Author, speaker, and physician Dr. Thom Mayer explains how a magical series of serendipitous circumstances took him west, the tragic event that led him (back) to the NFL, putting relationships over resumes, finding where your joy intersects the world’s needs, leading the NFL through the concussion crisis, sucking down vs. sucking up, working at the burning Pentagon on 9/11, the Boss vs. the Leader, innovation at the speed of trust, making failure your fuel, and the virtue in thinking of yourself less.

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Today's guest is Dr. Thom Mayer, an author and

keynote speaker who's been a leader in times of crisis for

over 25 years. He's the medical director for the NFL Players

Association, served as a command physician at the Pentagon on

9/11, led a mobile emergency team in Ukraine, and has

authored the new book Leadership is Worthless, But Leading is

Priceless. It's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Thom Mayer. Thom,

great to meet you.

Dr. Thom Mayer: Good to see ya.

I actually want to know a little bit of your

backstory like where did you grow up? And then how did you

end up where you are now?

Dr. Thom Mayer: Well, I grew up in a small town Indiana

Midwestern classic Midwest way to be raised to one of those

factory towns that feeds are fed General Motors 70 miles

northeast of Indianapolis, and football player A lot of people

played football in order to go to college I went to college in

order to continue playing football and dreams of playing

in the NFL and aside from I did play in college was all

conference linebacker and you know, the old saying is you

know, the longer go we played the better we were didn't have a

chance I had broken my leg my or I didn't break it somebody broke

up for me in my junior year a pretty bad fracture. So I

couldn't play my senior year. But I was invited to training

camps with the Vikings and the bears and I thought hey, let's

give this a shot and discovered that What did they tell me? They

said aside from my side speed, strength and talent. They said I

had talent other than that I would have been a perfect

linebacker in the NFL.

Oh, how nice.

Dr. Thom Mayer: Yeah, I decided to go to I was in at Dukes

medical school and I thought no matter how nasty the professors

at Duke were they couldn't be any worse than the guys trying

to take my head off with the Vikings and the bears so became

an emergency physician. I trained in surgery at Salt Lake

City and we worked a deal out so that the surgical residents

covered the park Doctor role at Yellowstone National Park. Oh,

and we've been going back ever since. So 25 years ago we we bit

the bullet and bought a place and have enjoyed it ever since

it's still a small town atmosphere a lot more people

have moved in from other places, but we love it.

How did you... that's a big reevaluation right?

When you switch gears from thinking I'm going to be a

professional athlete to you obviously had another trajectory

in mind to even be considering Duke Medical.

Dr. Thom Mayer: Well I was actually a theology major when I

was in college, and it wasn't that I was particularly cerebral

or reflective. It was because you didn't have to take tests.

You just wrote papers at the end of my sophomore year. My two

professors my theology professor and a biology professor name was

Dr. Pray, you can't make that stuff up, said if ever thought

about going into medicine instead of being a theology

professor after duke i was very clear I wanted to go west, but

decided I was either gonna go to Colorado or Utah. So I read Salt

Lake number one and loved it met my wife Maureen there she was a

newborn ICU flight nurse. I was a pediatric trauma fellow, just

a magical series of serendipitous circumstances.

And then how did you decide to reengage with the

NFL or how did they decide to re engage with you?

Dr. Thom Mayer: The people ask me all the time, how do you

build How do I build my resume to get a job like yours? Just

the Medical Director of the NFL Players Association in my answer

is, I became the medical director on August 1 2001. Korey

Stringer, a tackle for the Vikings died inexplicably of

heatstroke. And I got a phone call. The phone call was from

Gene Upshaw, then the executive director of the NFLPA and he

called me not because he had done a resume search, but he

called me because we were best friends. And we were best

friends because his youngest and my youngest were best friends.

Our family said had countless dinners, we coach T ball

together. We coached football together. And so he called me

because he knew me and he trusted me. So I always tell

people don't build resumes, build relationships. And I think

that's the key, particularly as we move forward. And so I've

been doing that for the last 23 plus years, and it's been an

honor and a privilege to be a part of guiding the health and

safety of our 2500 players per year.

But it's a huge responsibility. What are just

one or two challenges that you ran into?

Dr. Thom Mayer: Sure. You know, when our boys were younger, I

used to take them to school every day I was entailed. When I

dropped them off. I always said precisely the same thing. One

more step in the journey of discovering where your deep joy

intersects the world's deep needs. I swear I said this to

them, you have to start with your deep joy, not the world's

deep needs, the world's deep needs are infinite unfathomable.

There's no bottom to that well, but if you start with your deep

joy, with passion that drives you why you do what you do. And

that has been a constant in the job because you know, Lord Acton

said, as you know, power corrupts, and absolute power

corrupts absolutely. NFL is now was then in 2001, the most

powerful sports organization in our business in the world, and

keeping in mind that the deep joy of representing the health

and safety needs of our 2500 player patients. That's not the

same interests as as the NFL, which represents the interests

of 32 billionaires who are the owners of the clubs. And so you

just have to be willing to stay constant to that it was true in

the concussion crisis, when we recognize there was a problem

that had to be fixed. We we the NFLPA, Sean sands, very our

attorney at the time, and I wrote the original concussion

protocols. And there were significant pushback from the

NFL, different commissioner and different medical director and

chair of what was then called the mTBI. Committee, we stayed

constant to that. And now, you know, we're at a place where the

league takes great pride in the calling of the NFL concussion

protocols. That's great, as long as it's for the good of my

player patients. But having the courage, the integrity to stand

up and say, No, we are going to have guidelines. And these are

the scientific protocols that are our best knowledge at this

time.

This leads us to actually something you write

about, which is sucking down, instead of sucking up.

Dr. Thom Mayer: The book, as you know, is kind of a litany very

brief, 176 pages of contrarian types of statements, starting

with the title leadership is worthless. But leading is

priceless. What I learned 911, the NFL and Ukraine, you know,

when I was called to the Pentagon on 911, I was a command

physician at the Pentagon. And I got there, first of all, you you

fly in and think Oh, my God, these are the gates of hell. I

mean, you see the Pentagon of all things burning, you know, I

couldn't even see that there was any remnants of a plane in the

southwest wall was completely on fire. But the gates of Hell take

you to some pretty interesting places. And so what I learned

was that, first of all, is a civilian operation, I was the

Medical Director of the local EMS agency, and the chairman of

the emergency department. But we had, I had 32 generals standing

behind me, facing the Pentagon willing to help in any way good

men, good women, who were there to help me any way they could.

But I realized, I'm not gonna get anywhere. By sucking up to

these generals, I have to suck down to the people actually

doing the work, to the structural engineers, to the

Army Corps of Engineers, to the paramedics, to the firefighters,

to the suppressant folks to the FBI evidence recovery team, in

order to secure that building, so we could safely they could

safely get into the building, to help rescue those who are in

there and recover those who had not made it through the horrific

crash. And I think that's true in all of our lives, we kind of

suck up guests, I always say the boss is someone who thinks that

he's the most important person in the room. Whereas the leader

knows that she's her job is to make sure that everyone else

feels that they're the most important person in the room, no

need to suck up. We need to suck down and discover the answers

within us.

It is hard, right? You you step into a leadership

role at times if you are the leader, and you have people

reporting and sometimes they're sucking up to you, though, when

you reframe and say, it really is about hey, I'm not here to be

the most important person. I'm here to serve the people that

pay my salary really, that that actually put me in this position

to begin with.

Dr. Thom Mayer: Yeah, when I shortly after I first started my

job, I had a very difficult issue with the NFL and I laid

the issue out and I knew that you can't just say Hey, boss,

solve this problem for me. I had to come in with solution. So I

had three solutions. And I laid out the solutions and said Here

they are 123 some What do you want me to do? And he said he

thought for a second he looked at me and he said just go be Tom

mayor. That's why you are Tom mayor. That's why are down

mayor, I realized what he was saying is, I trust you trust

yourself to be able to make the right this decision. And I'll

support you all the way. You know, the leader, we're looking

for the leader you're looking for as you. You are the one.

I feel that you operate probably at very highly

autonomous level to when you're taking on these roles. And I

mean, not in the way that you don't work with a team. But it's

the position you're often put in as, here's the football, you got

to figure out how to get the rest of the way down the finish

line, that that ends up being a big strength of your stat. And I

feel like you have very high risk tolerance.

Dr. Thom Mayer: Well, that's true. Definitely. You know, I

always talk about innovation at the speed of not genius,

intelligence, creativity, but of cost. Because if people don't

trust you, they're not going to step outside the lines and try

something that might fail. And we have to make failure fuel, we

have to understand that if you're not failing, you're not

innovating. You know, you're only adopting best practices,

adopting what has already been identified maybe as the next

phase. But something that's clearly there, you know, we want

people to be able to think we're really completely outside the

box, most of the time when the boss says, think outside the

box, they are box, they don't mean that they mean think inside

my box, the way I'm thinking Guess what I'm thinking. So

that's like sucking up. So the answers are not in the you know,

they're not the C suite, they're in the Weast suite. They do the

work, that team of people who do the work in the trenches on a

daily basis. And that's where innovation should come from.

The challenge in leadership is getting honest

feedback. From that we sweet that you have, do you have any

thoughts or tips or like personal anecdotes on how you

created an evolved a culture where people would tell you

sometimes what you didn't want to hear and felt okay, doing

that?

Dr. Thom Mayer: Well, first of all, I always heard people not

only who were better than me, but were much better than me.

People would say, What's it like working for you? And the answer

is I have zero idea. Because no one's ever worked for me, they

work with me, I started almost every statement that I made to

my folks, my team by saying two things. One is, I need your

help. Now, instead of you've got a problem already with I need

your help. I mean, even if the person you're working with is a

difficult person, you know, egocentric whatever it might be

locked into the boss mentality, instead of the leader mentality.

You when you say I need your help, most people are going to

say, Okay, I'm going to try to help you, too, is I like saying

what would have to be true. My point being what would have to

be true. In order for us as a team to be able to deliver what

it is, you've just told me is something a desired state we

need, you know, here's where we are, here's where we want to be,

what would have to be true. In order to get there. There's a

difference. There's a fundamental paradox between a

team of experts, a very smart, talented group of people. And

that's not the same as an expert team, people who work seamlessly

across boundaries, who understand what the goal is the

ability to trust each other, to come up with ideas. The Kansas

City Chiefs, you know, famously are a very innovative team.

Well, that starts at the top with Andy Reid, who sits down

with his entire staff, his entire team on the whiteboard,

and looks at ideas about different plays that they could

run, how could we exploit in this situation this down in

distance, they're going to uncover one this, they're going

to be uncovered three, that's an expert team, a group of people

saying, let's take Creative Chemistry.

You know, I know what you think of when you think

of the antithesis a lot of these principles, but it might help us

move into this other part of your life. You know, I read all

these anecdotes and news articles about Russia, and at

Putin's leadership and this whole affair with Ukraine, and

it seems almost completely countered everything we talked

about, I mean it, you get the sense that the generals, pander

to Putin and tell him what he wants to hear instead of what he

doesn't, which might be the reality on the ground. When you

got a phone call to go help Ukraine at the start of this

war? What went through your mind? Were you concerned? What

How did you make this decision?

Dr. Thom Mayer: That's a great question. First of all, I didn't

get a phone call, I made a phone call. Well, I picked up the

phone, and I saw what was happening. I thought, you know,

I've been very fortunate, as you know, to have bled in in some of

the most prominent crises of our generation. It's an honor to

serve others in the in the course of that and to have been

asked to have done so. But to me, I thought this is an

injustice that that can't stand. I'm an emergency physician. So

I'm uniquely trained in Have a mentality, you know, we have

this weird thing of, you know, explosions fire, you know,

gunfire, we run into that, not away from it, they're, you know,

we're just not normal. And so I made phone calls connected with

Team Rubicon, a group of former Marines. And so literally,

within three weeks of the invasion, we were there boots on

the ground and in Ukraine, in order to take care of patients.

So having been at the tip of that spear, exposed to air raids

of literally every day, and every night, you know, I saw the

results, people are blown out of their homes blown out of their

apartments, in the middle of the night, having to get on a train

and go 900 miles west and hope someone would be there to take

care of him. But you see, it's hard not to think about what

kind of mentality results in men doing that. I think your point

is extremely well taken that authoritarian way of dealing

with things does not in my opinion, have the right results.

No. And not to be too contrarian. But I also think

like in times of crisis, I mean, you're shaking Team Rubicon over

there. And I imagine it's a all hands on deck, a pretty intense

experience. And there's there's got to be some motivation,

sometimes to be a little authoritarian, because there's

the speed element that if you are the one making all the

decisions, you can make them so much quicker, right?

Dr. Thom Mayer: You know, how does a team operate as an expert

team? Certainly, you recruit smart people. But you know, Bill

Belichick said, talent sets the floor of a team, but character

sets the ceiling of a team. And I think that's true in any t.

So, you know, our group came together and bonded, I mean,

serious badass is, and that's the highest compliment I can

give somebody. And in an emergency situation, you quickly

develop those bonds of trust, you talk about team, how are we

going to react in this situation, I can tell you, when

I was dealing with those patients, they're right there

working with me. And I never, almost never had to ask them to

do anything. You know, it's like in the midst of an emergency

resuscitation, I put my hand out when the nurse puts a chest tube

in because she knows what I'm thinking. The same thing

occurred there. So you know, from great teamwork comes great

preparation, great trust, a great sense of the ability of

people to work across boundaries. And you develop that

very quickly. And I think the more we understand that the work

begins within, but it turns very quickly towards teamwork.

It's almost like that expression, leadership is

assumed before it's assigned, right?

Dr. Thom Mayer: Wherever we're leading, whether we're leading

our family, our kids, you know, whether we're leading a large

organization, we have to learn to tell the story of the people

we serve. Tell a story about the people that you represent. In

too many organizations, too many teams are so bogged down in

statistics and data, instead of telling the story of the people

that we serve. Mark Twain was very good at this as most things

when he said, If you want to rise to the meteoric heights of

literary greatness, don't write about man, write about a man

tell the story of the person who's doing it.

Curiosity has had to have played a role in your

life, because of your well read and well study. How much

importance do you put on curiosity and being a person

that asked questions?

Dr. Thom Mayer: Yeah, obviously, I think failure has to be our

fuel. But driving failure is curiosity, that that wonder why

why why not? Why did we do it this way? And why not do it a

different way? Why are we doing it this way? We hear that all

the time. And the most common answer to that, because we've

always done it that way. Because we've always done it that way.

That doesn't show curiosity that doesn't show, you know, hey, why

couldn't it be done another way? So the question, you know, why

should be it adds value to the people we serve. But the bigger

question is, why not? Why couldn't we do it another way?

Because I asked people to think about leading in a radically

different way to act on those thoughts within a week, because

if the people who listen to this don't, in some small way, do

something differently, if they don't act on it within a week,

they're not going to add in the third is to innovate, think, act

and innovate, and to innovate takes that curiosity to say,

what I couldn't have been done another way, why couldn't this

the play that we drew up? Why couldn't that have been done in

a different way? Why the strategic plan that we laid out

how did it fail? How did it to what extent did it fail? Sure.

It's nice to have stats to show data to show the you know, the

delta between what we aspired to, and that which we achieved,

but again, that human story that's behind that. So to me,

it's read Tilly read to lead read the lives of great men

Right women, those who've been through it, I just got back from

Normandy, had the great privilege working with Donnie

Edwards, a former NFL player, Best Defense Foundation, we took

60 World War Two veterans back to the Normandy beaches. Wow.

Unbelievable cold chills just thinking talking about, you

know, listening to those men, what they went through how they

faced it, you know it, you can't do better than to see the people

who've been through it before and hear their experiences, read

their lives, how did they make decisions? What guided what went

right, what went wrong? It's just that curiosity, as you so

correctly says, is the only thing we can do to fuel our

failure to understand how did we fail?

Failure, you know, you talk about it as a lesson in

a learning experience. And I don't know if you've got a good

story for this. But sometimes we learn our lessons life, not

because we did it, right, because we did it wrong, and

learn from it. What's the a personal example, where either

you didn't follow your own advice, and it cost you something?

Dr. Thom Mayer: Anytime I put myself in front of those I

serve, I feel like you know, I'm too old to be making that

mistake, I made that mistake so many times. And I just made it

over again. And whenever I've you know, answered a reporter,

given a talk or been in a meeting, and I've let my ego get

in the way, as opposed to thinking first, last and always

in between, about the people I serve, then then I've regretted

it. You know, I give you a great example of what I said once and

there was a shooting at the CIA, and I was the chairman of the

emergency department at the time. And I tell the story of

permission to the patient and his family. He's got a nick star

worked at the CIA waiting to turn in was shot at close range

with a ak 47. And he came into our trauma center, flown in by

by my police paramedics that that are the police helicopter

unit got 28 units of O negative blood. For some reason, they

determined that I was the only person that was going to talk to

the press through the national story. So I walk outside the

emergency department for reporters are all there. And as

you know, often you can hear the question go into their earpiece,

lightly but before they asked the question, so they're

peppering me with questions. And Dr. Mayer, everybody was

interested in donating blood to help because they knew he had so

much blood. They said, you know, patient had 28 units of O

negative blood, what blood type? Is he in before I could think I

said, I don't know what he was before. But he's Oh, negative

now. And I thought, Oh, my God, I can't believe I just said

that. And I thought, Well, this has been a good job, you know,

I'll pick up a neck up the office, got a phone call from

the chief of police. And I thought, well, this is it, you

know, and he said, Doc, I just want to tell you, that's the

funniest thing I've ever heard of you real human being say. So,

you know, just trust your heart, as I said earlier, you know,

keep the patient in fraud, the people we serve in front of the

team, and yourself way, way back. CS Lewis, as you know,

said, you know, humility consists not of thinking less of

yourself, but thinking of yourself less. Don't be so

humble. You're not that great. Good advice to keep in mind.

That's good advice. Quick round of

questions. These are just kind of quick answers. But we have a

lot of guests who've had a lot of different forms of success.

And something that's caused us to ask is, hey, you know,

success isn't quite universal in its definition. I'm kind of

curious for you, how you define success, and how you know when

you've achieved it?

Dr. Thom Mayer: Well, it's a corollary question deeply

related to, you know, the joy of which my deep joy is helping

others find and fully express their deep joy. So

understandably, my definition of success is the extent to which

I've been able to help them understand they are all leading,

because leadership is worthless, because it's just what you say.

And anybody can say anything. But leading is priceless,

because it's what you do all day, every day. And are you in

the course of what you do all day, every day, consistent to

your deep joy. That to me is success.

The last thing I guess I love asking would be you

know, there's there's a young man, somewhere in the state of

Indiana, thought he was going to be a professional football

player. If you went through a portal in time and happened to

bump into this young man, what advice might you have given

yourself in that stage of life if you had the opportunity?

Dr. Thom Mayer: Well, the first thing I'd probably say goes, I

couldn't restrain myself. It'd be Are you out of your mind. But

when I was 11, I was on an all star baseball team at

Meadowbrook Little League. And ended up winning the city title,

which, in effect was the county title, the regional title at

that time was a big deal. We had two things that happened to us

as a result of that. The first of which I thought was the best

thing that could ever happen to a person in their life, which is

they put us on the top of fire engines, sirens, blazing, lights

flashing, and drove us all around the town with people

waving. And I thought it just doesn't get any better than

that, you know, just put put me to sleep. This is not going to

get any better. Well, it turned out I was wrong. Because we had

a banquet at the banquet, a guy named Carl Erskine. Carl was for

Anderson, Indiana, and he had played for the Brooklyn Dodgers,

and was the World Series strikeout record holder until

Sandy Kofax broke it. And he said something I'll never ever

forget, which was gentlemen, you can't do everything in life. No

one can. But he paused for a fact. And I can see him saying

it and hear the tone in his voice. He said, but any of you

can do any thing you choose to do. And I never forgot that, you

know, particularly when failure was looming when, you know, it

was like, okay, it can be done, you know, and that's why I say,

you know, read to lead. Curiosity, as you so correctly

said, that ability to see Yeah, it can be done. You know, it's

awesome. But Mandela said, it's always impossible until it's

done. The one great Mandela line of many is being resentful about

failing or being resentful towards other blaming failure on

others. He said, resentment is like drinking poison, and hoping

it'll kill your enemies. Yeah, shocker. Doesn't work, it kills you.

Yeah. Wow, this has been an amazing interview

with a lot of good lessons. And you've managed to pack quite a

few those in the book that you've published as well. So

where can folks go at Tom just to track yourself and anything

else that you have?

Dr. Thom Mayer: The book is in leadership is worthless, but

meeting is priceless is available on Amazon or all major

sites. If you enjoy it, then please leave a review. Untold

that helps. If you don't enjoy it, read it, reach out to me,

because you can reach me at THONMYER. MD. So Tom Mayer

md@gmail.com. If I can help you in any way, I will need a phone

call. We need to zoom happy to do that. My deep joy is helping

others find their deep joy and fully express that. If there's

anything I can do to be helpful in that regard. It would be an honor.

Right? And if they really really enjoy your book,

they can send you a bottle of Silver Oak.

Dr. Thom Mayer: Hahaha, well played, well played.

Really appreciate your time today. Lots of wisdom

and picked a lot of good anecdotes as well. So appreciate

that.

Dr. Thom Mayer: Thanks so much. It's been my honor entirely.