Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Let’s talk about guinea pigs.
Not the furry, squeaky kind—though yes, they’re cute. I’m talking about the people who experienced your very first attempts at leadership. Your first team. Your first staff. Your first employees. They were your guinea pigs while you tried to figure out who you were as a leader.
And if you’ve ever been in that spot—first-time athletic director, CEO, head coach, director—you know exactly what I mean.
The Big Shift: Theory vs. Practice
Before you take that first leadership job, everything is theory. You have ideas about how you’ll lead differently, how you’ll treat your people, how you’ll run your program. You may have even written it all down in a shiny handbook. But once you’re in the big chair? Reality sets in.
The context is completely different—new location, new size, new culture, new expectations. Suddenly, you’re fully responsible for outcomes, and the people you’re leading don’t care about your growth curve. They just know you’re the one in charge.
That’s where the guinea pigs come in. They’re the ones living through your trial-and-error leadership experiments.
My 27-Year-Old Coaching Cauldron
When I became a college volleyball head coach at 27, I had no idea what I was doing. I just knew I didn’t want to coach like the ones before me. So I changed everything. The offense, defense, culture, handbook. My players? They became my guinea pigs.
I was basically in the kitchen throwing ingredients together, hoping I’d land on something that worked. Meanwhile, their scholarships and athletic experiences depended on me figuring it out quickly. That’s the wild part of leadership. You’re not learning in a vacuum. Your growth affects real people.
Why the Guinea Pigs Matter
Those early teams, employees, or staff members didn’t sign up to be part of your experiments. They signed up to play, to work, to succeed. And yet, by being patient with your messy beginnings, they helped shape the leader you became.
That’s why it’s important to thank them. Thank the athletes who weathered your experiments. Thank the first employees who endured your ambitious handbooks and half-baked systems. Thank the staff who stuck with you when two plus two wasn’t adding up to a thousand, but a very humbling four.
They’re the unsung heroes of your leadership journey.
Closing Thoughts
We talk a lot about mentors, books, and training when it comes to leadership growth. But the people who really helped us figure our stuff out? The guinea pigs.
So, who were yours? And have you thanked them yet?
I dive deeper into this idea in the latest episode of Five with Fry. Give it a listen wherever you get your podcasts.
