Dr. Robert E. Simpson accepted the Henry A. Butova Memorial Award March 31 during the 57th NFF Western Massachusetts Chapter Annual Banquet at the University of Massachusetts. Simpson, who played college football at Amherst College in the 1960s and went onto a prestigious career as a top hospital administrator and strategic consultant, was honored as "a local football player who went on to a distinguished career while continuing to support athletics." Honored alongside the state's top scholar-athletes, Simpson delivered the following remarks:
Thank you for this honor. I am extremely grateful especially to Tim Schmidt who is a legend in the Western Mass football community as a coach and college football referee.
I played football for 1,260 days over 14 years from Midget Football, to single wing quarterback in high school (anyone remember the single wing?) to Co-Captain of the Amherst College Football Team. Now remember that at age 72, I have lived for 26,288 days, so my football career was only 5% of my lived days. Didn't former Bowdoin Coach Vandersea just say in his talk say that mathematics was important for football players! Yet the lessons I learned from those days and the coaches, players and the game itself have been vital and fundamental to my life and career.
Let me tell you now some of these most important lessons I learned from my family, coaches and the game of football.
My mother was my first coach. She could throw a football faster than the kids and many adults in the neighborhood. I can say with certainty that she provided the inspiration for me to be comfortable with introspection, a key ingredient of effective leadership. It is as if she is there as part of the dialogue in my head providing a sense of humor and a push to get to the heart of the feeling and the matter. Fundamentally, she cared about excellence in all that she did and that we did as her son; and if we had anxiety about any pursuit that we were involved in, she let us know that the answers were inside us. I'm sure the mothers and sons in the room can relate to this.
Growing up in an orchard in the 1950's, we learned the value of hard work and teamwork. We raced to thin a line of peach trees ahead of the crew on the next line so that the foreman, Dan the Man, built like a Percheron, would reward us with bubble gum in our early adolescence and extra pay as we got older. Dan taught us that leaders outside of our family were interested in results, and that the best ones knew how to create inspiration and incentives to motivate the team.
I watch what leaders do, instinctively. It was my father who most nurtured this instinct in me. I remember sitting at the breakfast table having him read the newspaper to me telling me about the decisions that leaders were making in our town and around the world. He would ask what I thought, listening to my answers uncritically. He would ask, what did I think was going on in Russia. As a child of the Cold War I'd say, "Oh boy, Dad, I don't know, what is going on inside of Russia?" His whole persona was about how to get things done: "Robbie, this is how to mow the lawn, this is how to fix the car in the days when we could actually fix cars, here's how you throw a curve ball (this from a guy who was a pitcher at the Naval Academy with the nickname 'Shrapnel Ball Simpson'
)."
As I got older, the advice became more critical: "This is how to call your Congressman to make the request for federal appropriations." If Congressman Richie Neal were here today, he would agree that I asked him many times in my career for money from Washington to help my patients in the hospitals I ran as a CEO.
When I graduated from high school, my father took me to dinner saying he wanted to tell me something that would be very important in my life. He said getting things done required risk taking as one might fail. "Courage and the courage to take risks," he said with emphasis, "has never been your problem." Now I had not thought that about myself. I wasn't even sure if it was true. Did he mean that because I was tough and straight ahead on the football field? Was that the courage he was talking about? But it was as if in that moment he set my destiny, and I walked right into it. I would try to become a person and a leader who would have the courage to take calculated risks. And, I would know that I had my father's confidence in me to do just that.
When we are younger courage is more easily defined and as we age, we know that it becomes harder to make the right calls in life. Leaders must trust their instincts knowing that the risks of failing are a lot lower than the losses associated with not trying. Always measure the timing of taking a calculated risk, but, nonetheless, take it. Courage begets courage.
But there is something else profound that I learned about leadership and teams that didn't come from coaches, professors, fathers, mothers or any other older person. I learned equally profound leadership lessons from my fellow teammates. Look around you at your teammates and you know that this is true. We learned to resolve disputes, to put the team first and ourselves second. From my band of brothers in sports, I learned that to become a leader one must first have an experience of listening to one's peers describe and assess the value of the lessons being taught by older leaders and coaches. In many ways the best coaches I had were my fellow football players who became as valuable as the coaches who kept us together. From my teammates I learned that if you don't show that you care about your team members, you can't lead—you can direct, but you can't lead.
When I played football at Amherst College for Coach Ostendarp, "The Darp", as he was known, coached life lessons. When I played football for The Darp he was a very interesting, multi-faceted man. He would take us to the Meade Art Museum before our biggest game with Williams. We would say, "What are we doing at the art museum just before we are about to go out and run into Williams?" He would say that while the pursuit of victory is important, make sure that as players we stood up to value the truly important things in life, like family, loyalty, friendship, beauty and... art.
He also reminded us that success came from cultivating confidence in our team members, even allowing them to fail by supporting them when they did. In that way their successes would truly inspire us and others when they came back as winners having learned the lessons of resiliency. Another lesson in courage from The Darp. In fact, also, there were times when he would stop the practice on a Fall afternoon and say come over here boys and have us look out into the setting sun, reminding us again of the beauty that life brings, not just the struggles born in competition. That was the kind of life coach he was to us. We also learned that while none of us might ever be the kind of halfback that my co-captain Billy Foye was, his success on the field could not have happened without the guys on the offensive line or the defense that got the ball back.
I'll close by Underscoring the 4 Key Leadership Lessons I learned from Football and Life:
1. Early leadership lessons come from Family Stories:
The leadership lessons and values that make you a more compassionate and resilient person are all there in how your family lived and coped with the challenges of daily living. These internalized values and lessons must come out as spoken stories, they just can't be kept inside for the impact to be fully felt. Stories then become powerful metaphors for how to succeed in life, love and leadership. Trust your family stories as from these we learn that the world is trustworthy…if we are lucky…leading to a sense of adventure, that gives us the courage to grow. Then we can take the risk of daring to do the impossible, the improbable. Know and tell your family story.
2. Expect Adversity, because it will happen, and this will make you Resilient:
Adversity makes you a stronger person. Remember that the way out of adversity is never around it, it is always through it. In those moments support your team, express your concerns and fears, add context, for others will then join you and the journey will be easier and the outcomes more easily attainable. Football taught me to always put the Team first, to never give up, to respect everyone on the playing field, to honor both the process of winning and the process of losing and to be a lifelong learner by letting yourself be coached through adversity by your peers and by your coaches.
3. Leaders cannot be Soloists; they must be Networkers:
Always remember to look for ways to expand your connections to other leaders in your town and on your team as you can continuously learn from them. They can keep on supporting and teaching you. After all, that is what assures support when it is necessary. You can always call back someone who has helped you in a tough moment. Create your own personal board of directors. Keep those leaders that you have known, admired and loved close to you. They can make a significant difference in your life. They have in mine. And it will be necessary…trust me.
4. Language and communication ability define one's potential to become a great leader:
Communication can be the spark to your potential to become a great leader. Leaders practice how to frame a problem, a solution and in doing so they create communities out of words in their story telling. Effective stories told by a leader become metaphorical power tools for those living and working within a team. In doing this you will find your voice. And when you do, remember, to paraphrase Winston Churchill: "
Never, never, ever, lose your voice. Never!"
And lastly, long ago my wife, Ariane, asked me soon after we were married:
"Robbie, why do you dart in and out of traffic when you drive?" I said, "Once a defensive end always a defensive end… I'm looking to get the Quarterback. He's out there somewhere." Ariane laughed and said, "You can take the boy out of football, but you can never take football out of the boy." I answered: "Never. Amen."
And that is still true. Football will never come out of me. It's solid inside of me. I have learned so much from the game, the players and the coaches. It has fundamentally made me the person I am today. Those 1,260 days out of the 26,288 days I played football were among the most important days of my life. They set me up to become the leader I have become because I was coached and cared about by great people.
Thank you for this honor and for the opportunity to use my voice.
