Three Leadership Lessons from Jets GM Joe Douglas | The GM Journey

We're back with a new episode of The GM Journey! In the latest episode, I took the camper van up to Bedminster, New Jersey, to catch up with New York Jets General Manager Joe Douglas. Joe's NFL executive career began with the Baltimore Ravens and took him to the Chicago Bears and Philadelphia Eagles prior to being named GM of the Jets in June of 2019.

After a stretch of challenging seasons, Joe is focused on turning the proverbial ship around, and was kind enough to chat with me about what he's learned in the role thus far and what his vision is for the future.

Listen to the full episode here .

Here are three of my favorite leadership lessons that Joe touched on during our conversation.

1. So much of success is about having the right people.

The vast majority of general managers in the league are brought into their role because the organization needs a change in direction. A new leader needs to come in to turn things around, inject a fresh approach, and, the organization hopes, ultimately bring more success to the team. For Joe, a huge part of this mission has been looking at other successful organizations and reverse engineering what made them thrive. In doing so, Joe has realized that so much of success boils down to having the right people.

"So you just reverse engineer and [ask], 'Why was this organization so successful?' And so you take those points, and like so many things in life, it's the people and the type of person you're bringing in. And so you make it about the people, and you take all the things that you felt made Baltimore successful, what you felt gave us a chance to win the Super Bowl in 2013. What were those traits? What were those qualities when you're building a team? And we've tried to implement that here, and obviously, it's an enormous task trying to turn the ship around, but I really do feel like we have the right people to do it."

2. You don't have to be good at everything, but you have to be self aware.

I've asked each general manager to share one piece of advice that they would give to an aspiring sports executive, knowing what they know now. Joe had a great answer - you don't have to be good at everything, but you have to have the self awareness to recognize your strengths and weaknesses and to work on those weaknesses.

"I think self awareness is such a key thing in any walk of life and success in any business, whether it's business or sports, you know, having self awareness and knowing what your strengths and weaknesses are. So if you're an admin guy that's trying to get into overseeing all personnel, you work on your weaknesses, work on your evaluations. If you're a college guy - like I was coming up the ranks on the college side - you'll work on your pro evaluations, get to know more about the operation side, the admin side. So have the self awareness to know what your strengths are, always continue to work on those, but really attack the things that you don't do every day."

3. The best leaders lift as they climb.

As I got into the later stages of my career and began to think more about legacy, one of the things that became most important to me was mentorship, and building and nurturing relationships with up-and-coming leaders. Talking to Joe, it became clear that this is extremely important to him too, and while a big part of his job is helping his players achieve their goals, it extends to helping his staff grow, flourish, and achieve their goals as well.

"You want to help players achieve their goals and you want to help the people in your department achieve their goals too. I can remember saying in one of our meetings with the group, 'I hope that there's 10 general managers in here, and I hope that you're all way better than me. If I can, I want to help you guys achieve that goal.' So let's work together. Let's have fun. Let's roll our sleeves up and get this thing going. I think every good leader should strive for that, right? I think that's such a cool legacy to leave."

Be sure to listen to the full episode to hear more wisdom and advice from Joe!

Next up on The GM Journey: defending Super Bowl Champ and General Manager of the Los Angeles Rams, Les Snead!?#RamsHouse

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