Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

Seeing Tony Dungy in the spotlight after so many great years of coaching was truly fantastic to observe. He's one of the great leaders that can be looked upon as being successful, yet never abandoning the values he believed in.

What's great about Tony Dungy as a leader is that he has remained genuine and true to who he is. One writer said, "Dungy is fair, he is candid, he is helpful, he is genuine. He is a man who repeatedly talks about his Christian faith without seeming overly preachy, nor hypocritical. He lives his life exactly according to the values he espouses."

His wife Lauren added, "You see that soft-spokenness. The calmness, the humbleness, the man that's in control, a man that has a job and wants to do it and do it well. Not necessarily to get credit for it, it's a family coming together to make a championship team.

"The way he has done it, that's to play a game with intensity, to play without compromising. To go out and play on the field and not have to compromise with the cussing and carrying on that often happens, we often see with coaches."

We as managers and business leaders need to understand the importance of what a quality leader like Tony Dungy represents. It's not that everybody carries the same values, it's that those values that we do carry, we need to be true to and never change.

This goes along with a lot of the great managers we've been talking about throughout the months. They understood who they were and what type of company they represented, and they always moved and made decisions based upon those values no matter what. They are rarely tempted to go outside of those parameters, and if they do, once they see they have they return to them as quickly as they can.

Another great characteristic of Dungy was that he never became bitter. When he was the defensive coordinator for the Minnesota Vikings football team, he had build the No. 1 defense in the league, and when 7 head coaching jobs became available that year, he wasn't interviewed for even one. Still, he kept on with his integrity and who he was, and waited while he continued to do his great job.

Even with personal tragedies, like the death of his parents and eldest son, it didn't cause him to falter. When asked about some of these recent heartbreaks and if it had brought him tears for his past losses, Dungy said, "No tears at all. No, it's complete joy and just so proud. I guess that's the main thing. Pride in our organization because I think we have won, but we do things the right way." It couldn't be said any better