Condoleezza Rice

You may know Dr. Condoleezza Rice because of her role as Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, and Director of Stanford’s Hoover Institution, but did you know she was the first woman on the College Football Playoff Committee? And that her football coach father taught her so much about the game, she could break down defenses at just six years old?

In this episode, Dr. Rice recalled a moment when she was eleven and was watching a football game between Notre Dame and Michigan State with her father John Wesley Rice. Late in the game, Notre Dame Coach Ara Parseghian went for the tie, thus ensuring that the Fighting Irish were named the national champions and Alabama, where the Rice family lived, would be left out. “Man, there needs to be a playoff!” exclaimed the angry elder Rice as he slammed down the remote.

Little could father or daughter have anticipated that 47 years later, in October of 2013, little Condi, now known as Madam Secretary Rice, would be selected as one of the 13 inaugural members of the College Football Playoff Committee (CFP), charged with picking the college teams to compete in just the kind of playoff format her father had wanted.

“Inaugural” would be one good word to apply to Rice, who was also one of the first two women to be invited to join the previously all-male Augusta National Golf Course. But I think the better term to describe Rice would be “bridger,” as in one who builds bridges between people, organizations… even countries.

“If you are deciding that you’re going to try to play the role of bringing people together, bridging differences, you have to take your own ego aside for a bit,” noted Rice. “Rather than impose my views, my role is to listen very carefully to everybody and to see if I can hear things that might suggest there are common beliefs here.”

Rice makes listening sound easy, but in this episode, she revealed herself as a true competitor: one who has excelled at applying what she has learned with a steady and quiet confidence that is extraordinary by any measure.

You Will Learn:

• 3:00 The elements Condoleezza looks for when identifying a great team.
• 10:00 How football served as a “bridging language.”
• 12:00 Behind the scenes of the College Football Playoff Committee (CFP).
• 13:00 How serving on the CFP taught her to assess teams “with a coach’s eye.”
• 15:00 How to be a better listener and recognize common ground.
• 19:00 Lessons learned from being “terrible” at figure skating.
• 25:00 The moment she was invited to join Augusta National Golf Club.
• 28:00 What she learned playing golf with Bubba Watson.
• 30:00 What her mother and father taught her about giving back.
• 34:00 How to turn a group of individuals into a team.
• 36:00 How to eliminate gossip on your team.
• 37:00 How to prevent “losing the locker room.”

Learn More:

• Follow Condoleezza Rice on Twitter.
• Learn more about the Hoover Institution.
• Four questions every great leader can ask to assess their team’s competitive standing:

  1. Does your team have an identity?

  2. Does your team have a leader?

  3. Do you trust each other?

  4. Who do you play?