25 Steps Millennial Leaders Need To Take To Have Sustained Success For Their Entire Career

I spend a lot of time coaching young millennials on what I have seen it takes to be successful.  These young leaders have more talent and potential than I ever did.  It is an absolute joy watching them soar!

On June 1st, Peter King retired from Sports Illustrated after a 29-year career at the magazine and is moving to NBC Sports.  Peter is my favorite pro football writer.  To honor him, the magazine profiled King in its May 7th edition.  What I enjoyed most about the article was how it chronicled his first job just out of college all the way to becoming the league’s most respected reporter.  The lessons for young leaders and how to get started in their chosen profession and achieve its highest rewards is profound.

The following are 25 Steps Millennial Leaders Need To Take To Have Sustained Success For Their Entire Career I gleaned from the article:

1. To Have Sustained Success Never Despise Small Beginnings – Just out of college, King took a job as a cub sports reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer.
2. To Have Sustained Success Be Willing To Pay A Physical Price – During the Cincinnati Bengals 1984 training camp, King noted “We’re in the middle of nowhere Ohio, it’s 89 degrees with 80 percent humidity every day, standing out there for four hours.”
3. To Have Sustained Success Become An Expert At Your Craft – Now with the Newsday and covering the New York Giants, then-head coach Bill Parcells noted of King, “He was eager and very interested in the subject matter. He was a big football fan. Quite interested in the nuances of organizations and how they’re being run. Then the player acquisition and strategic elements of the game. Then, I think more so, he was interested in the personalities of the game, this game for maladjusted people.”
4. To Have Sustained Success Always Arrive Early – King said, “Every day I would show up at [Giants] camp at 7:15 a.m. in the coffee room, which doubled as the press room. All the assistant coaches—[offensive coordinator] Ron Erhardt, Belichick [the defensive coordinator], all the coaches”
5. To Have Sustained Success Outwork Everyone Else – King told Parcells, “There’s 19 papers that cover this team every day. I’m a competitive guy and I want to be good at this.”
6. To Have Sustained Success Do Your Research – Parcells remembered, “I would go to the same places, and I’d take the same route to the stadium. He would know where I was going to be, and once in a while, he would show up there.”
7. To Have Sustained Success Be Relentless – Bob Glauber of Newsday said, “Peter was driven. Parcells nicknamed him ‘Relentless,’ because he was completely fascinated with every aspect of things. He would meet Parcells at his donut shop at 6 in the morning!”
8. To Have Sustained Success You Must Sacrifice – Parcells said, “He knew that I got to work early, and he would show up and be outside the gate at the parking entrance under Giants Stadium. He’d be waiting there.”
9. To Have Sustained Success Get To Know The Influencers In Your Industry – “I soon realized I could call the PR guy of the Bears and he would get me Buddy Ryan on the phone.”
10. To Have Sustained Success Always Be Building Relationships – Former Broncos beat writer Adam Schefter said, “He had a goal to call five different people—people he hadn’t spoken to.”
11. To Have Sustained Success Takes Risks – After winning his first Super Bowl, Parcells was riding from the stadium to the hotel with his security.  King remembered, ” I asked him [if I could ride along], and he said, ‘I don’t care.’”
12. To Have Sustained Success Be A Connector – Former Sports Illustrated managing editor Mark Mulvoy said, “His Rolodex in those days was unmatched. He knew everybody. He knew the owners.”
13. To Have Sustained Success Put People At Ease – Brett Favre said, “He was working, and I had a tendency sometimes to forget that. I think that’s what makes a good media person—you almost tend to forget that they’re working. Peter had that way about him.”
14. To Have Sustained Success Be Reliable – Peyton Manning said, “I don’t know if the term off the record exists much anymore, but it certainly did with Peter. You could tell him things off the record, and it would stay that way.”
15. To Have Sustained Success Build Trust – Boomer Esiason said, “He has the most valuable asset that any reporter could acquire, and that is the absolute unabashed trust from the subject that he is covering.”
16. To Have Sustained Success Love The Business You Are In – Steve Young said, “Not all writers love the game. They cover it, but they don’t love it. And I think Peter’s love of the game came through. Players felt that. You can feel when somebody cares about the game. The questions are way more interesting and thoughtful when you’re covering something that you really have a passion for.”
17. To Have Sustained Success Know Who Really Matters – King noted, “I always tried to get somewhere after a game, with somebody who really mattered. If I could.”
18. To Have Sustained Success Become A Trusted Resource – Manning remembered, “After he interviewed me about how camp was going or that season’s expectations, it would be my turn to interview him about all the places he’d been. He wasn’t revealing any private information, but it was a great way for me to keep up with all that was going on around the league.”
19. To Have Sustained Success Do Things At An Insanely High Level – Former Sports Illustrated writer Mike Silver said, “He did something momentous and novel and uncharted, and he did it at an insanely high level and he almost never stopped.”
20. To Have Sustained Success You Must Make Difficult Decisions – Football writer Ed Werder said, “I thought it was something I might like to get involved in (the creation of the MMQB website), and he pretty much told me right away that he wasn’t hiring all of his friends, that he had a different vision for it.”
21. To Have Sustained Success Create Opportunities For Others – Werder added, “He was going to use it to create opportunities for journalists he thought deserved a bigger platform.”  MMQB writer Jenny Vrentas added, “Peter told me how important it was to him to have more women and more people of color on staff. You could take that two ways. No one wants to be hired because of their gender or race. But that’s not what Peter was saying. He was saying that he was a white male, working in a predominantly white and male industry, and once he got the chance to hire a staff, he wanted to change that.”
22. To Have Sustained Success Do Something No One Has Ever Done Before – Vrentas noted, “When Peter started The MMQB in the spring of 2013, the first thing we did together as a staff was an off-site retreat. We were given one assignment by Peter going in: Brainstorm 10 ideas that no one has ever done before.”
23. To Have Sustained Success Embrace Digital Technology – Chris Stone, Editor In Chief of the Sports Illustrated Group, said, “I really believe he is one of the five most important figures in SI history. Peter almost alone kind of ushered Sports Illustrated into the digital era with his willingness to embrace digital.”
24. Millennials Who Have Sustained Success Are Highly Honored – “Peter would be on the Mount Rushmore of football writers.”  In 2009, King received the Dick McCann Memorial Award from the Pro Football Writers of America which allowed him to join the writer’s wing of the Hall of Fame.  He has been named Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association three times.
25. Millennials Who Have Sustained Success Become Iconic – Manning concluded, “When you think of Sports Illustrated, you think of Peter King. I know I do. It’ll be hard to not see Peter King and Sports Illustrated tied in one.”

What one thing from the list above can you implement to become a better leader?

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