Ep. 40 - Adrian Mayes - Leadership Lessons: Creating a Culture of Ownership & Accountability

The first person to give me a shot in college football recruiting, Adrian Mayes to this day is one of closest friends and mentors in the industry!

 

In this week's show, we take a deep dive into the mindset Adrian had when he took over the recruiting department at the University of Houston and peel back the layers of his approach to recruiting!

 

Starting off the show, we discussed what Adrian looked for when hiring interns. As he prepared for the role of director, he mentions that he studied the Ohio State and Alabama recruiting models for guidance.

 

What he looks for, is pretty simple and boils down to two points:

Look for people smarter than you
Find people with true passion and personality

 

 As you will notice through the rest of the show, Adrian takes pride in entrusting role and responsibility to his interns in order to create ownership within the department.

 

That brings us to the next big topic covered, which is how to create a team atmosphere in the recruiting department:

It all starts with ownership in what you're doing -taking pride in your work
And secondly, it takes accountability

 

Accountability, which is covered throughout this episode, is obviously enforced by the superior but needs to be reinforced by the individuals within the department. No different than a player-led team, you need your front line workers to hold each other to standards set by the supervisor.

 

When it comes to recruiting, there were a lot of takeaways as it pertains to the evaluation side of the business as well.

 

For Adrian, he is adamant about watching every player that high school coaches send your way. There are no such things as diamonds in the rough anymore with the proliferation of film and exposure, but you can miss out on players if you don't take the time to sit down and watch them.

 

Also covered was the topic of intangibles and evaluating the learning capabilities of a given recruit.

 

You can't take all exceptions with less than prototypical measurables, but it is extremely important to keep an open mind for the really good football players that love the game. If you like the player, be thorough about what he can and can't do, and see if he has traits to overcome those limitations.

 

In the words of Cincinnati Bengals DPP Duke Tobin, "The art of scouting is what deficiencies do you accept? Everybody is looking for the same positives…"

 

With regards to assessing a recruit's ability to learn ball and pick up concepts, Adrian does a great job of explaining how he teaches a recruit a specific concept, asks the recruit to teach the concept back to him and watches closely how the recruit executes those actions. Is he taking notes? After listening and taking notes, how does he retain and regurgitate the information? How was he taught by his coaches? What concepts can he articulate back to the coach? Etc.

 

All this and more is covered on the show, and it was a ton of fun to hit that record button! You can follow Adrian on Twitter at @CoachAMayes, and be sure to visit UpCloseInPersonnel.com for complete show notes and listening links!