Leadership is Intuitive: The Intuitive Group Shares Mike Tomlin's Commencement Speech on Motivation and Success

With football season fully underway what better way to learn great leadership skills and the power of motivation but from one of this generation’s most influential football coaches: Mike Tomlin, head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Tomlin became the Steelers head coach in January of 2007, as the third youngest coach in NFL history. Tomlin is also the youngest coach to take his team to the Super Bowl not once but twice and find a win at Super Bowl XLIII against the Arizona Cardinals. Of his 5 years with Pittsburgh, Tomlin and the Steelers finished first in the AFC Conference 3 times. With statistics like these you can see why Mike Tomlin is a force to be reckoned with and a leader to follow!

The following are segments from a commencement speech Tomlin gave at Saint Vincent College. He shows how important motivation is to a winning team. If you are unable to motivate your team to success, you will find it challenging to find success yourself. Not only in this speech, but with his team, Tomlin provides a great example of positive motivation.

"I want to encourage you to trust your preparation," Tomlin said, as if he were talking to Ben Roethlisberger and James Harrison instead of all those young faces looking back at him. "Trust what it is that you've done here. I tell you that you are prepared for the game of life. "

"I'd like to reassure you that the first five minutes of the game does not determine the outcome. We might burst out of these doors and have great success right away, but we can't wear ourselves out patting ourselves on the back. Or we might burst out of those doors and trip over a cord or something and fall flat on our face. The first five minutes never determine the outcome of the game. ...

"I'd like to encourage this group to attack and to play to win. But it's also about how you play the game of life. You play with great integrity and honor and class. You must give back to your community and make this a better place to live for all of us. ...

"Lastly -- and I mandate this -- you must continue to dream the wild dreams that you dreamed when you were young. Dream, and dream big. But you have to make a daily commitment to take action to make your dreams a reality."

(Excerpts as found in the Post-Gazette, to watch Mike Tomlin’s full commencement speech, watch here!)