Archie Manning - When To Call an Audible

TRANSCRIPT

Introduction:

Welcome to Beyond Speaking with Brian Lord, a podcast featuring deeper conversations with the world's top speakers.

Brian Lord:

This week, I'm really excited to have on Archie Manning. A lot of people know Archie is someone from football, which makes sense because he's an amazing football player with an amazing legacy, but in a lot of ways, he's so much more than that. He's someone who has given so much back to his community in Louisiana and Mississippi and around the country. He's someone that is one of the great fathers in the country recognized by so many people for that. And someone who continually gives back to the sport and to the community in so many ways. So Archie, thank you so much for joining us here.

Archie Manning:

My pleasure, Brian, glad to be with you.

Brian Lord:

Well, one of the things that has happened, you know, obviously the past 10 months have been a just an unprecedented time just to overuse that word. And one of the things that have been so difficult for people during this time is what to do and how to change and how to be leaders during this time. And so, you know, this presentation, this sort of moderated fireside chat is about, you know, when leaders should call an audible and how they should do that. So the first question would be, you know, you as a leader, somebody who has raised leaders what does a leader need to do to build trust with their team?

Archie Manning:

Well, I've always felt like as a leader to build trust number one is to set a good example. I think people that, that work under you- work in a company, they look toward the, toward the top people and they observe. And of course day to day, whether it be communication or just see how they, they carry on. I think just, I've always felt like if you're not, if you're not getting it done, if you're not doing it right, then how do you, how do you expect other, other people to do it? So I think when you, when you go to work in the morning especially as a, as a leader is to set a good example for the other people. And it's, and that's, that's going to be so important now, as you said, unprecedented, there's this pandemic. And there's so many stories. There is just countless things. And I mean, I even know people that have prospered during this time and some rare companies and things like that, but majority of people have never, never experienced anything like this. I equate it, a little bit, Brian, that you remember... I live here in new Orleans and hurricane Katrina it knocked our socks off. And so it you know, everybody of had to kind of unite and pull up their straps and, and start over in a lot of ways. And I know there's so many people throughout the country that it's, it's got in some, some form or fashion start over. And so it was a lot of similarities there.

Brian Lord:

And one of the things that you as a, as a speaker, but also a you know, quarterback talk about now as a quarterback, there's a thing called an audible. So for those who don't know about an audible, it's when you've done all this preparation and everything else, and you get up to the line and then you have to change what you've planned to do. And that's one of the things that makes you so perfect for this time is, is being in that position where you are a leader and you're changing things. So tell us, you know, when do you decide to call an audible? And what goes into that when you come up, when you're faced with something that you weren't expecting before you got there?

Archie Manning:

Yeah. The, at times, especially as a quarterback, the time to to call an audible is when you you've got to change, you've got to change what you, what you've got called is not going to loosen your opinion and probably your coach's opinion is not going to work. So we changed and, and I, and our society and this world change is the most constant thing that we, that we, that we live with. And if you're not, if you're not prepared for that, you can't exist. So it's, it's, it's almost constantly like a lot of the, I don't know, a good yeah, there's a really good golfer. And he talks about golf is a game of adjustments. Well, I feel life is a game of adjustment. Business is a game of adjustments and is never going to be truer than now, as we come out of this pandemic and try to get back on track, get back to whatever our business is, get to where we were at and even then go beyond that. But football, you know, I use football terms is calling an audible, but basically it's, it's being ready to, to change and make adjustments.

Brian Lord:

For this, we got a huge amount of questions from people that they want to ask. And definitely fewer watching, go ahead and ask those. This one is from Jennifer Leday. Can you share some times when you've had to call an audible both when you were successful and maybe when you were less successful when you call an audible?

Archie Manning:

Well I'll go back to football first year. I kinda talk about I played 15 years of pro football and prior to that college and high school, and I, and I I've often talked of it as almost two different lives. So my, my youngest son, Eli just retired last year after 16 years in the NFL. So he's at that point where he's, he's beginning that phase phase two of of his life. And so in football I had to call it, I'm not talking about just a single play at the line of scrimmage, but a lot of things happen throughout the career where you've kinda got a call and all I got, we, we weren't big, good we're losing, we've got changes going on. And in management, we've got change, huge changes going on every two or three years in coaches, head coaches, assistant coaches, and so forth. Um that's adjusting to that. That's a, that that's an audible to try to start over. It's it's it began again I got traded that's a real audible, right there. Going to another city, going to another team, going to a whole new group of teammates. People, people deal with that as they change change jobs got traded again first time to Houston next time to Minnesota and other different part of the country. For me going to Minnesota and another another coach long-time coaching staff there great past that they'd had. So those, those are changes. Those are all those retire start my second career and different things there, you know, kind of okay. What, what to do had a lot of had fortunately had had some options, but gotten investment business, but then I was trying to juggle other things too getting invitations to do corporate speaking. Um I'm getting invitations to maybe do some marketing with a, with a company. My boys started playing pro football. They're involved in some marketing things I'm being asked to, to join them to maybe an in some of those things, so that try to juggle the investment business with a lot of, a lot of other things. Is this, is this going to work? Can I get do that got into got into a health club business, kind of trying to run that deal that do all the other things. So, as I said, it's it's it's constant change is it's adjusting it's trying to do is you're trying to do the right thing, you want to do what's right for your family. You want to do it's what makes you happy, what you can be successful doing? So oftentimes those are, those are pretty tough decisions to make.

Brian Lord:

That is one of those that came up, and this is another you know, listener question here. But it goes into that when you're moving around, you're doing these different things. You know, one of the things you're famous for being is, is as a great dad and, and your kids will say that for your grandkids would pass that long as a great grandfather, but you know, for somebody who lived on the road quite a bit, you know, being a professional football player and then, you know, moving, you know, for three different teams in different cities. So this is from Ryan Burke, but how did you balance being a successful professional and being a successful father?

Archie Manning:

I think one of the, one of the things that my parents taught me was tried to always maintain my priorities and Towanna my priorities and make sure you stick to them and your face should be your number one priority. And then the next, I was always thought it should be family. And I've tried to, I've tried to keep that. And as you know, as the as I say, the man of the house, it's, it's, I've got a, I've got a lot of responsibility there. I've got, I've got to make a try to make a good living and provide of Olivia and I, I mentioned w w next week we'll be married 50 years out, congrats by her that she needs a medal. She needed some [Inaudible].  but you know, I enjoy travel. I enjoy what I like most about what I like most about speaking is not, not necessarily getting on that plane and getting there, or maybe spending the night away from home, but I love meeting new people. And in, in, in speaking corporate speak and you meet successful people, you know, a lot of times you're the head of the company and you get to know somebody and kind of his story and how I got there and so forth. So, so I enjoy that, but I, I don't enjoy- I never enjoyed, you know, being away from my family for a long period of time. But,uuI think there is the one that one great thing about football is,uwe didn't travel that much, you know,ubaseball, they go on like a two week road trip and basketball. They're gone sometimes on a road trip of 10 days. We didn't do that. We would play an away game. Uwe leave on Saturday morning and we're back on Sunday night. And in training camp, back in those days, we'd go away sometimes for four or five weeks. And didn't particularly like that. But sometimes when you, you know, when you're away for a period of time, your family's real glad to see you when you, when you get back. And you're certainly- you're, you're glad to see them, but I tried to balance it. And I, you know, they always say, try to try and have that quality time when you are there. UI was always tried to,uuin any way I could, and I could, in, in football, I could have breakfast with my kids, you know, up early, getting ready to go to school. And I would leave about the same time they, they would that's that's when I was required as a football player to be there. And then,uafter football,ukind of the same thing, but when you are home, trying to make it quality time, be around, you know, checking in on your kid, on your children's,uactivities, be part of their life.

Archie Manning:

Home helping with homework is that's good, that's good stuff. And also, you know, if you, if you can, as much as you can to have dinner together and meals together we always- we had a little something. My kids used to call the board meeting, and it was just something that I kind of established it as they were getting a little older is on Sunday night, we had a board meeting. And we would get, we didn't, we never hated our dining room table very much. It was kind of formal. We didn't do that much, but on Sunday night we had a little board meeting around that dining room table, and kind of just talked about maybe what's going on this past week, but what's coming up this next week. And how are we going to handle that? How we deal with the things that's going on in everyone's life, but it's just it's time with your, with your family, which we all love to have.

Brian Lord:

No, that's great. I've got teenagers and little ones, and that's a, that is a really good suggestion. I think we're probably going to install that into the offense on a Sunday night this week. So that's great advice there. You know, you talked about as being a leader, whether it's your family, whether it's your football team, whether it's your business what are your tips for people on how to overcome adversity?

Archie Manning:

Well, the one thing you just got to recognize, and, and again, recognize that there's always going to be change that you're always going to have to be making judgements. Adversity is inevitable. It is going to happen, and now we can, we can roll along and we can feel great and business is good and I'm healthy. And my family's healthy and the kids won a football game on Friday night, you know, all the things were good, but then some don't jump up there. It's just, it's just the way it is. So I think to be in a mindset that when, when it happens not to go through this big drastic change show up big, huge, emotional let down, it's about attitude. And dealing with adversity is is absolutely to have to recognize that it can happen, but deal with it and gain and be positive about it. And if, if it's happened to a family member to a cohort at work or whatever you're sympathetic about it, but, you know, in a positive, in a very positive way, deal with it and work to overcome it.

Brian Lord:

Well. So we've got a couple of questions in here. It's actually two similar questions. So from Bill Stainton and Drew Collie, but basically when do you decide to call an audible basically, or when do you decide to make a change?

Archie Manning:

You know, I might try to make a change when, what you're doing now is not working. And sometimes, you know, we can all as leaders coaches can be late, make it, you know, they w we can be stubborn, I guess, is the word as leaders. I think it's very important for us to to, to ha have an attitude that we aren't just dead set that our way is, is the only way. And, and that we've gotta be flexible. We've got to listen to other people, we've got to recognize what, what problems are, what, what can I do and talk about audible, what can I change to make everything better, to make this person better, to make our company better, to make me better for everything to try to if things aren't going just perfectly, how can, how can we work, work this out? So it, it's definitely a a flexibility thing and recognize, but it's more than anything is, is recognizing that change is needed and we gotta do it.

Brian Lord:

One of the things you talk about is the attitude is more important than ever. And it kind of goes into a question here from, from Gary Brouht you know, what is more important when it comes to dealing with uncertainty? Attitude or actions?

Archie Manning:

Both, both don't, don't try the action without the right attitude. So, you know, they, they they're hand in hand, but it's very important to act and get, get, get things going, get, get you know, I've talked about getting back on track. I, I used to, I learn something when I was still playing football in the offseason I worked- so I used to work with a car dealership, a real outstanding car dealership, and they had a great program of where they had a dealer development program within their not only their dealership but their, their association, which was several dealerships around the country. And basically what it involved was people that are in sales, in a car dealership have the opportunity to advance and get into management and then get into other areas of the dealership and ultimately be a, be a dealer. So it was, it was, it was really outstanding. So I went through that in the off-season, maybe a little bit in a limited way, because I still had a few football responsibilities so forth, but it was kind of learning that, but I know we've all bought cars. And I learned something when I was in sales. And we, we actually, before they ever put anybody out on the Salesforce, they have six weeks of training, that's pretty unusual, six weeks of just in kind of classroom and product knowledge and those type of type of things. And, you know, going back and forth, with each other, you really meet customers and try to work on what they used to call the Road to a Sale. But one of the, one of the great concepts that I learned during that time was called get back to zero. Get back to zero. And I used it right away in football. Quarterbacks throw interceptions, and nobody, no quarterback ever wants to throw an interception. A quarterback gets beat for a touchdown. It... That's inevitable. It's gonna, it's going to happen. But it was compared to in the car business is when you made a customer and you tell them all the good things about the car. You take them on a demo ride, and then, you know, what happens, then you go back and you go in that office right there, and you got the, you write out the price and you hand em that pen to sign up. And they say, "Well, I'm going to go down the street and look at, look at this product, too. And I'll check with you later." And that's the way it works. And so you've spent three or four or five hours, whatever who does customer and, you know, count them, all your momentum and your attitude kind of changed a little bit and you'd get down. And now all of a sudden, another customer walks in the door, you've got to get back to zero. You've got to meet that customer and you got to go to work to try to make that sale. So I, you know, like I said, I used it in in football, try to, and not in it when I threw an interception to not let that go with me for the next series, or certainly not the rest of that game. Certainly not the next week if I threw three or four, which I did. So it's just come up to me so many times in business and in work, and it's an attitude adjustment, but it's a getting back to zero.

Brian Lord:

Absolutely. So so we have another question here from how Ty Ferguson, what suggestions do you have for getting teammates or colleagues to not let feelings and emotion play such a large role in how they act and think?

Archie Manning:

Say that again about... For who?

Brian Lord:

So how so as a leader what suggestions do you have for getting teammates or colleagues to not let feelings and emotions play such a large role in how they act and think?

Archie Manning:

Yeah again, I think I think it's being a good example. I think if you don't do that, if you kind of level, and it's being confident and, and, and passion in showing you your passion for what you're doing for your work, for your our, our company, our business, that, you know, a lot of passion for it and appreciation for it, and the attitude that you go about it is it's the example. And then you, if you carry yourself right, then you sit down and talk with that person about, about, you know, their, their, their weakness, their but if you're you know, give power scream, go off here. And there is, that's kind of hard to do is you got to influence them by your own example.

Brian Lord:

And that's one of those things too, that's, that seems to be part of what you do and others it's, it's more of a calm, a sense of, of leadership as opposed to others who were I don't know if vocals are right word, but but, but, you know, taking those actions in sort of a calmer way during times of change in times of stress. So I know that's always appreciated

Archie Manning:

Brian there, are different ways to skin, a cat. And here, I always go back to football and you talk about quarterback and you talk about quarterbacks is leaders and sure... I mean, there was a, there was a a quarterback before me Bobby Lee, and he said he would wait. He can really dress down his team. And, you know, and I think a lot of people looked at that and, and said, well, he, that makes him a great leader. I when I first started playing Bob Greasy was with the Miami dolphins and they had these great teams, had an undefeated team. Bob was just level is he could be, he just did his job set a good example of the rest of the team that there may have been a time where we go off a little bit, but never really in public, never really in the huddle, not on, not on, on TV.

Archie Manning:

So again, there's a, I'm not saying it's bad for a quarterback to sometimes... I did it a few times, but if I really was going to kind of jump someone, I really tried to do it privately. I think to embarrass someone in front of 10 other guys in that huddle, I never felt like that worked very good. No, some guys didn't care and maybe they needed it, but I just think it's better to individually talk, someone, try to motivate them a little bit and make them understand what we need to do to be successful.

Brian Lord:

Now, obviously, we did, we did do a question earlier about you know, some of that parenting and fatherhood, that sort of thing. But I know that's one of the biggest things that people always ask for us. We have a couple of questions on that. So how did your relationship with your sons change once they became grown men?

Archie Manning:

Well, I took them off allowance. You know, two of them, my oldest son Cooper after college got into the business world, but he had some very, very proud of it really well. And the other two went into pro football when they, when they got out of college. I think, I think it becomes... And out, I didn't, I was never, I never tried to be their coach when they were coming up through junior high and high school, even though I had played, they had a coach and I just didn't think it was my place. I wanted to be their, their father and not be their coach. And so now they asked me, you know, at a younger age, you may ask me, daddy, you want to go play catch with us. I go, I'll go. But I never said, "Get your ball and bat or get your football. We're going to play catch." It kind of had to be them. So when they got into high school and college, I never tried to go over that coach with some technical things. Matter of fact, I'm just trying to drop the law out of that. I just didn't, I didn't talk X's and O's with them. And I, and I really appreciated, I think they appreciated that they had a good coach. They had good coaches, but they would come to me with, with other things beside the X's and O's how did, well, what about when I got to talk to the media about this? How should I handle that? What if they ask me advice, I'm gonna give it to them. Getting into pro ball, you know, kind of setting up a life away from football, being away from home. This is my profession. Now they would get married and all, and all those, all those things.

Archie Manning:

I think over time, you kind of get away from the father, son relationship into a best friend type of thing. And I enjoyed that, you know, where I was kind of I felt like I was kind of their buddy and they could, they get, asked me to do something. They could ask my advice. I loved that relationship rather than me just trying to be dominant over them. I mean, my, my boys are now in their forties and they've been down some rough roads and they've had the highs and the lows, but they, they, they deal with it. And we, we have a great relationship and you know, another thing I've always told them, and I've heard them say this, but I've told them often. I said, "If you never want to disappoint me is for y'all not to get along." I hate to see that. And it happens in our society. I hate it to see siblings that don't get along and you see it. And I know sometimes it just happens and maybe there's a good reason, but I've kind of studied it a little bit. Cause it makes me sad to see it. And as, as one thing I'm really very proud of, of especially my three boys, they're all married, they all got children. They all got, you know, this old, this old world, this pandemic, and all these things, but they still get along and they have fun with each other. And that makes me proud.

Brian Lord:

One last question here, I know we're coming up on you know Super Bowl Sunday and there's been many many commercials out there that have involved view or Mannings in some, some form or fashion. And so out of all the commercials that you've ever done, what are your favorites?

Archie Manning:

You know, a lot of people ask me about what Peyton's commercial. Peyton has done, so many, and they've done some together has been fun. And, but all, all of us oh, I was a better one. Even Olivia was in one and this was years and years ago, ESPN came to me and said, eh, ESPN does some really funny [inaudible] through the years, I've really done some great stuff. So we want all the Mannings in a commercial. I said, I can't get all the Mannings to Bristol, Connecticut virtually impossible right now, Peyton and Eli were already in pro ball. And but we were in New York, we were all going to be in New York. So I called the girl back. I said, I think we could get up there, but it's gotta be quick. Peyton's got to go to a mini-camp. We'll be ready. We'll be ready. They sent me the script. We went in there and they had, and so I don't know how many people remember it, but basically we're all we're taking a tour of ESPN and I said, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going down. And he's going to take us down there and we'll build the tour and Peyton, you, and Eli are going to be in the back. And y'all were kind of frolicking with each other kind of messing with each other. And what does your dad usually do when y'all do that? And they said, he gives us the look. First, first thing he does is it gives us the look. So he said, okay, we want the look. So we, I mean it a roll with the cameras. Cause Peyton had to go to a mini-camp. We kind of need to get this done. And I was proud to say when we did it we didn't want to take on the look. They said that's it. That's how many, I can't tell you how many people through the years is that that's the look my dad used to give me, you know? So I think I've gotten more comments about that when it's mostly about, about the look.

Brian Lord:

That is great. Now, how often now did the boys just beat each other up? Cause it looked like they were, they were doing a lot. I've I've seen that commercial so many times myself. Yeah.

Archie Manning:

That was, you know, you know, Cooper was two years older than Peyton, and then it was a five-year gap to Eli. So when they were growing up, Peyton and Cooper two years apart, yeah, they fought. I mean they battled and they just competed, but Eli was five years back. They just, I don't know, abuse is not a good word. They just messed with Eli, you know, things. They just, they just played with it, you know? He, he, you know, as he got older, he kind of caught on, he kinda had to Win his way here to get his respect, that, to get in there, to get in those battles.

Beyond Speaking is hosted by Brian Lord and produced by Eric Woodie