#2 What Makes a Momentous Moment?

My first season as a Play-Caller rocking the orange hat

In the first post, I shared the story of JC, a young man with autism who became the backbone of our analytics program and, in many ways, the catalyst for everything that became Momentous Leadership. If you haven't read that post yet, start there.

That story raises an obvious question: what exactly made those moments with JC so powerful?

It wasn't the size of the gesture. It wasn't the budget. It wasn't even the championship. It was something more specific than any of those things. Once you understand what it is, you'll start seeing opportunities for it everywhere.

I'm not the only one who has thought deeply about this. Chip and Dan Heath spent years researching why certain brief experiences can outweigh much longer stretches of time in terms of how we remember them. Their findings, published in The Power of Moments, became the premise of my leadership philosophy. While they have done an incredible job defining moments and what makes them memorable, I believe moments are both a resource and responsibility for leaders in all walks of life. My upcoming book Building the Empire is full of these moments, and my second work Momentous Leadership will detail this philosophy so you too can be a Momentous Leader.

The 2014 American Football Coaches Association Convention was held in Indianapolis and it was the first time I was able to attend. As a young coach, it was a great time of learning. Little did I know that, for many different reasons it would turn into a very memorable experience.

For starters, it would mark the first (and only, to date) time I would get to attend a special movie screening as an exclusive premier. It was in the big general session ballroom and was pretty full when it started. Everyone got some different gear branded for the movie, and free popcorn. The movie was When the Game Stands Tall about Coach Bob Ladouceur and his De La Salle dynasty. Even more memorable was getting to meet Coach Ladouceur and confirm that he was indeed just as nice of a guy as Jim Caviezel portrayed in the movie. While this was a cool experience, this would not be the most memorable moment for me from that trip.

The convention consisted of many general and breakout sessions on various topics, presented by different coaches. There was a ton of great information presented. However, the most valuable learning experience didn't occur in one of them. It happened at a bar, where I ended up in a hour long conversation with a coach whose offense I had studied for years. I didn't even realize who he was until we were already deep in conversation, which is probably why he kept talking to me. What made that interaction memorable wasn't that it happened, but that he made it personal. He asked me questions. He took notes on what I said. He treated a young coach from a small school like someone worth listening to. That's personalization. And I never forgot it. If a head coach and one of the present day (at the time) fathers of the triple option attack was humble enough to interact and learn from a young guy from a school he had never heard of, I could learn from anyone I could meet as well.

Then came St. Elmo's, a steakhouse in Indianapolis. It was the same restaurant Peyton Manning had famously taken his offensive linemen to dinner after home games. Our Head Coach gathered our small offensive staff there that night for dinner. As a poor coach who didn't eat meals like that ever at the time, I made sure to order a REAL nice steak and seize the opportunity. Our other offensive coach who was there ordered a salad...yes, a salad. Hearing Jared order a salad at the best steakhouse either of us would eat at in the foreseeable future was a funny memory in and of itself. It also became a memory I've made sure not to let him forget.

While Josh (our Head Coach) and I waited for our steaks, and Jared his salad, Josh offered me a promotion to Offensive Coordinator. I was just 24 years old. The timing of that moment is why it lives in my memory the way it does. It wasn't just a job offer but came at the end of a hard year where we had finished 2-9. It was in a place that meant something, with people I trusted. The location, the company, the weight of what had come before all amplified the message. Chip and Dan Heath would call that a peak moment by design. I just knew it changed everything for me as it would be my first real opportunity to own a side of the ball and really see what I was made of as a play caller the next season.

Understanding the definition of a moment is one thing. Being able to build a moment is another.

The Heath brothers identify four elements that classify defining moments: elevation, insight, pride, and connection. I'd encourage you to read the book to explore those in depth. I promise you, it's genuinely worth your time. What I want to do here is translate those ideas into the practical language of what I've seen work on the field, in the film room, and in the hallways of a school. In my experience, every memorable moment I've either created or witnessed shares four ingredients.

Presence. You cannot create a moment from somewhere else. Not mentally, not emotionally. The Heath brothers describe how so many powerful moments are simply the result of someone choosing to rise above the script, stepping out of the routine transaction and doing something that says: I actually see you.

Early in my coaching career at Dakota State, I was the youngest guy on staff. Because I knew from my own recruiting visits how much the feeling of a visit mattered, when it came time to plan campus tours for our recruits, I didn't just run them through the standard route. I thought about what I found impactful from my own visits, and what I had wished someone had done differently. Presence was the ingredient I kept coming back to. The visits I remembered weren't memorable because of elaborate programming. They were memorable because someone in that room made me feel like I was the only person they were thinking about that day. Presence is the foundation everything else is built on. Without it, the other three ingredients don't matter.

Personalization. Generic is forgettable. The Heaths make the case that defining moments are almost always specific. A moment built for this person in this situation, not for everyone in general.

I learned this lesson in a way I didn't expect. The reason a simple bottle of Kiwi-Strawberry Propel placed on a hockey bench hit me the way it did (a story I'll tell in full in the coming weeks) is because it was specific to me. It said: I see you. I know you. I thought about you. You cannot manufacture that feeling with a broad gesture aimed at everyone. Personalization requires that you actually pay attention to the people you lead.

Timing. The right gesture at the wrong time lands flat. The wrong gesture at the right time can still move someone. The Heath brothers write about the importance of recognizing transitional moments. For example, first days, milestones, and completions as natural windows where people are most open to being impacted.

Intentionality. This is the one most leaders skip and it's the one the Heaths are most insistent about. Their central argument is that we tend to think defining moments simply happen to us, when in reality, the most powerful ones are built. Intentionality means actively asking: who in my circle needs a moment right now, and what would that look like for them specifically?

I wasn't always good at this. In my early years at DSU, I was so focused on doing everything asked of me that I wasn't deliberately thinking about the moments I was creating for people. I was being useful, but I wasn't being intentional. There's a difference. The shift happened when I started realizing that being present and useful for someone could become a moment if I brought the right level of care to it. Intentionality isn't about grand gestures. It's a discipline, not a personality trait. You can build it.

Here's the uncomfortable flip side of all of this.

If you are always either creating a moment or missing one, then the inverse of everything above is also true. Distraction instead of presence. Generic instead of personal. Bad timing. Going through the motions without intention. These don't just result in nothing, but actually result in a negative imprint.

The Heath brothers are candid about this too. They observe that most organizations and leaders put enormous energy into fixing problems and almost no energy into creating peaks. In doing this, they leave the most memorable parts of someone's experience entirely to chance. I saw this on both sides of recruiting tables throughout my career. Power Four head coaches would come through to recruit our players, and you could tell within minutes which ones had spent the last ten minutes thinking about that kid specifically and which ones were running the same script they'd run for the last twenty recruits. The kids could always tell. So could their families. So could I.

Those generic visits were moments too. They just worked against the coaches who ran them.

The good news is that awareness is the first step. Once you understand what a moment is made of, you start noticing both the ones you're creating and the ones you're letting slip by.

You don't need a championship game or a magazine segment to apply this. Start with one question at the end of your day:

Who did I interact with today, and did I leave them better than I found them?

That's it. Not every interaction needs to be a defining moment. Asking the question builds the habit of looking. Once you start looking, you'll be surprised how many opportunities are already there.

If you want to go deeper on the science and research behind why moments work the way they do, pick up The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath. It will change the way you move through your day.

PARTING THOUGHTS

• Think of the most memorable moment someone created for you. Which of the four ingredients presence, personalization, timing, or intentionality was most at work in it?

• Think about your own version of the recruiting visits. Think of interactions where someone made you feel truly seen. What specifically did they do? Can you replicate that for someone in your circle this week?

• Is there a moment you've been meaning to create for someone that you keep putting off? What is stopping you?

What a Moment Actually Is

A moment, in the context of leadership, is an interaction, experience, or event that creates an emotional imprint powerful enough to influence how someone thinks, feels, or behaves. Not just in the immediate present, but in the future.

That definition contains three critical components.

First, a moment involves an interaction. All moments require at least two parties (even indirectly). A moment isn't something that happens to someone in isolation. It happens between people. That means you, as the leader, are always either creating a moment or missing one. There is no neutral ground.

Second, it creates an emotional imprint. Moments leave marks that persist beyond the experience itself. I think back to my own college recruiting visits, sitting in those rooms as a high school senior trying to figure out where I belonged. Decades later, I can still vividly recall which visits made me feel invisible and which ones made me feel genuinely valued. The facts of those visits have mostly faded. The feeling hasn't. The Heath brothers point to research showing that our memories of experiences are largely shaped by their peaks and endings, not their average. Emotional imprints don't follow the rules of logic or time. They stick, and they stick at the high points.

Third, it influences future behavior. A moment doesn't just feel good in the actual moment; it actually changes the trajectory of what comes next. When JC won Athlete of the Week, it wasn't just a nice afternoon. It changed how he carried himself around the program. It changed how our players talked about him. It changed how I thought about who deserved to be recognized. One nomination of just five minutes of writing became a lasting shift for everyone involved.