“To not exist for yourself is a beautiful thing.”

Mike McDaniel is one of the hottest names in all of coaching. Thought by many to be too young to make a significant impact in NFL coaching, McDaniel is challenging the traditional approach to coaching and leading in just a few short years in one of the most pressure induced industries in the world. On February 6, 2022, Mike McDaniel was named the fourteenth head coach in the history of the prestigious Miami Dolphins franchise. 

He’s known to those in the industry as a “player’s coach.” Utilizing his age and personality to relate with players in a transformational way. He wears Jordans on the sidelines and flashes expensive watches. He’s not your typical buttoned up NFL head coach. But under the surface of his youthful approach to this difficult job is the wisdom of decades of pursuing high performance and enduring the costly measures of attaining success.

The pursuit of success is costly. High performance is taxing. And don’t let his age fool you, Mike McDaniel has paid dearly to achieve what he set out to do as a young boy. Though he’s only 40 years old, he’s spent a lifetime in the pressure cooker that is the NFL coaching ladder. And the ups and downs of his journey can shed light on significant components to living as a flourishing leader in an environment that seeks to create circumstances designed for you to burnout and languish. 

Is “All In” Really Sustainable?

When McDaniel graduated college from Yale he sent letters to all 32 teams in the National Football League. Denver Broncos head coach Mike Shanahan recognized the name from McDaniel’s tenure serving as a ball boy in Bronco’s training camps years before. 

Having worked a summer internship at an investment banking firm, McDaniel knew that path was not for him. Nothing lit up his brain like football. Football was his life and he was all in. He jumped into a coaching internship with the Broncos in 2005 and put his all-in approach to the test. 

The “all in” approach is the standard for pursuing success in our modern culture. First to arrive, last to leave. “Balance in life is for the undedicated.” This is the norm in the high pressure, fast paced culture of the National Football League. McDaniel felt an extra edge to prove himself by way of his all-in dedication because he never played professionally. The approach gave quick and affirming feedback. After “grinding” for a full year as a coaching intern with the Broncos, McDaniel was given an opportunity with the Houston Texans as an offensive assistant.

This is the break all emerging leaders are looking for! The chance to rise in rank, and enlarge their territory of influence in more important rooms and higher altitudes. After arriving in Houston, McDaniel continued his all-in, costly approach to work and skill development. He was the most dedicated, the most hungry, the most focused individual in the room. On an episode of The Pivot Podcast he shared:

“I was not sleeping so I could be more involved. And then pulling all-nighters like every other week so I could be involved in the game-planning process.” 

Many in the high performance culture can see how this could give rise to a path to becoming the head coach of the Miami Dolphins. But unfortunately, the path was not linear from Houston to Miami. In fact, the years in the middle for Mike McDaniel show the dangers of the “all-in” approach. While he was rising in status and stature in the NFL with the Washington Commanders (after a two year stint in the UFL), then Cleveland Browns, then Atlanta Falcons, there was more going on under the surface. When it comes to the intersection of leadership and well-being, we must always lift the hood of the car after marveling at the speeds it can attain and the performance around the curves. 

For Mike McDaniel on the outside, everything seemed to be stacking in order. Under the hood, he was experiencing deep problems. An all-in approach comes with steep costs. Pulling all-nighters, hopping from city to city with no community base. A maniacal drive to attain a singular outcome. It can be really taxing on our well-being when all of life is wrapped up in a singular pursuit. 

While in Atlanta, McDaniel began facing a lot of negative emotions that come as a byproduct of chasing success. Promotions and opportunities can come rolling in, but on the inside the experience can be totally different. He shared in an interview with USA Today in 2017: 

“I couldn’t handle the emotion of not getting what I wanted, when I wanted it. So I was going out and being young. I had to have a grown-up journey where it all kind of evaporated through my fingertips, blowing my world up.”

While on staff with the Atlanta Falcons, he was approached gently by coworkers that he smelled like alcohol. McDaniel went to head coach Dan Quinn to talk about getting help. General Manager Thomas Dimitroff and Assistant General Manager Scott Pioli connected McDaniel with a team psychologist. Eventually he went for a three week stay in an in-patient treatment facility where he was diagnosed with depression which led to a psychological dependence on alcohol to “check-out” of reality. 

This chapter in the larger story is not just unique to Mike McDaniel. It serves as a visual of the dangers of burnout. The all-in approach of pursuing and obtaining high performance can leave any leader at risk for burnout, stress, and languishing. 

For McDaniel, success was climbing the ranks of the NFL industry. Winning on the field, moving up from a position coach to a coordinator to eventually a head coach. It was the type of pursuit that dictated everything in his life. Hours at the team facility, late nights watching film, studying, preparing for their weekly opponent. A complete lack of stability in life as all of life was wrapped up in achieving the definition of success he set whether intentionally set or not. 

What High Performance Really Is

High performance is not what you can do, it is what you can recover from. 

Fortunately for Mike McDaniel he was surrounded by great leaders who had his well being in mind, despite the high expectations of life in the NFL. 

“For the first time in my life, I had men stand behind me and say “hey, you’re not alone dude.”

Even more fortunate, McDaniel had the humility to act on the inflection point in his life and begin the difficult work of recognizing that leadership and the pursuit of success can have a negative effect on well-being. 

You don’t have to be an NFL head coach to realize the pressures (often self-imposed) to be a high performer can pull you into habits and rhythms which may raise the ceiling of your capabilities but fail to raise the baseline of your well being.

Recovery is the return to your baseline state of functioning. Less than ideal recovery means that our baseline is in a languishing state. So while the peak of Mike McDaniel’s performance was enough to allow him to climb the ranks of the NFL coaching world, the return to his baseline put him in an unhealthy spot which caused the reliance of unhealthy coping mechanisms. 

When we have suboptimal recovery it takes us longer to return to our ceiling. Being a high performer is about raising your baseline through healthy recovery. It’s not necessarily about achieving “balance.” It’s more about maintaining stability. However, the pressures of chasing success coupled with the drive of an achiever sometimes don’t allow for a healthy recovery process. We drive and drive and drive until we blow up or burn out. As McDaniel shared, 

“Things were happening in life and I wanted to dictate the terms. I realized I was not addressing problems and was running from them.”

How to Improve Your Baseline

All leaders and high performers must develop awareness. Not just awareness on how we’re wired, or the type of personality we have, but awareness to know what state we’re in, and how to alter it in a positive way. This requires both rhythms of healthy recovery and an ability to develop personal “check engine” lights to realize things are beginning to head in a direction we don’t want to go.

Stress is rising, expectations are closing in, pressure (real or imagined) is negatively impacting your state. When we’re drifting, we do nothing to intervene. When we’re living on purpose, we use the signals given to us to recognize something needs to be addressed.

All leaders are returning to their baseline. The question is how low is the baseline relative to well-being?

In the years following his difficult stint in Atlanta, Mike McDaniel has done the work to raise his baseline. This allows him to show up to leadership in a different way. After working through his alcoholism, his next opportunity was in San Francisco with the 49ers, after numerous successful seasons and one year as a prolific offensive coordinator, he made his way to the Miami Dolphins.

“The past is something you can’t control. But in the present you can take back what the past stole. You can change the story.”

Now as McDaniel leads the Dolphins all indications seem to show a leader who has a revised and refined definition of success. A definition of success that positions his role as leader differently than in his early years in the NFL. A new approach to leadership, mastery, and the pursuit of high performance that enlarges, not diminishes his life away from the football field.

His new approach is encapsulated in an interview he gave with NFL films in the fall of 2023:

“I think ironically being a father is similar to being a coach in that they’re both a servitude role. Being a Dad is very much like being a head coach in that you’re constantly concerned about the well-being of other people. To not exist for yourself is a beautiful thing.”

In two short years as the leader of the Dolphins he is turning heads with his players first approach to coaching and leading. Soundbites and shareable perspectives are overflowing out of Mike McDaniel, like some of these,

“I’m a coach. So inherently my job is to serve players.”

“I don’t feel entitled for players to listen to me. I have to earn it.”

“You have to build relationships, understanding that you don’t know the full walk of life of each individual.”

It’s not difficult to surmise that an approach like this is only possible when internally, we’re flourishing, healthy and stable. The result of internal stability. Purposeful response to check engine lights and a healthy relationship to our important pursuits. 

Ultimately it seems obvious, Mike McDaniel has raised the baseline of his recovery. When he used to return to his baseline it was in the thralls of alcohol and an escape from reality. Now, his baseline appears to be firmly established in a healthy, flourishing state. 

And the byproduct of this recovery is a consistent, others-centered approach to leading the world calls, “transformational leadership.”