Ryan Poles on Building and Sustaining Championship Culture

Ryan Poles is currently the General Manager of the Chicago Bears. Prior to that, he spent 13 years working with the Kansas City Chiefs and helping to build the Super Bowl Champion that they are today. He was heavily involved in scouting and bringing on the players that you see dominating the NFL today. Ryan also played football at a very high level; he played offensive line for Boston College, and his quarterback at the time was Matt Ryan. He then went on to get cut from the Chicago Bears, the team he is the General Manager for today. That led him on his journey and his path to working in the front office. Today’s conversation is really about leadership, it’s about how do you build the culture which the Bears are currently doing, and Ryan gives you a behind the curtain look at what he’s doing to build this one time historic, legacy franchise that is the Chicago Bears.

Ryan had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include:

“It’s part of my makeup. I never feel like I’m there yet” (6:00).

“Staying curious, listening to other people’s journeys, the lessons they’ve learned, that’s a ton of wisdom. It’s the same reason why I read books” (6:10).

“I want to peel back the curtain on different experiences so that I can apply them when those situations pop up for me” (6:20).

“Growth mindset is really contagious” (6:40).

“You’ve got to lean on people, and you’ve got to let people lean on you” (7:20).

“There’s times you’ve got to sleep on it” (14:40).

“I really value people” (15:20).

“Sometimes the worst thing you can do, and it’s so toxic, is just to keep [everything] inside of you” (19:05).

“It’s important to get things off your chest and express your thoughts and emotions” (21:00).

“We attack mind, body, and spirit” (23:25).

“[Spirit] is internal peace” (25:20).

“If you can have part of your foundation be being a resilient football team, to me that is progress” (29:15).

“That old school, tough, gritty football team; we want that back. That’s part of this city” (33:30).

“We’re not going to panic and do things that are going to harm us just because of pressure” (35:20).

“For me, to my core, sustaining success is the challenge” (39:50).

“You can feel the passion jump out of the [players] that really care and love [football]” (51:30).

“For building a football team, you want as many guys where when they go out to practice or a game, it’s like recess” (52:05).

“The hardest part of professional sports with collaboration is the team changes every single year” (59:40).

“It comes down to people” (1:03:45).

“You can call it a General Manager if you want, but at the end of the day you’re a problem solver for the organization” (1:04:10).

“The more balanced I am, the more clear I am about decision making” (1:05:50).

“I need to block off time for me” (1:07:05).

Thank you so much to Ryan for coming on the podcast!

I wrote a book called “Shift Your Mind” that was released in October of 2020, and you can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, I have launched a company called Strong Skills, and I encourage you to check out our new website https://www.strongskills.co/. If you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers.

Thanks for listening.