Diagnosis: Gamma
A recent NFL employment story highlights the importance of the applied SSH
A story reported yesterday about the head coaching changes in the NFL illustrates both the importance of understanding how the SSH explains male behavior as well as the importance of not putting men into situational roles for which they are socio-sexually inappropriate.
Many professional football fans were surprised when Mike Vrabel was fired by the Tennessee Titans after six generally successful seasons as the head coach there. He got to the playoffs three times, the AFC championship game once, and was even named Coach of the Year in 2021.
People were even more surprised when despite being one of the favorites for two of the eight different vacant head coaching jobs, Vrabel didn’t land with a new team. But the most surprising thing about the entire process was the reason that was given to one female reporter by an NFL General Manager for why Vrabel wasn’t hired.
“I had a GM at the Senior Bowl who mentioned to me Vrabel's physical build. That he's a very large human being. And that can be very intimidating to people in an organization.”
Now, this sounds like something a woman would say. But there are no female GMs in the league right now; the San Diego Chargers interviewed NFL executive Dawn Laponte for the job, but ended up hiring Joe Hortiz from the Baltimore Ravens instead. So, we know the GM quoted was a man.
But what sort of GM rejects a head coach who has been successful at every level of the game as a player and coach, who has won three Super Bowls as a player and team captain, and is known to be a popular and formidable leader of men on the basis of his size? The answer is obvious: a Gamma male who literally fears the physical presence of a large Alpha.
And this is why it is always a terrible idea to put a Gamma in charge of a group of men. Because he will not do what is best for the group or for attaining the group’s objective, instead, he will always prioritize what makes him feel comfortable and important, then rationalize those priorities as being good for the group.
In fact, one way to quickly detect if you’re dealing with Gamma in a situational role that should be held by an Alpha - in the event it’s not immediately obvious - is to observe whether he explains things directly, using “I” and taking personal responsibility, or passively using “we” and placing the responsibility on the collective. In the example above, note that the GM blames the team’s disinterest in hiring Vrabel on “people in an organization” rather than coming right out and saying “he scares me and makes me feel unimportant because he’s big.”
Now, not hiring Mike Vrabel does not necessarily mean a team will be unsuccessful or that its GM will fail at his job. But the problem is that anyone who won’t hire Vrabel because he’s too big and scary also won’t hire the likes of Dan Campbell, Dan Quinn, Mike Tomlin, Bill Parcells, Tom Landry, Bud Grant, or Bill Belichick, which means that GM is going to be making his choice from a smaller and less successful pool. And that is not a recipe for success.
And what on Earth is that GM going to do about the oversized players that populate the NFL, draft 180-pound defensive tackles and 5’6” quarterbacks?
Never, ever, put a Gamma in a role where he has power over Alphas. One way or another, it’s not going to end well.
The timing of this is great for me. Just this morning, I was thinking about an ex-boss of mine and said to myself: that dude is a Gamma and that explains why the organization was so dysfunctional. The dude got the position almost by accident during a time when our company was being acquired. An accountant by training, he was put in charge of a sales organization and the fit was awful. He took a divide-and-conquer approach to "leadership" trying to pit his senior leaders against each other (myself included). He was passive-aggressive in conflict and if pressed, would explode in angry outbursts. As a Divisional leader, I was responsible for the growth and management of my group and had stellar results and as a result, kept getting knocked down his pecking order. I didn't care really because I was on a comp plan and my compensation was performance-based and the people that mattered to me knew the real deal. Until the "pandemic" happened and he saw an opportunity to squash me since I would not get the experimental injection. I was excluded from high-level meetings and could not attend in person the closing of a deal that I spent two years chasing and landing. That's when I found another position and left. Since then the company has cratered and my division specifically has scattered to the wind. My advice: when faced with a Gamma boss, find another position.
A similar situation played out with Jerry Krause a GM of the Bulls and Jordan as his star. Then Jordan (and also Pippen) didn't help matters by openly mocking him. If you watch The Last Dance Krause' decision to focus on rebuilding in Jordans last season there seem mystifying untill you apply the same filter as the vrabel situation. Krause couldn't control Jordan and was intimidated by him so he wanted him gone.