We had a guest speaker at our company meeting this past week. It was Charlie fisher, Co-Passing Game Coordinator and Wide Receivers coach for Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

I always enjoy and appreciate it when companies bring in special speakers to motivate their employees. I think was the first time that I have had a coach from a sports team speak to me in that venue, however. I was not an athlete in high school, and I’m certainly not one now–I don’t even have much interest in watching professional sports of any kind. In spite of the fact that I don’t understand a great deal about Charlie’s work, or his entire sports minded world view, I greatly enjoyed and appreciated his talk. We still had several more meetings left that day, but after listening to Charlie, I really just wanted to get back to focus on my current big project. I wanted to hit the task hard, with everything I had, and rush it down the field for a touchdown.

In the movies, you see coaches screaming at their players and playing on their adrenaline to get them hyped up. I don’t know how Charlie is in the locker room, but in our meeting room, he was pretty laid back. He just shared some of his favorite quotes to us and relayed some stories to us from his experience. Regardless of his methods in the locker room, I’m sure that he does a great job at motivating them to be their best.

One of the things that the Vanderbilt football team does before every game is quote “The Commodore Creed”. I found this to be a very motivating, and enlightening, list of ideas. I found it on a few other web sites, so I thought that I would share it here as well. I hope that it has as great an impact on you as it has on me. Enjoy!