Ed note: I think it’s fascinating that corporate America (like Microsoft) and major philanthropy (like the Gates Foundation) feel that they have lessons to learn from Pete. Perhaps we all do. Do you notice the absence of negative thinking and criticism?!
The Seattle Seahawks’ coach is shaping his locker room talks about self-discovery and finding meaning in life for corporate America.
By Matthew Futterman
Pete Carroll has heard the haters telling him what he can do with all his New Age banter, all that talk about self-discovery and the Seattle Seahawks’ culture of love.
He knows there’s a coach on the other side of the country with six Super Bowl rings — the guy who replaced him in New England 20 years ago. That guy obsesses about down and distance and blitz packages, and has built the model 21st-century football organization around three words: “Do your job.” Carroll has one Super Bowl ring.
Carroll swears that’s not how he keeps score, even though he is paid to win football games. It’s all process, he says. Don’t believe him? “I do hear it from people, you know, ‘Stick to your coaching,’” he said last month as the N.F.L. playoffs approached and the Seahawks tried to find their groove. “I don’t care.”
As if to prove it, there Carroll is, suddenly in jeans and a sweater and sneakers, beamed into a digital course on human performance, leading a kind of corporate group therapy discussion about the process of creating a personal philosophy for your life. Tens of thousands of employees at Fortune 500 companies have participated in the training sessions Carroll and his partners have created to help people find purpose and perform better.