Great Leadership Cannot be Automated

High school sports teams spend hours a week on skill and almost nothing on how to lead a group. Then we hand a kid a C and expect them to know what to do with it.

I’m Mitch Allen. I coach high school football in Cincinnati, played quarterback at Wofford College, and lead people at a Fortune 500 company during the day. Eighteen years playing, fifteen coaching, fifteen leading teams at work, and the same thing holds in all three: the people worth following were taught. Usually by somebody who bothered.

A tough leader isn’t the loudest kid in the room. It’s the one who says the hard thing on Tuesday so nobody has to say it on Friday, who keeps a promise when it costs something, and who is the same person down twenty as up twenty.

There are two ways in. The Captain’s Practice is twelve weeks of fifteen-minute sessions a coach runs in their own locker room, free forever. The seminars are the same material run live, in a room, for a team that wants it in one block.

No chatbot talks to your athletes, and nothing here collects anything about them.

Toughness is taught, by people.