Coaching Ordinary People Into Extraordinary Teams

Jon Clifton:
[0:08] Have you ever wondered what it takes to be a great athlete? How about what it takes to be a great mentor or a great advocate? Well, DeMoine Adams knows because he's all of those things and more. DeMoine is the CEO of TeamMates Mentoring, and he's made it his life's work to elevate the next generation of young people. He's a model of passion, principles, and leadership, all traits that he works tirelessly to instill in each of the 43,000 young people that have benefited from the TeamMates program. From the fields of professional football to the boardroom in the C-suite, today's guest is a leader and youth mentor with a big story to tell. I hope you get as much inspiration from his words as I did.

DeMoine, can you talk just a little bit about what is it that you're trying to accomplish at TeamMates? What are you doing? How do you use strengths in that program?

DeMoine Adams:
[0:56] You know, I lead with Futuristic, Significance, Individualization, Strategic, as well as Relator. I'm trying to bring significance to the organization. Started by Tom and Nancy Osborne 32 years ago, this is a legacy that I want to make sure that it continues long-term. And so to bring significance, to make everyone feel like they belong a part of something special, particularly our students, which our mission is to help them to reach their full potential. That's really what it's all about.

Jon Clifton:
[1:29] Now, can you talk a little bit more about how is strengths embedded throughout the organization? I know that in Coach Osborne's book, he talks about how mentors and mentees are actually paired based on their strengths. Can you talk about that process?

DeMoine Adams:
[1:44] You know, I'll start with co-founder Tom Osborne, who pretty much was in grad school with the founder of just strengths, Gallup in general. And for him to take that philosophy and bring it out to his football players to focus on what they do good instead of what they do wrong, their strengths instead of their weaknesses. When he started TeamMates, he wanted to make sure that students, they had that same opportunity to identify what makes them uniquely gifted and talented. So we train our mentors to focus on that, not what's wrong with them, but what's right about them. Not what they can't do, but what they can do. So we train our mentors on that. And then even as an organization, one of our core values is Strength Space. So all of our staff, everything that we do, we look for the good, we focus on strengths because strengths is what leads to hope. And hope is the greatest indicator of success when it comes to our young people.

Jon Clifton:
[2:47] Can you talk about more about why that philosophy is so important? A lot of times the mentees that come into the program have for most of their lives been told what's wrong with them as opposed to what's right with them. Is that one of the reasons that you think that TeamMates has taken hold and why the impact has been so strong, and if so why?

DeMoine Adams:
[3:07] I do and it's funny we just had a staff day and I always remind our staff we're not normal. We're different because in society if  you think about going through an interview process, we always ask, what are your strengths and what are your weaknesses? A performance review, here are some things that you do well, here are some things that you can improve. Society, we are wired to focus on what's wrong with us, what we can't do, our inabilities, our disabilities, our lack of abilities. And it's unfortunate that that's just our psychology makeup.

But what I love about strengths, what I love about what we get to do with TeamMates, we get to really do something that no one else is doing. We are helping young people become leaders instead of followers, which is different than the norm of society. We are focusing on what can go right instead of what can go wrong, which is completely different than social media. Everything that we're doing, when we talk about the future, the future belongs to those who prepare for it. And we're preparing our future around strengths, around helping our young people really embrace what makes them uniquely gifted and talented. And I think when we do that, that's the solution. And hope, engagement, wellbeing these are all things that we're really trying to figure out what do we do after COVID? Well I believe that TeamMates Mentoring  we're ahead of the game because everyone else they're still trying to figure it out but Gallup is a great resource. We are fully invested, and at the end of the day it's about our kids.

Jon Clifton:
[4:52] Let's talk about you for a second and let's even go back to way before you became CEO of TeamMates. Can you talk about your own strengths journey when you first took strengths, when you learned about your top five, and what you did to build upon those strengths to help become successful in everything you've done?

DeMoine Adams:
[5:09] Growing up in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, raised by my grandparents, I didn't really have a lot of confidence, low self-esteem, low sense of self-efficacy. I would say most of my life was really geared around hard work, just putting my head down and just very observant, you know, as an introvert. It wasn't until I joined TeamMates Mentoring as an employee where I took the assessment, discovered my top five, and for the first time in my life, I now have confidence. I now realize there's nothing wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with the fact that I like to read. There's nothing wrong with me because I like to work all of the time. There's nothing wrong with me that, you know, I'm so focused and I'm so serious about achieving goals. Because most of my life, I was told there was something wrong with me. Special ed classes, I stuttered. The fact that I was a slower learner than other people. But for the first time in my life, here is a tool that's helping me to really embrace something that I've never embraced before, and that's DeMoine Adams. I would say that is when I became DeMoine Adams, and I'm only becoming more extraordinary by the minute, by the hour, by the day, because I take ownership in who I am.

Jon Clifton:
[6:36] Which in your top five helped you accelerate? You've now mentioned Learner, you've talked about Achiever. You even mentioned Significance as one of the things, is a strength that not only used for yourself, but a way that you tried to amplify the success of TeamMates. But which ones in the beginning do you feel like really helped you grow as a leader?

DeMoine Adams:
[6:58] I would say my Achiever, my Focus, and my Discipline. Because I was always told, you're not smart, you're too small, you're not good enough. And something deep inside, I don't know if it's the drive, the tenacity, the grit, I would just outwork folks. And keep in mind, I tell myself I didn't have confidence, but maybe it was that chip, you know, to prove people wrong. So to be a kid from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, no parents who have graduated from a four-year school, to go to a D1 school, being told that you're undersized, all of these other defensive ends are taller, bigger, stronger, faster than me, but to be a three-year starter, Blackshirt, lead the team in sacks, honorable mention All-Big 12, second team Academic All-American, I mean, how do you explain that? I explain it because my Achiever, my Focus, my Discipline, doing the same things again and again and again, good is not good enough, great is not great enough, striving for excellence, going above and beyond, it's something scary about Achiever. And I would say I am the man who I am today, I'm the professional who I am today because of me being able to use my strengths in a way that pretty much has allowed me to be in this leadership position today.

Jon Clifton:
[8:26] You and I have talked about the fact that you're an introvert, yet you give speeches all over. You get flown places to give speeches. And you just mentioned, Woo, Communication are your 33 and 34. What's driving that?

DeMoine Adams:
[8:43] I would say my Significance. And Significance can be interpreted in different ways, of course. But for me, the way that Significance looks on me, I like to bring significance to people. I like to bring it to community. So when given an opportunity to motivate others, to inspire others, I'm bringing Significance. I'm making other people feel valued. I'm helping them to get to one place to another place.

Just going back to when I first took the assessment, my whole life I made excuses, my whole life. I didn't like to be around people you know, I would say oh you know I'm social anxiety and I think anxiety is a real thing, but I'm just thinking what if I would have been exposed to strengths in high school, which we are doing through TeamMates Mentoring. We are exposing students at an early age. I'm expecting them to be a whole lot better than me once they get older. But Significance, Achiever when I'm truly passionate about something I'm gonna find a way to make it happen and that's what I've been doing for the last 12, 13, 15 years when I know I'm on pretty much center stage and it's kind of going back to football to play in front of 90,000 fans, like you really have to turn up your Significance and you have to be, extraordinary. You have to do the impossible. And I guess I was doing it at that time. But now I'm more conscious of it. Now I own it and now when I get on the stage I don't use being an introvert as an excuse. But on a Friday night, Jon, I am using it as an excuse because introverts, they do need to recharge.

Jon Clifton:
[10:40] Amen to that.

DeMoine Adams:
[10:41] Yeah.

Jon Clifton:
[10:42] Now, you talked about the use of your Individualization, and people with Individualization have an unbelievable ability to understand someone. We consider it a relationship theme, but sometimes I would personally consider it a thinking theme because it's almost taking this deep sort of interest in a human being. Did you ever have a time where you felt like your Individualization was really struggling to understand someone and it was really a growth moment for your Individualization to say, I couldn't understand this person. Finally, I did. And so what was that?

DeMoine Adams:
[11:18] I think my Learner helps me to somewhat put myself into other people's shoes. I wouldn't say I've struggled or maybe had challenges of understanding someone with that strength. As an African-American, I feel like, you know, that journey puts me in other people's shoes, whether I like it or not.

And I would say that probably has given me an advantage over other people because it allows me to diversify myself when I'm out in Western Nebraska or if I'm out in South Dakota, I know how to wear a suit or I know how to wear a cowboy hat. So I think the Learner in me, the Individualization on top of just other natural characteristics, such as being an introvert, allowing me to really analyze people, a situation, pay close attention, and then adapt. Not a lot of people can do that. And I think what serves me well in this position is that leaders don't create followers, leaders create leaders. And that's what I try to do with my staff. That's what I try to do with all of our 200 plus program coordinators, our 9,000 plus mentors and mentees. We're all about leadership. But leadership is about one word, influence. How do you make people feel? What impact are you providing? How do you want your legacy to be? And that for me is when I'm no longer here, I want people to talk about the impact that I had on them, their communities, and their future.

Jon Clifton:
[13:09] And how about Individualization? Is that something that you carried with you on the football field, and if so, how?

DeMoine Adams:
[13:17] I would say when it came to the trust of my teammates, knowing that, you know, we all had a role, we all had different personalities, we all brought different, I would say, talents to the table. But for us to trust one another, you know, that comes through building a relationship. That comes from getting to know your teammates. And so at the time, I didn't know what Gallup strength that was. But when you build a relationship and you get to know someone, that leads to trust. And when you have trust, just talk about being able to do something without even thinking about whether the man on the left of you or the man on the right of you, if they're going to do their job. So we did amazing things as a Nebraska football team.

Those are the years when people say, what was your best football team that you've ever played on, including NFL? You know, it'll be the Huskers. Because taking the time to build those relationships and use that Individualization, which I didn't realize I was using at that time, and to have people also to trust in me. I mean, talk about team, a championship team. And that's what I'm trying to bring to TeamMates. I don't want to just be a team. I want us to be a championship team. If someone leaves TeamMates, they're leaving TeamMates to become a leader. They're leaving TeamMates to get a promotion. They're gonna leave and they're gonna cry because the culture that we created, 89% engaged culture, by the way, which is a lot higher than a national average of less than 40%. It's because we're creating something special. And it goes back to what Coach Osborne created at Nebraska football.

Jon Clifton:
[15:09] Now, with your Futuristic, what does the future of TeamMates look like?

DeMoine Adams:
[15:16] We're going to serve more students. You know, we're currently serving 9,300 students. Every year, we should grow that by 1,000. So in 10 years, we should be serving close to 20,000 students. We would love to take TeamMates Mentoring nationally, but we never want to jeopardize quality over quantity. We want to make sure that we have a solid foundation of sustainability to where people believe in our mission, they believe in what we're doing, to where we don't have to worry about fundraising because it shouldn't be about the money. It should be about the students. It should be about school districts seeing TeamMates as a partner, community members, stakeholders, partners, foundations, businesses, seeing TeamMates as another way of helping society, which it starts with our young people. And overall, creating leadership, making sure that our young people, the people that get to work with me, that we're a team. Teamwork is what makes the dream work.

And I wanna make sure that how I use my leadership to influence others, to bring significance into small towns like Hershey, Nebraska, or into large towns like Lincoln, Nebraska. Wherever TeamMates Mentoring is, we wanna make sure that we are bringing hope, and we are turning the impossible to possible because I go back to my story. How can you explain this kid from Pine Bluff, Arkansas who stuttered? Parents didn't graduate from a four-year school, special ed classes. 13 on ACT the first time, graduated with maybe a 2.5, to going to one of the best colleges in the country, football, graduated, three years, masters, pursuing my PhD and I'm leading an organization as a CEO. How do you measure that? Well, Gallup has been an incredible assessment to measure that.

Jon Clifton:
[17:22] And how about Futuristic? How does a football player use Futuristic?

DeMoine Adams:
[17:27] I like to refer to mental reps is what we call it as football players. We visualize ourselves as a defensive end getting a quarterback sacked before it happens. So as I'm going against the offensive line, if his hands are out, I've already visualized by taking mental reps what I'm going to do with his hands based on the placement. Am I going to swap him? Am I going to pull him? Am I going to do this? So taking mental reps, that is how I really use my Futuristic as a football player. And as a professional, it serves me well before going into any meeting. Preparation breeds confidence. And by me taking mental reps before I go into a room with people, board meeting, making an ask, I go in there already knowing what people may say, what people may ask, and what I'm going to already say. Preparation breeds confidence.

Jon Clifton:
[18:28] Now, if there was a young person of the tens of thousands that have come through TeamMates, and they learn that they have Futuristic number one, and they say, I'd like to build on this, what advice would you have for them?

DeMoine Adams:
[18:40] You know, I live by this famous quote, once you see where you're going, then everything you do must correspond with where you're going. And so I would challenge that young man or that young lady, and I would say, here's your goal. Here are the things that you need to do. You need a game plan. Okay, you want to go to college? Well, you need to go to school every day. You need to make good grades. You need to stay out of trouble. You need to ask for help. And you need to do the same things again and again and again and again and again, and if you hit a bump in the road, guess what it's okay because in the game of football is it easy to score that touchdown? No. What happens along the way? You get tackled, you get hit, you get knocked down. But what do they do? You get back up. So condition yourself to take those hits. You're gonna get tackled with bad news, you're gonna get hit with discouragement, you're gonna get knocked down with things that are out of your control. But that's the difference between winners and pretenders because winners know how to put their eye and win and you got to do that every single day. So that will be my challenge to them. Everything that they do must correspond with where they're going.

Doctor? Well you need to like science. You want to be a lawyer or you want to be a teacher? Well you need to like kids, you need to practice interacting with someone, looking at someone face-to-face. And these are all resources that we have in place for TeamMates Mentoring because we know we have so many different forms of potential. And for us to be able to respect and honor all types of potential that students all possess, that's what makes us different. That's what makes us unique. And we like being different. We don't want to be normal. And this speaks a lot to co-founders, Tom and Nancy Osborne. They wanted to do something that was completely different, but unique. And that's the legacy that I want to continue. As a serving leader, I'm just here to serve. And my hope is that the Osborne family will be proud when I'm done with the work. And I won't even say work, with the fun that I get to do every single day. Using my top five strengths.

Jon Clifton:
[21:03] And how about Strategic? Talk about how you use your Strategic in your leadership or just how you view Strategic throughout your entire life.

DeMoine Adams:
[21:11] I would say my calendar controls my day, which is unfortunate. But I try to be strategic based on putting first things first, like Stephen Covey talks about. What are my priorities? And at the end of the day, we have to fundraise every single year. So making sure that our donors are cultivated, our donors are being stewarded, all the way down to making sure that all of our chapters feel connected, making sure that our staff are engaged. So strategically, I'm always thinking about how can I make others feel connected? And my Significance allows me to make people feel a certain way. It's like a gift. It's like a superpower gift. And when people embrace their top five strengths, it makes them super. If you look at Spider-Man, he's just a kid, teenager, goofy, he has acne on his face, but what makes him super is when he focuses on his strengths every single day.

So for me, my Strategic, I'm able to really get to know people with my Relator, with my Individualization. I know exactly how to meet them where they're at. I know exactly areas that maybe they can improve in. But instead of focusing on what's wrong, how can I help them focus on what's right? That's why our theme is we focus on quality, not quantity. Because we never want anyone feeling like they're doing anything wrong. So, my Strategic really allows me to assess a situation, assess a person, assess my day, and what pivots do I need to make, what changes do I need to make to keep those priorities priority. It may involve some cancellations, but if I've been trying to meet with a donor for months, and I get a call, and they can only meet at this time frame, I got to be very strategic to where I got to move stuff around and my priority list. I got to make sure that I'm always strategizing, because yeah, it's important. It is important.

Jon Clifton:
[23:23] Now, how do you use the strengths of others as a CEO within TeamMates? Can you talk more about that?

DeMoine Adams:
[23:30] That's when I use my Maximizer and I help them to maximize their discipline, maximize their strengths, and really keep them focused in helping them to take ownership. Now, this is what you did last year, but how can we improve on that? It's kind of like the Huskers, I have to say, day by day, getting better and better, team that can't be beat, won't be beat.

So we're all about, you know, improving. Now, I never force my top five strengths on other people. But when I look at their top five strengths, I want to make sure that they fully know them. You know, there's the balcony and there's the basement. How can you always be here? How can you always, you know, give your best effort? How can you grow? How can you continue to get bigger, better, and stronger? You know, playing football for 20 years of my life since the age of eight, the more you work out, the more you stay in shape. Sometimes you keep getting stronger, you keep getting bigger, but every day you have to continue to work on your strengths. You have to use them, otherwise you will lose them. And so I'm constantly, our conversations, very strength-based. Our staff days, strength-based. Our emails, we have our top five strengths in our signature. We have a chart that lists everyone's top five strengths. It helps us to be inclusive. It helps us to be strengths-based. It helps us to be committed to what we signed up to be. And that's to serve students. But ultimately, we cannot be teammates if we aren't acting like teammates. And so helping them to make sure that, I know your colleagues' strengths are different.

But get to know what makes them uniquely gifted and talented. Get to know what makes them a part of this team, how they contribute. We're all here for one purpose, one goal, one mission, one uniform. We may not be in uniform, but we need to be in uniform with our effort and our attitude. And that's what I stress. And I do consider myself a coach, not a boss. I don't like the word boss at all. And I would say the boss to coach training that I went through really, really helped me to understand the difference between being a coach and being a manager. And I am in no way, shape, or form a manager. But if I do manage something, I manage the strengths with my Individualization.

Jon Clifton:
[26:07] But when you have this sort of inability to turn it off, of course, one of the risks would be burnout. How do you confront that?

DeMoine Adams:
[26:20] Well, this is probably another Achiever in me, but I work out every day, every single day. I do cardio maybe three, four days, and then the other days I'm lifting. So that's my outlet. I may get about six or seven hours of sleep, which is probably not what a doctor recommends. But what's nice is I also balance out my strengths at home. As much as I want to be the best at work, I want to be the best father at home. I want to be the best husband at home. I want to be the best friend at home. I want to attend all of my kids' events. I want to be involved. I'm not looking at my phone. I want to be in that moment. So I would say one of the ways that I'm able to at least justify that I can never turn off my Achiever is that I use that same Achiever when I'm at home, trying to be the best that I could be as a family man.

Jon Clifton:
[27:20] I've only spoken to a few football players about their top five, but when you thought, when you look back on your football career, what strengths were you using the most and what strengths were you using in a unique way that might surprise those of us that have never played football and applied strengths on a football field?

DeMoine Adams:
[27:43] Achiever, for sure, 200% Achiever. Because coming to Lincoln, Nebraska, Tom Osborne recruited me as a 6'3", 215-pound defensive end. Now, you think of your typical defensive end, 6'4", 6'5", 250 pounds or above, I was not normal. But he believed in me. And I had to continue to lean in on what did he see. Now, in a talent perspective, it was speed and strength. You know, I could run a four, five, three, and I was bench pressing 405 pounds my freshman year. I didn't think it was a big deal, but I had so many other weaknesses in a way. I was undersized. I was short, I was small.

Newspapers were questioning, you know, how come this kid from Pine Bluff, Arkansas gets a scholarship? That just did something to my Achiever. I saw an opportunity and I did everything that I knew I needed to do to get to that goal. Because like I say, that once you see where you're going, everything you do must correspond where you're going. I focused on all of the things that I needed to do to make a difference, to get onto that field. And still to this day, it's hard to believe. Started for three years, led the team in sacks. No one believed that that was gonna happen, but I believed in it. Coach Osborne believed in it. He is also a mentor to me as well. So Achiever is a dangerous strength because who can stop you, who can defeat you when your biggest competition is you? No matter who says no, winners never quit, and quitters never win, and that's the Achiever in me.

Jon Clifton:
[29:38] What advice would you have for somebody that gets their results and that they don't do anything with it? How can they better engage with it when they see those five words?

DeMoine Adams:
[29:47] Someone that knows their top five strengths and does nothing about it, they just let it sit at their desk, or they can say it out loud, here are my top five strengths. It's just like a person that walks into a gym, looks at the weights, thinking that they're going to get bigger, better, and stronger. But if you're not going to put in the time, energy, and work, you know, to do something with those weights, that's that person. The person that actually embraces their strengths, that takes ownership in them, that uses them every single day, not just at work, but when they're not at work with their family, that's that person that is lifting. They are using all of those tools and resources that are given by Gallup to get stronger, to get better. And they improve environments around them. They influence people around them. They are helping spot others and helping others to see what makes them uniquely gifted around them. Because that's really what it's all about. Going back to Maxwell's quote, leaders don't create followers, leaders create leaders. If you're going to take the strengths, it's like you have this platform of resources that should make you bigger, better, and stronger. Taking it is one thing, but embracing them is a whole nother thing.

Jon Clifton:
[31:07] DeMoine, thank you for your leadership at TeamMates. Thank you for your leadership in the state of Nebraska and for everything you're doing for today's youth.

DeMoine Adams:
[31:15] Yes, sir. I appreciate the opportunity.

Transcript autogenerated using AI.