Tony Dungy: the Mentor Leader

"Tony Dungy: The Mentor Leader"

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Executive Summary

The Mentor Leader by Tony Dungy highlights lessons Dungy has learned from his career playing and coaching in the NFL. In the book, he advocates a leadership paradigm—“mentor leadership”—that focuses on the relationship between leaders and followers and how leaders can use the influence of this relationship to have a significant impact on people and the organization in the long-term. The influence in the leader-follower relationship is key to mentor leadership, because the mentor leader’s focus is on having a positive influence on his followers and in turn influencing others through them. Dungy outlines the process of mentor leadership in his “7 E’s”: engage, educate, equip, encourage, empower, energize, and elevate. These are the actions leaders should take to implement mentor leadership in their organizations.

Many of the tenets of Dungy’s leadership philosophy correspond with popular leadership theories discussed in this course. The importance of influence and a relationship-oriented style promoted by Dungy is also endorsed by other leadership experts. Dungy discusses the value of referent power over position power and the importance of empowering followers, topics frequently mentioned in our course discussions and readings. Many of the characteristics Dungy advocates are characteristics of Level 5 leaders. Humility, self-sacrifice, and a long-term focus are all aspects of a mentor leader and a Level 5 leader. He also exemplifies and encourages a transformational leadership approach that is focused on getting followers to rally around a compelling vision. Overall, Dungy illustrates many of the leadership ideas we have studied and incorporates them into his mentor leader model.

Having utilized some of the most effective leadership styles available, Dungy has created a leadership example worthy of being replicated. However, it is not without its limitations....