Growing up around the Harlem Globetrotters taught me to respect preparation. My father and Marques Haynes believed in getting to the gym early, before the crowd arrived and before the pressure started. They wanted to know the floor, the lights, the rims, the dead spots, and anything else that might affect the game. My father taught me that the more you understand your environment, the better prepared you are when things begin moving quickly.
I carried that lesson into coaching, business, television, and life. I like to know the lay of the land. I prepare for meetings, study people, arrive early, and think through situations before I enter them. Preparation gives you confidence, but life eventually puts you in situations that no shootaround can fully prepare you for. There are moments when you have done your homework and still have no idea what the next play should be. My faith became most real to me in those moments.
Faith Had to Become Personal
I did not begin my adult life as someone who had everything figured out spiritually. My wife, Barb, became a born-again Christian before I did. My father and his wife, Lorelei, had also committed their lives to Christ and encouraged me to take my faith more seriously. I resisted them for a while.
I had been raised Catholic and attended Catholic school, so Christianity was familiar to me, but I wanted to know whether what I was seeing in the people around me was real. There was an old commercial that asked, “Is it live? Or is it Memorex?” That became my private way of looking at Christianity. I was conducting my own Memorex test.
I watched Barb, my father, and Lorelei closely. I saw a peace and confidence in them that I was not experiencing in my own life. They still had problems, but something about the way they handled those problems was changing. Eventually, faith became something I had to examine for myself instead of judging from the outside.
That experience still shapes the way I think about faith-based leadership today. People rarely grow because somebody gives them a polished speech about what they should believe. Growth often begins when they see something working in another person’s life and become curious enough to ask why.
When I Had No Idea What to Do
Years later, I found myself working in television at Kenneth Copeland Ministries. I had never planned a career in television production, but one opportunity led to another, and I began producing commercials.
Then I received an assignment for something called a “message product spot.” I had no idea what that meant or how to create one. I had reached one of those moments when experience could only take me so far.
I walked outside and prayed, “God, you’ve got to help me. I do not know where to start.” I remember feeling a sense of peace. I went back inside, sat down with the editor, and suddenly had a clear idea of what I needed. The commercial centered on David and Goliath, and it became one of the best spots I produced during my time there.
That experience stayed with me because the answer did not arrive as a detailed map of everything that would happen next. I received enough clarity to take the next step. Leadership often works that way. We want certainty because certainty feels safe, yet leaders regularly have to make decisions before every variable is known.
Faith gives me a place to go when my preparation reaches its limit. It also reminds me that admitting I need help is part of leadership. Pretending to know everything usually creates more problems than saying, “I need wisdom here.”
Making Quality Decisions
Another man who shaped my leadership was Scott Johnson. Scott had a question he asked whenever I made a decision, especially one he thought deserved more consideration: “Is that a quality decision?”
At first, the question frustrated me because I might have spent hours working through something before he asked it. Eventually, I understood what he was teaching me. He wanted me to examine the process behind my decision. Was I reacting emotionally? Had I considered the consequences? Was I making a choice that would still make sense after the pressure of the moment passed?
That question followed me from work into my marriage, parenting, relationships, faith, and coaching. I still use it today with younger coaches and leaders because leadership is built through decisions, and better decisions help build better people.
Coaching has also taught me that leadership requires knowing who you are leading. Pat Summitt once spoke about understanding a player’s triggers. One athlete may respond to a challenge, while another needs reassurance or quiet direction. Treating people fairly requires paying attention to who they are and what helps them grow.
Faith strengthens that responsibility for me because people are never simply pieces on a board. A coach may be looking at a player, a manager at an employee, or a parent at a child, but each person carries fears, strengths, weaknesses, experiences, and potential that deserve to be understood.
Leading When the Play Is Unclear
I still believe deeply in preparation. I still believe in studying the court before the game starts and doing everything possible to understand the environment. Faith has never given me permission to become careless or unprepared. It gives me somewhere to turn when preparation cannot answer every question.
Today, I understand my identity through my relationship with God and try to carry that identity into every role I hold. I am a husband, father, grandfather, coach, mentor, and leader, and each role presents moments when I do not immediately know what to do.
When that happens, I return to lessons gathered over a lifetime. I prepare carefully, ask for wisdom, pay attention to the people involved, consider whether I am making a quality decision, and move forward with the peace I have. Leadership rarely gives us a perfect view of the entire court. Sometimes we simply need enough clarity to recognize the next play and enough faith to run it.