This season I watched a few games the Chicago Bears played. Mostly because they played against the Vikings twice but also the playoff game against the Eagles and a couple games when they were on in primetime. Every time the camera panned to Matt Nagy, head coach of the Bears, I would see “BE YOU” at the bottom of his play call sheet in bold yellow letters stuck in a blue rectangle. Maybe you saw the same thing. I thought ….Be you? Interesting that a head coach in the NFL who also calls offensive plays, with a high pressure job in a fast paced game needs a reminder to be himself. What a great message for all of us.
So I went searching for Coach Nagy’s explanation of what ‘Be You’ means to him.
Here is a piece of an article I found:
“What does ‘Be you’ mean?,” Nagy said. “It means let your personality show. Be you, don’t change. If you have a vibrant personality and somebody thinks that it might be a little cocky or arrogant, that’s OK.
“If you’re quiet and introverted, you don’t like to speak up too much, that’s OK. I don’t want false enthusiasm. I don’t want that.”
Nagy said there are certain lines that can’t be crossed by players. Nagy, though, doesn’t appear to have the same lax approach that Trestman had to player discipline and issues.
“That’s my job as a coach to kind of corral that,” he said. The Bears were struck by Nagy’s authenticity during the coaching search. Nagy’s message is an offshoot of that.
“We all got here our own ways,” Nagy said. “We created our own paths. What can happen, as a player, is you think you need to maybe try a little harder, you may have to act a little different — don’t do that. Just be yourself. Do what got you here. As coaches, don’t change. If you have a certain style of teaching, then teach that way. Don’t change because now you’re in the NFL.”
Source: https://chicago.suntimes.com/sports/bears_coach_matt_nagy/
A great message from a coach who turned around a franchise with a terrible record just a year ago to become a NFC contender. What I hear in his message is; be yourself but don’t cross certain lines. Do the things that have helped you become successful, but be open to your coaches ideas and growing yourself.
So who are you? Who am I? What makes us tick? What are our strengths and what do they mean?
I recently read a book and took a personality assessment to help us find out more about ourselves. It’s a very quick 50 questions and if you don’t answer a question in 20 seconds it skips to the next one. It’s designed to get your first reaction and not overthink things. I recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about themselves and how to work with others. The name of the book is Strengthfinder 2.0 from Gallop. You can find it on Amazon for about $15. The code to access the strength assessment comes with the book so no need to purchase anything additional.
My sister is a HR integration lead for a very large company and she said that everyone in the company is asked to go through the Strengthfinder when they come on board. She has taken the assessment multiple times. It’s something they use when communicating with people and building out their teams. Again a great tool and resource to learn about other people, how to understand them, to learn how to integrate all of our strengths and to do something great together.
My top 5 strengths are; 1) Responsibility 2) Harmony 3) Consistency 4) Relator 5) Futuristic. You can read more about what those mean in the book or at https://www.gallupstrengthscenter.com/home/en-us/cliftonstrengths-themes-domains.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. I hope you are having a great start to 2019 and have a healthy and prosperous year!
Keith