If you stroll down the bargain bin section of just about any book store that still exists in the country, you’ll find amongst the spattering of cook books and returned James Patterson novels, a healthy litany of “this sport and Psychology” books. You know: “Hockey and Psychology”, “Football and Psychology”, and on and on. These books are meant to be short term primers into the world of psychology — getting casual readers to think about psychological studies by framing them with familiar things.
What many of these books, and indeed what real, actual studies have in common, is that personality roles tend to play a huge part in the way we interact with each other in the world. It is a key part of team building to be sure you don’t have too many of this type or that type of person — that any sort of team, from a football team to an office team, are put together with many personality types and different kinds of people fulfilling different roles.
These roles are mostly what you’d expect: The Fighter, who is in the real world generally the person who most ably handles the dirty work of a situation, is willing to bend the rules and go farther than his/her compatriots to see that a task is complete. The shortcomings of this role are obvious.
There is the Superstar, who is in the real world generally the type of worker who is very process oriented. They can get lots of things done in a short amount of time, but are generally unquestioning and do not deal well with controversy or nuances.
There is the Grinder, who is not particularly talented but makes up for this with hard work and reliability.
There is the Roleplayer, who are limited by both their ability and drive, but accomplish the small, base tasks of a team.
There is the Communicator, who conveys good will and is generally affable towards everyone, but can be bullied and pushed around.
And there is the Leader, who is supposed to embody some small aspect of all of these qualities and shortcomings, and guides the team in a particular direction. The leader is assertive, makes the tough decisions, sets the tone and deals with the consequences.
All of us, of course, has at least a little bit of all of these traits, but most of us are predominantly one or another, even if we don’t suspect it initially.
I have, as most everyone has, I assume, spent some percentage of my private life wondering to myself about who I actually am — about what words I could use to sum up the wholeness that is me. That if a movie was to be made about my life, with theme song and all, what would those details sound like, look like? Am I Leader? A Communicator? A Fighter?
What would my friends say about me in confidence? What would my enemies say?
This is a part of life, of growing as a person, of becoming humble. Through this — eventually even if we don’t initially — we all end up looking at the world that way: by how we look at ourselves, and why. I’d eventually decided on my own, but had also been reinforced by my bosses, friends and family, that I am more of a Leader than anything else. That in many instances, people look to me for answers.
(And you’d think, considering my penchant for trying to write long-winded posts, sometimes about nothing, that I’d be a Communicator).
But it is not always easy to come to a realization, or to have a feeling about who you are. It is not always pleasant to look at yourself in that way. Human nature is a sometimes ugly thing, and no matter how we try, we can never escape that. But it feels like we are always improving, even when the limitations of human nature or the emotions of a moment get the best of us. Even when it feels like we are broken by our own mistakes. Improvement is an ever present thing; it’s not something you can escape, necessarily. I feel like the worst people in the world are improving ever so slightly, too.
So all of us, individually, are striving toward an individual ‘something’. We all are set forth on fulfilling that vision of who we view ourselves to be.
I’ve never really understood Donte Whitner. From the first moments he was a Buffalo Bill until now, he has existed to me only as an enigma. Sometimes
ingly overrated, and in brief instances the flashes of a true leader, something we’d been starved for as Bills fans. But never meeting his potential, never meeting our expectations, and never existing in a world where that leadership existed for too long.
My first personal communication with a professional athlete was with Whitner, who was as active in communicating with sports fans before Twitter as he has been since Twitter. Whitner had just recently been detained by police in Ohio because of the strange and unverified events that saw him pitted again a few officers after a party. In the proceeding days, outpouring of both support and criticism filled the Bills safety’s facebook wall.
Regrettably (or perhaps not regrettably), I put in my two cents. I don’t remember the exact words I used, but the several-years-later summation of my post was that this was an opportunity for Whitner to grow as a person, to become a man in ways he wasn’t before, and to become the leader that he claimed he wanted to be.
An hour or so later, I got a private message from Whitner to my facebook account with the words “GUYS LIKE YOU MAKE ME SICK”, all caps, and very little, as it goes, tact.
I can’t imagine that my words impacted Whitner any more than the other endless criticism and praise he was receiving, and firmly believed then, as I do now, that he must have spent a lot of time that day personally responding to many of his critics, probably with similar vitriol.
I didn’t then — and don’t know — feel sorry for or angry with Donte Whitner for the way he sees the world. I don’t care about the way he conducts himself.
Leadership, in the end, is about supreme confidence and standing up for one’s convictions. It is about always being firm in the faith that no matter the trials of the night, the day will come. It is about sometimes not knowing any better, but knowing still that there are people who believe in you. All of that, of course, comes first from believing in oneself.
Somewhere along the journey, Donte Whitner looks to have stopped believing in himself. His reactions now are only reactions in a self-serving sort of way. He has become the wounded, cornered animal, desperate clawing at shadows. And as the pressure increases, as the gap widens, as the team he wanted to lead forsakes him more and more, those desperate claws get sharper and less accurate.
It is sometimes hard to see it this way in the moment, but, leaders are left with making tough choices. Leaders are the ones who have the most enemies, because they are the ones who most often have to stand up for what they think is wrong and what they think is right. They draw the lines in the sand and defend them earnestly. But a leader needs followers, and when a leader stops believing in themselves, so too do the followers stop following.
The last year or so has been a bitter one for Donte Whitner. Bills fans appeared finally to write off the possibility of Whitner ever succeeding to his potential, and, seemed to regret the idea that they once looked toward him with such anticipation.
Whitner has grown increasingly frustrated with his inability to rise to the occasion, with his inability to rally supporters, and with the team’s inability to win football games. After one particularly difficult loss, he reportedly retreated to the locker room, collapsed into his hands and cried.
There is to be no denying that in his own way, Donte Whitner has very badly wanted to be a leader and decision maker for the team. There is also no denying, unfortunately, that this has failed miserably.
Things could have always worked out differently, though. Had Donte Whitner taken the Lee Evans track: to be a underachieving but ultimately under-the-radar first round draft pick, he may exist in the minds of Bills sports fans only as frustrating because he’d never met his potential. Instead, he wanted more: said give me the keys to the car, and I will get us to our destination. The crime, it seems, was in the wanting.
In the end, Donte failed as a leader here, failed in finding himself, and now it is probably time to move on. I have faith that Donte Whitner, under the right circumstances, would be a fantastic leader of men and a quality player in the National Football League. But not here now nor ever. These sort of divorces — they are permanent ones.
Donte is not unlike most of us in that whatever he tries in life is often littered with mistakes. That is the funny beauty of life, that we don’t always rise to the challenge, that allows us to embrace the actual victories. Like us, he is sometimes loud and sometimes wrong and sometimes disappointing to others. He is the total sum of his faults, and, likely little more than his very human ability to overcome them.
If we feel embarrassed or sad for, angry at, or indifferent towards Donte Whitner, we should recognize that he probably should not feel that way about himself. No, Donte, we don’t want you back, and no Donte, we’re not friends. But deep down, I still wish you all the best.
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