‘The Hall’ is the single greatest individual award that can be bestowed upon anyone in American professional baseball. The numbers he amassed over 20 seasons in Major League Baseball place him among the greats, and the joy of watching ‘Big Papi’ stride to the plate with bad intentions for opposing pitchers satisfied millions over the course of his career.
People will debate his greatest contribution to the game and if you pick up any one of the hundreds of articles written about him you will read that his personality and natural ability to lead are even larger than his physical stature.
I learned all this in person at Spring Training in 2007, when the impact he had on a certain 29-year-old journeyman minor league player kickstarted my journey in leadership.
Reaching your leadership ceiling
I am a big believer that leaders can be born but they can also be made in the sense that even if people have natural ‘born leader’ qualities the true height of that ability can’t be realized unless they continue to learn, train and exercise those abilities. Everyone is born with what I call a ‘leadership ceiling’. Whether that person reaches their leadership ceiling or not is dependent on a multitude of factors, such as, how influential can that person’s leadership be in a multitude of environments? Does a person have the requisite skill set to lead in any environment and most importantly can they activate those skillsets when it matters most? The best leaders on the planet exhibit a few crucial qualities regardless of who they lead.
At the Boston Red Sox’s Spring Training camp in late February 2007, I carried my bags into their clubhouse in Fort Meyers, Florida, and began to learn that Ortiz had those qualities in spades. I was heading into my seventh season as a professional, with my third club, and had yet to crack a Major League roster. Honestly, with my 30th birthday coming in October, I was questioning my time in professional sport.
Nevertheless, Spring Training can be a tremendous opportunity for younger guys or journeyman like me to make an impression on the coaches and decision makers. The second I walked into that clubhouse the place was different. There was a feeling of calm, easiness and focus on the task at hand: winning the World Series. This team was laser-focused on doing just that. This team was different too in that it was a very veteran clubhouse, including Jason Varitek, Manny Ramirez, Mike Lowell, Julio Lugo, Curt Schilling and, of course, ‘Big Papi’.
The origins of Ortiz’s nickname are rooted in American baseball culture. The most senior Latin leader in the clubhouse is referred to as ‘papi’, which loosely translated from Spanish means ‘daddy’. Major League teams and their affiliates will have rosters filled with players from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia and Curacao. They are signed between the age of 16 and 18 and usually start their careers in club-operated academies in the ‘DR’. The best will progress to the US where these young men are asked to learn a foreign language, assimilate to another culture and, oh yeah, play ball at a high level! On the flip side, you have a group of young American players who are yet to be exposed to Latin players.
What we know about human behavior tells us that people tend to assimilate in groups of similar people. Clubhouse culture in baseball is no different. In each of these groups – white guys from the West Coast, black guys, Northeast guys, Southern guys, the Latin guys – leaders tend to emerge from within these groups and, usually, these guys are comfortable enough in their own skin to bridge the gaps and pull people together. For the Latin players, the role of the ‘papi’ is crucial. With that moniker comes responsibility and, often, this man is not just the leader of the Latin players but a bridge to the coaching staff and everyone else on the team.
Intentionality and integrity
At Fort Meyers, I was assigned the number 76 – an awful number. You tell yourself it doesn’t matter but we all know it’s terrible. I would arrive at 5:30am for the workouts that typically didn’t get started until 9am because you never know what might happen. Lift, eat, sort equipment, adjust to any changes, whatever needed to be done. I remember the third or fourth day of camp at about 5:50am. I had just changed into shorts and a t-shirt and, out of the weight room having finished his workout, comes ‘Big Papi’.
‘Hey, what you doing here? It’s too early,’ he said in a deep voice with a heavy Dominican accent.
‘Papi’, I said, while pointing to the #76, ‘man, unless you’re early they forget about you!’ Part of me was kidding, part of me was dead serious. His answer was something that I’ll never forget.
‘Nah, you get invited to this camp, you have a chance to help us win a World Series and we gonna do that. Get your bat… let’s go hit!” He didn’t know me from the next guy but I was in that clubhouse and I had the same uniform on. At this point of his career he had been a three time all-star, a World Series champion and a World Series Most Valuable Player. At 6am he was changing his shirt post-gym workout and heading to the batting cage.
With his actions he was saying ‘we win things around here, this is how we work and you’re part of it’. This was his routine and he was going to do this whether I was in the building or not. I happened to be there so this was his opportunity to show me the culture in the building without saying a word. Leaders such as ‘Big Papi’ act with intention because they have a vision of where they see themselves and their club and a clear plan of how they can get there.
It spoke to his accountability too. Accountability and integrity are essential and connected, as it’s very easy to call for accountability in those you are leading. Holding people to account for their preparation, performance or work is easy – holding yourself to those same standards signals integrity. What are you doing when no one is watching you? Are you holding yourself to the same standard that you expect from those you lead? In world sport today, managers, coaches, or technical directors have a vision of what they want that culture to be but ultimately it must be player-led.
Communication and personal connection
It was 6:10am and I was sat in the batting cage with Big Papi, and Wily Mo Pena (a massive prospect at the time for Boston) taking turns. While Manny and Wily Mo would hit, Papi and I were in deep conversation about all number of things. He’d ask: where are you from? Where have you played? Are you married? Do you have kids?
When he hit, I watched him work through his hitting routine, how professional it was, how detailed and demanding he was of himself, how he watched Ramirez work (Manny is a legend himself). After I had my turn he asked me questions about my approach and the things I thought about when I was at the plate: did I like hitting left-handed or right-handed better? He was asking me about my baseball journey, how I ended up signing with Boston? Where did I feel most comfortable playing defensively? How did I believe I could help the club? What did the administration tell me about the opportunity I had in the organization?
Papi wanted to know who he was working with. He wanted to know what I was about. His approach in asking me these questions made me want to answer them without hesitation. Additionally, this was a two-way street. I didn’t know him, I just knew what I saw on TV. This was my opportunity to find out, besides talent, what made this guy tick. What was his journey to this point? One of the core beliefs I have in leadership and people development is the player resides within the man: if you want direct access to the player you better know the human first. He had an innate understanding that people’s talents, whatever they are, shine the brightest when there is a level of comfort in the environment.
That day the #76 felt important – like I really did have a chance to impact this club. Remember, this is 2007 and we weren’t talking about psychological safety then, but that’s exactly what it was. There was an easiness about him that was contagious. I hit early with that group the next ten days and every day was just like this. We got into real conversations, and it was incredible.
The ability for leaders to connect with everyone is vital to that person reaching their leadership ceiling or simply just having leadership qualities. ‘Big Papi’ went all out.
Authenticity
About two weeks into camp, the exhibition games against other teams start and the biggest beneficiaries of these early opportunities are guys just like myself. And I played terrific.
Early one morning I was in the cafeteria and in comes ‘Papi’. ‘Oye [Spanish for ‘listen’], I see you, you playing your ass off,’ he says. He grabs a bowl of oatmeal and takes a seat next to me. ‘There is a guy in this clubhouse that come up for one game – one series to help us win the division.’ I remember sitting in my locker later that day thinking this guy is unbelievable. The level of professionalism in his preparation. The respect he garnered not just from his play but also by how he treated his teammates, coaches and support staff. Most importantly, he was REAL!!!
There is a saying in baseball: ‘just remember, you can’t fool the clubhouse’. People know when you are real and people know when you are phony. When you are in a leadership position and you are an imposter in any way, you will lose the group.
Later in camp, the big boys were playing five to six innings and then the subs entered the game. We were playing the New York Mets and I replaced Ramirez in the sixth. When those guys get out of the game, they get whatever recovery they need from the physio team, shower, then leave. Well in the top of the seventh inning I was playing left field and Lastings Milledge hit an absolute rocket down the line near the corner. I took off full speed, located the baseball and laid flat out to make the best catch of my entire 14-year professional career.
At the end of the inning, I ran into the dugout and waiting on me at the top step in street clothes was ‘Big Papi’. He was watching the rest of the game as he was doing his recovery with the physio staff. When I’d made the catch he’d ran outside and was waiting for me at the top step. ‘Oye, that was unbelievable! I’m telling you, you gonna help us win something!’ When he’d first said that to me almost a month earlier, I’m sure he said that to put me at ease in the beginning of camp. Now, I had played well and he noticed. I believe in that moment he really believed ‘this guy really might be able to help us.’
Well, he wasn’t kidding the Boston Red Sox won something in 2007: the World Series and, believe it or not, they did it without me! I spent the entire season at Pawtucket, the Triple A affiliate. I had one of my best seasons as a professional and I never got called up. The younger version of me was crestfallen that I didn’t get promoted to the majors that year. The version that is writing this piece realizes the intellectual currency that I took from that experience. What I got was a six-week case study on what high level leadership really looked like up close.
Leaders connect on a personal level with those they lead. Leaders are vulnerable and transparent, understanding that authenticity in relationships is central to culture creation. Leaders realize they will accomplish nothing by themselves, and they need the contribution of everyone in the operation. Leaders make everyone in the operation feel like their contribution to the group is important. Leaders set the tone for what the standard is in the organization. Leaders do all these things and do so in different styles – we will cover that in later posts.
David ‘Big Papi’ Ortiz is a three-time World Series champion, a legend of the sport and now a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. I’m not going to pretend that I know him because I don’t. We don’t talk and I don’t have his number. Here is what I do know: Papi has influenced countless lives by modeling what real leadership looks like. For me, that makes him a Hall of Fame leader.
Bobby is one of six Leaders Performance Advisors, a group of leading performance thinkers providing more subject expertise to our member-only content and learning resources. To find out more about all our Performance Advisors, click here.
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By John Portch
“And the sense of leading or inspiring others to do things they don’t necessarily think they can do.”
Miller is speaking at our latest Keiser Webinar, which was titled ‘Developing the Person and the Practitioner’. He is joined by Duncan Simpson, the Director of Personal Development at IMG Academy and moderator Dehra Harris, who serves as Assistant Director of High Performance Operations at the Toronto Blue Jays.
The trio explored people development on a personal and professional level; what is done well, and what could be done better.
Scaffold your development as you scale
You are perhaps never at a better time to restructure than when you have reached a low ebb. Miller explains that British Fencing currently has just one podium athlete but that he, in his role as Head of People & Culture, is working with the wider team to build elite foundations ahead of the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane. He says: “[We want to] create an environment where people learn from whatever lens they’re viewing the programme through – be it a coach, be it an umpire, be it a parent or stakeholder in the journey – we’re building those world class foundations to grow and scaffolding the learning as we go through without having too much expectation placed on the individual athletes.”
The IMG Academy, which is based in Bradenton, Florida, serves 1,300 student-athletes across eight different sports, and employs over 800 staff. It is more advanced than British Fencing in its efforts to scale and support development but, as Simpson explains, there is a constant process of breaking down the silos that form between subject matter experts. For him, the key lies in its structure where the four facets of student-athlete life – school, campus life, sports and athletic & personal development – are given an almost equal footing. “How organisations are structured actually plays a massive role in the processes and how we see collaboration.”
The power of informal learning opportunities
Structures are important but culture also has a role to play and this informs the thinking around the Toronto Blue Jays’ new training facility, as Harris explains. “If we only meet separately then it doesn’t work,” she says of the staff based at the 65-acre Player Development Complex, which opened in Dunedin, Florida, in February 2021. “Having times where we’re socially together across disciplines helped and not just jumping into meeting structure but having five minutes of shooting the breeze where everybody’s just talking as humans. We recognised that we needed to shift from this relentless productivity of Zoom.”
Performance staff and coaches are also brought together through what Harris calls ‘intentional collisions’, a process that is also popular at Google. She says: “Strength & conditioning sitting down with hitting, we’re going through a bunch of players, we’re looking through an S&C lens and a hitting lens and we’re talking about a specific hitting goal. That’s a place where we’re anchoring a goal but maybe bringing people who aren’t always in the same room together.”
Do with not to the learner
“I need to have a ‘see, feel, hear’ sense of what’s going on so that I can, with the rest of the team, support [the athlete’s] learning in a way commensurate and at a tempo which is good for them,” says Miller. “Hearing, and feeling, and sensing what’s going on with the learner and how we build the learning around them in their context is really important.”
He sums it up with a pithy aphorism: “do with not to the learner.”
At IMG Academy, Simpson tells the virtual audience that learning is divided into three buckets: what the individual prefers to improve in, what they’re required to improve in, and where they are actually improving. He says: “It’s getting an understanding of those three elements. The actual development part is ‘maybe I can have a little impact there’, but it’s also getting them to understand that, ‘yes, you want to develop in this area and that’s fantastic but we can have multiple areas that we’re passionate about but your role may have evolved and changed, or the demands have changed, and you’re required to improve in this area.’”
The open conversation around those three elements, which can be scaled from the individual to the wider team, are the starting point for goal setting each year.
Comfortable being uncomfortable (and curious)
Miller wants people at British Fencing to be comfortable being uncomfortable and, for the audience, draws on his experience serving aboard a nuclear submarine in the Royal Navy. “When people join a submarine they’re walking into a learning environment, which is a high performance learning environment,” he says of an experience he and his shipmates called the ‘fourth dimension’.
“The importance of that is regardless of where you are hierarchically, when you walk into a submarine for the first time you are a learner and the philosophy and the culture inside that submarine is that we need you to be the best version of yourself as soon as possible because you might walk past an incident and you need to know how to deal with it because you’re the first person there. You can’t rely on a subject matter expert to come and bale you out, as it were. That sense of learning, that sense of curiosity, is inculcated in every fabric of every human interaction inside a nuclear submarine.
“Everybody takes responsibility for their individual learning but also their collective learning.”
It is an attitude he has taken into his post-military career with England Rugby, the English Institute of Sport and now British Fencing. “If we can help people to flex their curiosity muscle and encourage people to ask really insightful questions and be curious and want to develop themselves, where we get to is a sense where ‘it’s OK to ask a good question. It’s fine. It’s OK to not have the answer.’ But what we’re encouraging is the ability to be hungry for that learning.”
Making learners feel safe
Harris, who previously worked with medical students, recalls a time when she experienced a safety shift when delivering feedback. “A friend helped me to think about the difference between calling someone out and calling someone in,” she says. “When you call someone out there are relationship stakes. I might fire you, I might do something at you; there’s going to be something happen versus if I’m calling you in, it can be very direct but I’ve removed the relationship stakes by saying at the beginning of the conversation: ‘I appreciate that you’re here, I see all the hard work.’ This is potentially a difficult conversation but there are no stakes. This is us being honest about what is happening. I have to give difficult feedback but I want you to be very clear that we’re working on whatever I say.”
In addressing the question of belonging and psychological safety, Simpson cites American entrepreneur Charlie Munger. “He always talks about how much he underestimates the power of incentives,” he says. “When I sit down with individuals, I may have this picture of how great it is to work here, and we’re all pushing in the same direction, but I also need to understand the individual’s incentives. Why do they come to work, what are they here to do, what are they motivated by?”
Time is another factor, says Miller, who stresses the importance of trust and rapport. “Also with the learner, it’s giving them attainable goals in the short-term so that they feel success for themselves. Harris concurs, adding: “Succeeding is cooler than only failing.”
Tracking growth and development
The panel agree that evaluating learning can be difficult and Miller uses the Kirkpatrick Model, which is widely used for evaluating training and learning programmes, to explain why he feels he has fallen short at times.
“Organisations that plan big learning and development programmes often stop at the reactionary phase, the foundation phase i.e. ‘how did it feel? What was the learning like?’” he says. “The next level to that is how you are transferring that knowledge into your context. Then Kirkpatrick will suggest, actually, it’s a bit deeper than that because it’s how are you applying it? This takes time. Where we want to get to is how has it behaviourally made a difference to the organisation?
“When I think about learning programmes now, I think about how I’m going to evaluate it in the first six to eight weeks after the experience; what does the transfer of knowledge into the context look like? I plan that, six weeks out to three months. Three months out is how they’re applying it in their context and then, finally, in a year’s time, if we review and reflect on that learning experience for those individuals, what does that look like and how does it change the human behaviours inside the organisation?”
