Vols another chance to get discouraged and lose heart, but they didn’t. They got right back on the field and returned the favor with another TD.

The Vols had a mix of big and small failures, but what set them up for success was how they handled the miscues. Like in football, momentum plays a big role in life. One small forecast mistake here and there probably won’t have a big impact on you. But one big mistake, or a series of consistent small mistakes? That can be a game-changer.

In my early NWS years, I came in all passionate about lots of things. I wanted to have an impact, and I thought my way was the best. The problem is, I let passion get ahead of people, and I burned bridges, some of which may never get fixed. That was a fumbled-the-ball moment (or really, several fumbles in a row) for me, and it still stings to this day. Like UT after the fumble return for a scoop-and-score, I’ve had to work hard not to let that mistake define my “game” (ie. my career). I hate that I made those mistakes, but I’m not doing myself or my NWS team any favors by dwelling on it. That mistake has taught me to better balance passion and people, but the only way I’ve been able to improve is to not camp in the past.

Then I think of the times on radar where I missed a storm, or warned on a storm that didn’t go on to be severe. Sometimes we just have to take a sack, then get right back up and keep doing our best. Tennessee’s QB getting sacked was a failure, but it doesn’t mean a lack of success. The real failure would be if Hooker gave up and stopped trying the rest of the game. Same goes with warnings. Where I’ve had to rethink my approach to success and failure is to realize that a missed warning due to laziness is not the same as a missed warning due to mis-reading the environment or a storm. When I mentor others on radar, I try to encourage them to focus on doing their best and to not stress about missed events. Craig Manning reminds us that “When you focus too much on winning, you’ll start worrying about losing.” ("The Fearless Mind"). We don’t want missed events or bad warnings, but we have to be careful not to beat ourselves up in an unhealthy way when we gave it our best shot, but a mistake still happens. 

I see success as trying your best, but also being aware of where you need some additional training or experience. I recently took more of a leadership position within the NWS. I know that I will make mistakes my entire career as a leader, but I’m setting myself up for failure if I worry about those mistakes. What sets me up for success is not fearing mistakes, but addressing them with myself and with others, honestly, as they come up. Mistakes give us an opportunity to improve if we let them.

Easier said than done at times, I know. Those big mistakes that sting can be really tough to come back from. Recently, the #4 Vols lost to an unranked South Carolina team. This loss hurts all the more because this essentially eliminates the Vols from a playoff opportunity. That failure is tough to swallow. While I still hold to the importance of not camping too long on mistakes, I also believe we have to give ourselves time to process them. You can’t pretend a fumble didn’t happen. It happened, you need to process it, then try to move on. Sometimes it takes a shift, a week, or a year, to move on. One way to help process mistakes is to think back on the successes. At minimum, the Vols will have their first 9-win season since 2016. That’s progress. Progress is filled with failures AND successes. We have to remember that.

Sometimes we need to have teammates come alongside us and help us get through a tough mistake. I have seen countless times where a teammate will come over and pat a guy on the helmet or shoulder after a costly mistake. 

Sometimes that player will still be slumped over on the bench for awhile while they process it, and we need to give people room for that, but they need to know others are there. We need teammates like that, and we need to be teammates like that.

I think about my young kids (we have 4!). I can coach them or I can yell at them. I’ve done both. I regret the latter when it happens, because it doesn’t help them, it only makes the mistake worse. If you are in a leadership position, are you coaching or yelling? How we handle personal failure matters, but it also matters how we handle the failures of others.

I’ll end on this. Success is great, but how we handle success matters as much as how we handle failure. We’ll have strings of mistakes followed by strings of successes. Those strings of successes are wonderful! But we have to guard against pride creeping in. A quarterback running around taunting his success, not the team’s success, isn’t healthy for the locker room culture. We can celebrate each other’s success, but in a way that doesn’t put all the attention on us.

Life is going to throw us some scoop-and-scores, sacks, and unanswered points. We are going to make mistakes. Some will be more subtle, while others will be as visible and as costly as a fumble. The lesson we can learn from the Tennessee / Alabama game is that how we respond to, and view, mistakes matters. To be the most effective at whatever we set our minds to, we have to play to do our best, instead of playing not to lose. Acknowledge where you’ve failed, improve where you can, and don’t get too hung up on where you dropped the ball. As we get better at responding to failure, we find freedom, fun, and less fear. And, that, sets us, and our team, up for long-term success.

Unhealthy Humility

One of my favorite things to do is encourage people. I enjoy finding where people excel and cheering them on. But I want it to mean something. I never want to say something just to check off an encouragement quota. “Well, I haven’t encouraged Stan in awhile, I better go find something. Oh look, he opened the front door properly. Let me go cheer him on.” Over the years, it has meant so much to me when someone has given a genuine note of encouragement, especially when it happens to come at a time when I’m questioning my ability, or feeling weak, in a particular area. It’s so important that we all have moments like that, and I enjoy making sure that happens.

The responses I get vary, but there’s a common theme that pops up from time to time that I’ve been thinking about lately. It’s the classic, ‘Even a squirrel can find a nut’ response. There are several variations on this, but at face value it certainly doesn’t come off as prideful. But is it humble? It’s such a common response, and it seems harmless, but I’m not sure it is.

During a convective event I was working one afternoon, I drew a polygon around a storm developing along two colliding boundaries. Since the storm was going up along the boundaries, it didn’t have a clear motion yet. However, having the mean storm motion vector overlaid with radar, I was able to fan the polygon off to the southeast in anticipation that the developing storm would move in the direction of the mean wind, and make the box wider to account for the expectation that the storm would grow in size given the favorable environment.

After I drew the box, the storm moved off the boundaries, rapidly increased, and then moved off to the southeast…right through the box. One of the other forecasters looked over and said, “That was a great box. Did you mean to fan that out that way?”. The answer was yes, but I didn’t say that. I said something more along the lines of ‘It just worked out’, or ‘I got lucky’. It was my version of ‘Even a squirrel can find a nut’. The reality is, I used science and an understanding of how storms typically interact with certain boundaries, and I drew a polygon based on that in order to provide the best service possible. My response, however,  made it sound like I got lucky. See the problem? I don't share this story to toot my own horn. I share it because we've all had situations where we did something well because we are good at it, but played it off as something less than skill.

I try to be careful not to make unfair assumptions, but I would venture to say that many people who respond like I did are worried about coming off as prideful. We've been taught that pride is unhealthy, so the “squirrel” response makes sense. But, I believe we’re missing the heart behind humility. Being humble doesn’t mean we shy away from things we are good at. A phrase I like to use a lot is be humbly confident. We can be confident in an ability without flaunting it. Healthy humility supports the team, unhealthy humility hurts it.

Think about this. If you regularly tell others you just got lucky, how do you think you’ll respond when your boss asks if you believe you are skilled enough to take on a particular task? Or do you think your coworkers will choose you to be the next leader of a particular team if you always give the impression that your success is by chance? It’ll be hard to get a job or new opportunity if all you ever do is tell people you’re good at finding nuts once in awhile.

In his leadership podcast, Craig Groeschel once talked about changing our approach to unhealthy thoughts. He said, "...we must change our thinking and forge a new path in our brain." He went on to say "The leader you become tomorrow will reflect the thoughts you think today."

He's not saying that we can simply declare we're good at something when we're not. But where you do excel, it certainly doesn't help you, or anyone else, to regularly downplay it. Downplaying it may seem humble, but Craig argues that in reality you're just furthering an unhealthy thought process that can have long-term ramifications. It seems to be in line with ‘we are what we eat’. If we regularly tell others that the reason we did something good was because of chance, we may begin to believe that over time. Before you know it, you may find yourself not trying as hard, passing on new opportunities, or missing important windows to help others. What starts as humility becomes an unhealthy thought process that can hurt yourself, the team you’re on, and the people you serve. The fix doesn't even have to be some elaborate answer. It can be a simple "Thanks, I appreciate you saying that.", or "Thanks. I've been trying this new idea. I can tell you more about it if you're interested.".

If your default answer to compliments is squirrels and happenstance, it’s probably going to take some discipline and time to break the bad habit. In the end, I believe you’ll find a healthier balance of humility and confidence that best supports those around you.

Transferable Leadership

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the transfer of leadership, and how to best do that when moving from one office to another. As I’m finding out, the transfer of leadership isn’t as straight-forward as the transfer of household goods. I don’t say this in a negative way at all, but more matter-of-factly. Matter of factly…can you say that? Hmmm…not sure. Let me get back to you on that. Anyways, what is becoming readily apparent to me in my short time in my new role is that transferable leadership is more important than I realized. I’ve heard some in leadership circles discuss this topic, but for me it hasn’t truly hit home until now.

I recently listened to a podcast by Craig Groeschel where he argued that trying to lead the same way in one season as you did in a previous season is actually setting yourself up for failure. Hearing him say that really got me thinking about my approach to leadership here at my new office, and it helped me to see that I kinda have to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch in some ways. If this sounds like a negative thing, it's not. Let me explain...

The deal is…no two offices are alike. The makeup of the office, the partners and their needs, staffing levels, likes and dislikes…they all differ. I've been incredibly fortunate to be able to transfer from one good office to another, but that doesn't mean my approach to leadership at ICT will 100% transfer to MHX. We see this play out in sports all the time. We all know that a successful coach on one team doesn't guarantee success with another team. Some coaches simply fizzle after a transfer to a new team, even when both teams were good. I don’t think any leader wants to fizzle, so how do we avoid that? This is the question I’ve been mulling over a lot lately.

My experience in transferable leadership is limited, and I'm still learning, but what others have mentioned, and what I’m seeing play out in my own situation, is that the heart (the WHY) behind leadership doesn’t change, but that the HOW does. The tricky thing is that in many transfer situations, an individual is trying to lead while also trying to figure out which of their approaches to leadership transfer, which ones need to be scrapped, and which ones need a little tweaking. That’s where I’m at right now. I think some of it just comes down to trial and error, while also being cautious not to fall into the trap of “Well, this is how I did it at my last office…”. 

Even more foundational to that is something a mentor of mine shared years ago. He told me that people are like banks. You can’t make withdrawals until you’ve first invested. If I could pick a place to start when transferring as a leader, I would start there. As I’ve started in my new role here at MHX, I’ve been challenged to be intentional about investing in the new group of people I am working with. For me that means stopping and taking extra time to just listen. Active listening shows you care…that you want to know about people. It builds trust. And I’m not just talking about kids, pets, and spouses, although that’s a great place to start. But what about the job. What do they like? One of my go-to questions is what type of weather events get them excited. It's a great ice-breaker, but also gives a little insight into their background and what may be driving their goals and aspirations within the field of Meteorology. What I’ve noticed is that oftentimes, as you engage and actively listen on more surface-ish topics, the deeper conversations later follow. Through that process you can really get to know an office – the good things and the challenges, the strengths and potential areas of improvement…what makes the office flow. As you learn those things, you start to see where you fit in with the flow of the office and how to effectively lead within that flow.

By nature, I’m a people person and I enjoy building good work relationships, but I also have this competing tendency to be overly task focused. For me, then, this has required extra effort to prioritize people over tasks (and to not see people as tasks 😊). But, I firmly believe that patience and perseverance will pay off in the end, just like patient investing. That’s why I really like the bank analogy. The only issue I have with that analogy is that it sounds like you are investing with the goal of taking, which is not the goal here. Instead, I would rephrase it a little and say that we should invest with the goal of leading. What I’m realizing (in a positive light) is that the leading will come with time, but for now there will be more listening and learning than leading. Listen first, lead second.