My kids are watching The Blind Side as I write this. I’m sort-of watching and writing, but I saw it some months ago when I took my nine-year-old son to see it in a tiny (75-seat) theater in Friday Harbor in Washington’s San Juan Islands.
(The island in the San Juans where we have a place has no movie theater. It does have three espresso stands, four real restaurants and a few other places to eat, perhaps a dozen stop signs on an island twice the size of Manhattan, no chain stores, more sheep and cows than people, a plethora of eagles, ravens, and turkey buzzards, a nine-hole golf course where I actually managed to shoot a 46 last week, and an almost unlimited amount of peace and quiet. But I digress.)
In brief, the “blind side” is a quarterback’s back. A right-handed quarterback stands with his body facing right as he prepares to throw; anyone coming from his left arrives unseen, occasionally delivering a devastating hit. The film opens with the horrifying sack of Joe Theisman in 1985. I’m not a big football fan, but I was still in NYC at the time and happened to be watching the Giants game that Monday night. I will never forget the sight of Theisman’s leg bent in a Z shape from the compound fracture, and the moment the film started in Friday Harbor I knew what was coming and had to avert my eyes. I didn’t watch that hit in the film today, either.
But over the years, I’ve thought about that moment often. It happens all too often in the business world, where a team member fails to protect a colleague’s blind side. It’s even worse when it’s the employee’s manager delivering the hit that puts the employee out of the game, so to speak. Some managers appear to get a kick out of it, but most, like Lawrence Taylor (who delivered the hit with no intention of doing that kind of damage), inflict career-ending damage without meaning to. In fact, like Taylor, they’re often surprised and horrified by the result.
The difference is that in football, players play with the knowledge that they are at severe risk, that their careers could end at any moment. In the business world, that self-knowledge is largely absent.
If you’re a manager, it’s up to you to protect your employees’ blind side. You need to keep the blitzing executive linebackers away, even if you incur a penalty in doing so.
Do you do so?
How well do you protect your team’s blind side?
If you’ve never thought about it, watch what happens to Joe Theisman. You may want to avert your eyes 52 seconds into this (not very clear) clip. But whether you want to watch a closeup of his leg shattering or not, think about Joe Theisman and your team.
And protect their blind side.
As a manager, that’s your job.
(And in the spirit of full disclosure, while I shot a 46 on the second round of nine, I shot a miserable 56 on the first nine. I love the game, even though I’m pretty terrible at it.)
