I’m back on campus in five days. Some of you have already walked through the doors this week. Some of you start Monday. Either way, we’re all standing in the same spot right now: preplanning meetings, room setup, that first staff gathering where somebody’s going to stand up and use the phrase that makes half the room roll their eyes.
“Find your why.”
You’ve heard it a thousand times by now. It’s been said in staff development sessions, printed on a slide with a stock photo of a mountain, used as a hashtag under somebody’s motivational post. And here’s what makes it so confusing: administrators use that same phrase two completely different ways. When you’re struggling, “why” gets used as a weapon: are you even sure why you’re still doing this job? When you’re killing it, “why” gets used as a compliment: that’s your why shining through.
Same three words. Opposite meaning. No wonder half of you are sick of hearing it.
Dan Roark and the Guest Speaker
A couple of seasons ago, my team chaplain, Dan Roark, brought in a guest speaker to help our program sit down and actually define our mission and our vision. Not something we borrowed from a poster in the athletic office. Something the players themselves helped build.
We spent real time on it. What do we actually believe about why this program exists? What do we want a guy to walk away with in four years that has nothing to do with his batting average? By the time we finished, we had language on paper that the whole locker room had a hand in writing. That’s still one of the proudest pieces of my program’s identity, and it’s a huge part of my own personal why.
But here’s the turn that mattered more than the exercise itself: sitting in that room, I realized the program’s mission and vision weren’t the same thing as mine.
Your Why Isn’t the Same as the Building’s Why
Your administration wants you 100% bought into the school’s mission and vision. That’s fair. That’s their job. Maybe you were even on the committee that helped write it. Maybe you did your homework during the interview process and knew exactly what you were signing up for.
But you didn’t design your own why. Only you know what’s actually driving you when nobody’s watching.
And here’s where it gets hard for a lot of good teachers and coaches: you can be at one place for ten years, watch leadership change two or three times, and feel the school’s stated mission shift right in front of you. That’s real. That happens. It changes how you experience your job every single day.
It doesn’t change your why.
Start With Why, Except When You Should Start With Who
Simon Sinek built an entire career on one idea: the most effective leaders operate from a clear sense of purpose, not just a plan of what they do or how they do it. Jesus never wandered without knowing His purpose. “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10, ESV) wasn’t a mission statement He workshopped in a meeting. It was the reason behind every single thing He did.
But I’ve also read theologians push back on “start with why,” and I think they’re onto something too. One writer, Kenda Creasy Dean, argues ministry doesn’t actually start with why; it starts with who: the real person in front of you, in all their mess and need, not a purpose statement you’re trying to fulfill through them.
Most teachers I know default to that same instinct. Ask a good teacher why they do this job, and they’ll point at their kids. I’d point at my players. That’s not wrong. It’s just incomplete.
Because that’s not who designed us. That’s not who put us on this earth in the first place. Our Who has to start with God, and then the “who” in front of us (our students, our players, our families) flows out of that first Who instead of replacing it.
Growth Is the Cost of Admission
Here’s the other piece I’ve had to sit with. If you think you’ve arrived, if you believe you’ve learned everything you need to learn and you’re the top dog in the building, you’ve already lost. It won’t show up today. It might not show up this season. But the fall is coming. You will get passed by somebody still hungry to grow, and you won’t see it happening until it already has.
That’s true in education. It’s true in coaching. It’s true in any job worth having.
The reason “find your why” keeps getting weaponized is that most of us never actually sat down and wrote ours. We’re running on the school’s mission, our program’s vision, and whatever’s left over from motivation we felt during a good staff meeting three years ago. None of that is stable enough to hold you up on a Tuesday in October when everything’s going sideways.
Write the Vision
“And the LORD answered me: ‘Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.’” (Habakkuk 2:2, ESV)
That verse isn’t abstract. It’s an instruction. Write it down. Make it plain enough that you can run with it, not just admire it.
When Dan and I walked our team through building our program’s mission and vision, I went home and did the same exercise for myself. Here’s what I landed on, over four years ago now.
My vision: “A program that develops Christian leaders in the classroom, on the field, and beyond.”
My mission: “Help each and every person become the best, most selfless version of themselves.”
I still believe both of those. But if I sat down and rewrote them today, knowing everything I’ve learned since about the Red Dirt Tax and secured worth, I’d sharpen them.
Vision, sharpened: “A program that develops Christian leaders in the classroom, on the field, and for the rest of their lives, whether anyone’s watching or not.”
Mission, sharpened: “Help every person I coach become the best, most selfless version of themselves, anchored in a worth Christ already secured, not the one the scoreboard tries to hand them.”
Same bones. Just less room to hide behind vague language, and a clearer statement of where the value actually comes from.
Leadership Is Service, Not Ego
There’s an old story about a king who took his oath of service so seriously that people would find him nursing the sick in hospitals or waiting tables in restaurants, and when they asked why, he’d hold up a copy of the constitution he swore to and say nothing else. His answer to every question about his leadership was the same: kingship is about service, not ego.
That’s the test for your why too. Ask yourself honestly why you want to lead, whether that’s a classroom, a program, or a department. Is it for you? Or is it for the people you were put there to serve?
Three Gut-Check Questions Before Preplanning
Before you sit through another staff meeting where somebody says “find your why” like it’s the first time you’ve heard it, run these three questions on yourself, honestly, with nobody grading the answers but you.
Has my why changed with my job title? If your sense of purpose only shows up when you’ve got the corner office or the varsity program, that’s not a why. That’s ambition wearing a why’s clothing.
Would my why survive a leadership change? If a new administrator, a new AD, or a new principal walked in tomorrow and rewrote the building’s mission statement overnight, would your reason for showing up still hold? If the answer is no, you’ve been running on borrowed purpose.
Can I say my why out loud in one breath? Not a paragraph. Not a mission statement you have to look up. If it takes you longer than one breath to say why you do this job, you haven’t actually finished writing it yet.
If any of those three questions stung a little, good. That’s usually the sign you found the real one instead of the one you’d been reciting.
The Application
This week, before you walk into a single staff meeting, write your own personal mission and vision statement. Not your school’s. Not your program’s, if you already have one of those. Yours.
Three sentences, maximum. Nothing about your title, your win total, or your evaluation score. Just the truth of what’s actually driving you, and who you’re ultimately serving by doing it.
Your why isn’t something you’ll find on a whiteboard or a staff development slide. It’s not something you scribble once and frame. It’s what you live out on the Tuesday nobody’s watching, the north star you check when you start to drift, the intrinsic spark you reach for when the external stuff runs dry. And it all points back to the One who designed you and is still guiding your steps, long after this school year is over.
Greater Together, Coach O
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