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If you're reading this article, then you already know that the NFL's Arizona Cardinals drafted Kyler Murray with the first-overall pick. And you also know that, after drafting Josh Rosen last year, this is the second year in a row that they've drafted a quarterback in the first round.
Only a few times in the past 50 years has an NFL team has taken a quarterback in the first round in back-to-back drafts. And now, according to Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk.com, the Cardinals have traded away Josh Rosen.
One reason why Murray and Rosen could not have coexisted is that NFL players and coaches have strong Power drives. Through research with thousands of employees and leaders, we’ve discovered that there are five major motivations that drive people’s actions at work; Power, Achievement, Affiliation, Security and Adventure. There’s an online test where you can assess your own drivers, called “What Motivates You?”
People who are driven by a need for power aren’t necessarily looking for a Napoleonic “I want to command the world” kind of dominance, but they do love to be in charge and will even choose a high-ranking title over money. They also want to direct others and to hold the authority to make decisions that impact others. The need for power often includes a desire to be revered and followed.
Power-driven individuals thrive when allowed to stand out and to be great. They embrace competition, want a clear path to advancement, and they dislike fuzzy organizational structures that lack clear decision control and lines of authority. Shared or team-based decision making is a turn-off for the power-driven individual. They don’t necessarily need to make every decision, if they know who, exactly, is in charge and making all the big decisions.
Doesn’t that Power-driven personality accurately describe most of the players and coaches in the NFL? These are not people who love ambiguity, matrixed organizational structure, and self-directed work teams. NFL teams are Power-driven cultures, where even star players often call the team owner “Mister,” and coaches will retain that appellation in perpetuity.
In Power-driven cultures, there needs to be a clear ‘decider.’ Uncertainty about who is actually doing the deciding causes confusion, which in turn causes conflict, which leads to blame and mistakes.
In the NFL, the quarterback is one of the critical decision makers. And power-driven people need to know, with no equivocation, that there is one player at a time who holds that title.
That’s why it would have been inadvisable, in a Power-driven culture like the NFL, to have both Kyler Murray and Josh Rosen vying for the role of decider.
Some would argue that Murray and Rosen should compete for the role, and whoever loses will have to act like a grown-up and support the team. And while that sounds nice, that’s not an argument that anyone who has worked with big egos and office politics would make. Sure, people do come along that can suppress their Power drive, or who have offsetting drives like Affiliation or Achievement, but those folks are rare.
Since most of us, myself included, have never played in the NFL, we can better understand this by using an example from the office environment. We’ve all had moments of irritation watching a colleague mangle a presentation or mismanage a meeting. And in those moments we’ve all thought to ourselves, "I would have done this so much better." As long as we’re capable of keeping those thoughts private, and we’re able to silently endure the meeting, we’ll probably be okay. But we’ve all had times when it was really difficult to control our emotions, when our irritation turned to anger, and we probably created a bit of conflict.
Now imagine that, while you’re watching that colleague mangle the presentation or mismanage the meeting, you’ve got a dozen reporters following you around peppering you with questions like, “Don’t you think you should’ve been leading the presentation?,” or “That was a really bad presentation, don’t you think?,” or “When do you think you’ll get a chance to lead a presentation?” How long do you think it would take before your irritation turned to anger?
We all have moments when we have to take a back seat, and some people handle it better than others. But out of all the five major motivations that drive people’s actions at work, the Power-driven person struggles with this most mightily.
No matter how many pep talks our boss or coach gives us, for the Power-driven personality, taking a back seat or getting demoted will be a struggle. And what’s ironic, of course, is that while the coach of the team would exhort the player to "take one for the team" or "be a team player" or "shut up and do your job" or whatever, how many Power-driven NFL coaches could actually handle being demoted with grace and finesse?
To be a successful leader (or player or coach in the NFL), you need to have some power drive. It’s what gives you the boldness required to take responsibility for the fate of your employees, to be influential, and to survive and thrive even with a spotlight shining on you, monitoring your every move and emotion.
But there will be times when there’s one too many Power-driven people in the room and you’re not the one in charge, that your patience and decorum will be tested. Thus far, Josh Rosen appears to have handled this situation very well. And for that he should be applauded. But it would have been flirting with a lot of conflict to let this situation drag on any further.
