"How are you? Nice to see you!" These weren't simply polite words, but were Mike "Pinball" Clemons efforts during an hour-long address to make each of the over 900 students in the crowd feel special. "You're important because you breathe.
"How are you? Nice to see you!"
These weren't simply polite words, but were Mike "Pinball" Clemons efforts during an hour-long address to make each of the over 900 students in the crowd feel special.
"You're important because you breathe. You're a human being. No human being is more important than another. I don't care if you are the Prime Minister for me you are our future, he is becoming closer and closer to being a has-been," said Clemons.
Clemons was the first keynote speaker for the Canadian Leadership Conference, held last week in Weyburn.
He spoke Wednesday morning to the large crowd at Crescent Point Place and being his trademark self, pinballed around the crowd, high-fiving students and meeting the students face to face.
Clemons got his fame in the CFL, as he played for the Toronto Argonauts, where he had a Hall of Fame career and was the first and only professional football player to have over 3,000 al-purpose yards in one season. Although he is one of the best CFL players of all time and Grey Cup champion coach, Clemons doesn't believe it was that special.
"When I look at what I actually did, I come to the humble conclusion that all I did was run with a piece of leather for a few miles and it took me 12 years to do it," he said.
"If you want to know who I am? I am the husband of Diane. We have been together for 28 years and I live to serve her and I quite enjoy it too, because she is a hottie. And, also I am a father of Rachel, Raven and Rylie."
Football is what Clemons did, it was not who he was. He knows what drives him and his key question for the students was, "what and who is driving you?"
Clemons said his greatest strength is that he knows how important he is not. This is what is key in leadership, he said.
"As leaders many times our focus is about getting to the top and being in front. The true leader, though, is not the one who is standing up saying 'look at me!' because as you know, none of us can do it by ourselves."
The great leader isn't the one who elbows and scratches and does whatever it takes to make it to the top, he said.
"If you elbow and scratch, there are people with bloody noses and scratched corneas The true leader is the one on the bottom of the pile that has a bloody nose and is picking everyone else up."
Life isn't about you, and it's not about stuff, it's about people, he added.
"The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways but narrow viewpoints. We spend more but have less. We buy more but enjoy less. We have bigger houses but smaller families, more conveniences but less time, more degrees but less sense, more knowledge but less judgement, more experts but more problems. We drink too much, smoke too much, speak too much, drive too fast, get too angry too quickly, stay up too late, get up too early, watch TV too much and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom and hate too often," said Clemons, quoting a famous poem.
Real leadership puts others first, he said after telling a story about Damon Allen, who was one of the best quarterbacks in CFL history, was the leading passer in professional football history and also ran for over 10,000 yards in his career, more than Clemons.
It was the morning of the 2004 Grey Cup and Allen was giving a pre-game speech to his Toronto Argonaut teammates, whom Clemons was the coach of.
"He stands up, physically shaking, his eyes have welled up with water He looked at our defensive captain (and said) 'Mike O'Shea, I play this game for you, Tony Miles, I play this game for you, Michael Palmer, I play this game for you'. What he was saying was this game isn't about me," Clemons continued, looking into the students' eyes, shaking their hands.
"Hey, how you doing? Nice to see you. I play this game for you."
