Avoid Paterno’s Leadership Failure by Focusing on Your Purpose

Leadership Unlimited
A Monthly Column by Terry Wall
November 2011: Avoid Paterno’s Leadership Failure by
Focusing on Your Purpose

Joe Paterno’s decision to coach the remaining games,
a decision later nullified by his firing, was a
leadership failure. By focusing on his purpose, he
should have seen that coaching out the schedule was a
terrible idea.

Learn from his leadership failure that you should use
your purpose as a moral compass to guide you in
making tough decisions.

I’ve said before that when we focus on the purpose,
we get ourselves and others more engaged in the work,
more committed to goals, and more productive in our
jobs.

But, whenever we’re faced with big decisions, we need
to ask whether a decision will promote the purpose,
or detract from it. Had Paterno done this, he should
have come to the inescapable conclusion that he
should NOT coach the rest of the season.

A former player said that Paterno had taught him and
his teammates to be men as opposed to the boys they
were when they came to Penn State as freshman. So I
see Paterno’s purpose as “transforming boys into
honorable men.”

Paterno was enabling a child predator to continue
abusing children, and he described this tragedy as
“one of the great sorrows of my life.” Why it wasn’t
the “greatest” sorrow, I don’t know.

But he should have asked himself if coaching the
remaining games might look like “business as usual,”
or not showing enough sorrow for the children who
were abused because of Paterno’s enabling.

He should have let his purpose, as his moral compass,
guide his actions.

If building honorable men means teaching them
leadership, personal responsibility, and compassion
and concern for others, then coaching out the season,
was NOT the right decision.

Some might think he was showing how you carry on with
determination when faced with adversity. I disagree.

Maybe you do that with a “personal” adversity, the
death of a loved one, or something like that. But
this was larger than any personal loss. This was a
tragedy of stunningly profound proportions, involving
the sexual abuse of totally innocent children.

The moral compass of building honorable men should
have shown him that this tragedy was bigger than Joe
Paterno, or the team, or the university. The best way
to build honorable men would have been to retire
immediately.

And, although Paterno isn’t the only person
responsible for this tragedy, focusing on his purpose
when he first discovered the abuse would have
prompted him to take appropriate action. That would have
prevented subsequent abuse.

Leaders take responsibility for their actions, and
have laser-like focus on their purpose.

In his decision to coach the remaining games, Joe
Paterno, a talented man who has done a lot of good,
didn’t focus on his purpose.

Know your purpose. Articulate it. Use it as your
moral compass.

Until next edition, keep leading the way!

Copyright (C) 2011 by Terry Wall