Brandon Staley is in his first year as Head Coach of the Los Angeles Chargers. On Wednesday, Staley was asked about the controversy that led to Jon Gruden’s resignation from the Las Vegas Raiders.
Staley displayed wisdom and thoughtfulness a veteran leader in any industry would wish they could have.
Give a listen to his response. It is well worth 1 minute and 54 seconds.
“I think what you’ll discover is that we have so much more in common than not” pic.twitter.com/nKfKazUQ4v
— Los Angeles Chargers (@chargers) October 13, 2021
“Perspective and trust in this world are really, really difficult to achieve,” the 38-year-old began. “I think about all the people that were affected by those emails — whether you’re a person of color, whether you’re a person, you know, a gender, your sexual orientation. That’s who I’m thinking about because it’s a sacred mantle for someone to call you coach or someone to call you a leader.
“Trust is really, really hard to achieve in this world. It’s really, really challenging to achieve, especially with people with those groups that I just mentioned. People are really guarded and skeptical of people because of emails like that.
“For someone like me, it’s just incumbent upon you to set the example every single day so that people that were talked about in those emails that they don’t need to feel that way, they shouldn’t feel that way.
“Hopefully, all of us can learn from this, that it’s about bringing people together for me, so that people can become the people that they dream about. For me, leading this football team and being someone, hopefully, we can be a light for those people in those emails that not everybody’s like that, that there’s far more people that will love you than the opposite.
“Hopefully, this will be a chance for everybody to come together instead of go apart.”