January 17, 2025 • 13 mins
Notre Dame hasn’t beaten Ohio State since 1936!
But ND did score a big victory over OSU in a 1960s recruiting battle that not only brought All-American receiver Thom Gatewood to South Bend, but also turned Thom into an enthusiastic Notre Dame advocate that helped attract future talent to the university.
That being said, Gatewood's story isn't just a nice footnote in the lead-up to Monday's national championship game—it's a game plan for a differentiated, 3-step approach that you can use to more effectively attract and retain talent:
1 - Quit trying to keep up with the Joneses.
ND's coach, Ara Parseghian, won over Gatewood with an understated, guarantee-free pitch emphasizing hard work and grit—a very different pitch compared to what other coaches were telling Thom (and a VERY VERY different pitch compared to today's recruiting environment).
2 - Build genuine connections between top talent and senior leadership.
After arriving on campus, Gatewood developed a relationship with ND’s president, Fr. Ted Hesburgh, dispelling any notion that Thom was merely a cog at some large institution. In fact, Thom learned first-hand that he was an integral part of the unique mission and vision that Father Ted had for Notre Dame; and that bond inspired Thom to become a lifelong, enthusiastic promoter of ND.
3 - Showcase a merit-based approach to accolades and opportunities.
Thom Gatewood wasn't appointed as Notre Dame's first Black football captain; he was voted in by his teammates, based on his effort, leadership, and trustworthiness. Compare that to organizations where promotions are perceived (rightly or wrongly) as driven by politics, favoritism, or some short-sighted guarantee that a leader feels forced to abide by.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
What do Inauguration Day, MartinLuther King Day and the college
football playoff nationalchampionship game all have in
common? Well, the obvious answeris that they will all be
occurring on Monday, January,20. But the less obvious answer
is that all of them areconnected in some way to your
ability to attract and retaintalent in the oil and gas
industry and over the nextcouple of minutes, I Joe Sinnott
(00:23):
will explain how and why thoseconnections make sense, and I
promise they do make sense.
But first, let's start with astatistic related to that
upcoming Notre Dame Ohio Stategame, and that is that Notre
Dame has not beaten Ohio Statein 88 years. Now they've only
played six times in those 88years, but still, Ohio State has
(00:45):
emerged victorious in all ofthose contests, including last
season's heartbreaking lastsecond victory against Notre
Dame in South Bend. And ofcourse, I say heartbreaking
because I am a Notre Dame fan,and I happen to be at that game,
but nevertheless, today on theenergy detox, we're going to
focus on the positive. We'regoing to focus on a victory that
Notre Dame did have over OhioState in the last 88 years,
(01:10):
albeit not a victory on thefield, but a victory in
recruiting, because in the late1960s Notre Dame won the
recruiting battle for ThomGatewood, a star athlete from
Baltimore, Maryland, and Tom washeavily recruited by Ohio State
and about 200 other schools, butultimately, he chose Notre Dame,
(01:32):
because Notre Dame's message wasdifferent. What he heard or
didn't hear from Coach AraParseghian was different from
what he was hearing fromeverybody else, from all the
other coaches, including WoodyHayes of Ohio State, because Ara
Parseghian told, Tom, look, I'mnot going to tell you that
you're going to be an AllAmerican. I'm not going to tell
you that you're going to come inhere and be a starter. All I'm
(01:55):
going to tell you is that if youcome here and you work hard on
the field, well, you know whatyou might see some playing time,
and if you work hard in theclassroom, well, then you're
gonna play for a lifetime interms of the game of life, of
course, and the value of aneducation. But beyond that, our
parsion made no promises. It wasa very understated sales pitch,
(02:17):
if you will.
And Thom loved it. Thom lovedthat this guy, this coach, was
leaning on integrity, wasleaning on the fact that merit
was gonna help him move upagain, if Thom put the effort
in. But that was it certainlydifferent from what you see
today in terms of name, imageand likeness deals and all of
the various promises andguarantees that athletes are
(02:39):
expecting from universities, butsetting aside the perhaps
refreshing nature of thatrecruiting approach in the 1960s
versus 2025 let's bring it backto you. What are you doing that
mirrors our parsecians,confident, understated approach
that doesn't try to keep up withthe Joneses, that doesn't try to
(03:01):
lean on a bunch of promises thathe may not have been able to
keep, but instead, again, leanson integrity, leans on
confidence, leans on a salespitch that really shifts things
to the recruit. Whatopportunities do you have to say
hey here at our company, or hereon my team, we really are not
(03:24):
into making promises andguarantees that we can't keep,
or that are going to leave us ina lurch down the road. So if you
trust our approach, and ifyou're willing to work hard,
come and join us. Otherwise,we're not for you.
Again, that takes confidence andnow, sure, you need to keep up
with the Joneses to a certainextent when it comes to
(03:45):
compensation and titles and workarrangements and maybe work from
home promises if necessary. Butat the end of the day, the
underlying principle should beintegrity and opportunity and a
merit based approach. So askyourself, are you communicating
that, or do you find yourself inthis sometimes sickening
(04:06):
position where you're justtrying to offer what everybody
else is offering to attract andretain talent? That being said,
let's move on to the nextconnection.
Let's move on to Martin LutherKing Day. What does Martin
Luther King and Martin LutherKing Day have to do with
recruiting? Well, as I said,Thom Gatewood was recruited in
(04:30):
the late 1960s and if you'refamiliar with the late 1960s
there's a bit of strife here inthe United States, especially
when it came to race relations.
In fact, Thom Gatewood signedwith Notre Dame just a couple of
months before Martin Luther KingJr was assassinated, and when he
got on campus, he knew, andagain, these are his words. He
(04:51):
knew that he was walking into anenvironment that was hell bent
on attracting the best talent.
Possible regardless of the colorof people's skin. Now, in
fairness, there was still only acouple of African Americans on
the Notre Dame team, but he knewthat the President of the
University at the time, FatherTed Hesburgh, had a strong
(05:13):
relationship with Martin LutherKing Jr, was sitting on civil
rights commissions and factors afamous photo of Father Ted
Hesburgh linking arms with MLK.
So Tom Gatewood knew this goingin when he accepted the offer
from Notre Dame. In fact, hishigh school coach, George Young,
told Tom Gatewood ahead of time.
(05:35):
He said, hey, look, there's twopeople at this school, Notre
Dame, Ara Paseghian and TheodoreHesburgh. If those two people
are influencing your life, theycan make a big difference. So
Tom knew this going in, but whenhe got to the university, when
this talented individual wasthere already on the team, he
had the opportunity to form apersonal relationship with the
(05:57):
president of Notre Dame. And itwas that personal relationship.
It was the conversations withFather Ted that led to insights
and understanding about themission of the university and
its leader that you might notexpect of your average college
athlete, and bringing it back toyou and your organization,
(06:18):
really, it's a matter ofexisting talent. How connected
do they actually feel to themission and the vision of the
company's leaders? Maybe not thepresident, but senior leadership
in general. Do they feel thatbond? Do they feel that
connection? You know, in thecase of Father Ted and Thom
Gatewood, Father Ted, you know,shared very openly his vision
(06:41):
for the University. In fact, heshared his vision for Tom
Gatewood. Now Tom, in many ways,mirror Jackie Robinson, had the
potential to break barriers.
So yes, I understand that in theworld of corporate America and
different sized companies, it'snot always practical that every
individual employee is going tomeet once a year with a
(07:03):
president of the company. Idon't think ExxonMobil
necessarily has the time andenergy to arrange meetings
between its president and everyone of its employees,
necessarily, but there are otherways to form those connections,
and that's the point today. Howdo you build those connections
such that you're not leaning oncorporate speak and mass emails
and, you know, the occasionalTown Hall, but instead, can
(07:27):
really share insights of whatthat leader from a personal
level level wants. How do youstrengthen the bond between the
people the very top of theorganization and every other
employee, so that thoseemployees don't feel like
they're just a cog in a system.
Much like Tom Gatewood did notfeel like he was just some cog
in some giant organization thereat Notre Dame. He wasn't just a
(07:47):
player, but he had this personalrelationship that's the holy
grail there, especially when itcomes to retaining talent. But
also, you think about what ThomGatewood then did for the
university. For the next 50years, he became one of the best
advocates possible. Do you wantto talk about attracting future
talent? Well, you talk aboutbringing somebody in like Tom
(08:08):
Gatewood, who clearly feltconnected to the Notre Dame
family because of hisrelationship with the President.
So ask yourself, How do you formthat relationship? How do you
get people to be excited andengaged to the level where they
want to go out for you andrecruit formally and informally,
because if that's not theculture in your organization, if
you don't have people that arewillingly wanting to go out,
(08:29):
perhaps on social media and toutwhat a difference your
institution is relative to othercompanies to other
opportunities, well, something'samiss, and it's up to you to
figure out what exactly ismissing. And by and large, it's
likely that connection betweenupper management and your
average employee.
(08:53):
That being said, be remiss notto focus on the fact that Martin
Luther King also, of course, hada differentiated message. So we
started with our parseciansdifferentiated message. And as a
quick aside, let's emphasize thefact that Martin Luther King
also had a differentiatedmessage, that of course, being
non violence, non violentprotests. Now in fairness,
(09:15):
though, that is a bit at oddswith the current coach of Notre
Dame Marcus Freeman, who is onrecord talking about the need
for his team to embrace violenceand play with violence and
choose violence. Butnevertheless, obviously we're
talking about different violencehere, and we're also talking
about, of course, the fact thatNotre Dame's coach Marcus
Freeman has an opportunity to bethe first African American Coach
(09:40):
to win a college footballnational championship.
Which actually brings us to ourthird and final connection that
being Inauguration Day, we'regoing to have a new president,
or an old new president, orhowever, that's going to work
here in a couple of days andInauguration Day. And what's
worth noting is that, you know,I just said that Marcus Freeman.
It stands to be the firstAfrican American head coach to
(10:03):
win a national championship,although I think he's actually
already the first AfricanAmerican to play for a national
championship as a coach. Andit's worth noting that Thom
Gatewood was the first AfricanAmerican captain of Notre Dame.
And why do I bring that up? Whatdoes that have to do with well,
Inauguration Day? Well, it'sbecause Tom Gatewood was
(10:25):
elected. He was voted in to becaptain of the Notre Dame team.
He was not appointed. He was notselected by a coach. It was his
teammates who voted him in. Andagain, Tom is on record talking
about how important that was tohim, because clearly, he was
recognized for his efforts. Itwas merit, it was hard work. It
(10:46):
was the recognition from histeammates that got him that
title. It wasn't somebody elsehanding it to him. And so again,
what did that have to do withyou and your organization? Well,
again, if you actually have anorganization that relies on
merit to recognize people, andif you actually have an
organization that promotespeople who are clearly in,
(11:08):
clearly connected with theirpeers, with their colleagues,
well that's a winning formula,right? Versus companies that
seem to make selections that arebased on God knows what, just
politics based on a coin flip,based on personal favors, again,
regardless of what the realstory is, if there's a
(11:29):
narrative, if there's aperception at your organization,
that it isn't a matter ofchoosing the person that
actually has the best influenceon everybody else, that has
actually achieved results,that's actually earned the right
based on merit? Well, again,you're not going to have long
term success, and you'recertainly not going to have a
culture that is going to attractand retain talent, because much
(11:53):
like President Trump, who ofcourse, won the election, you
know, he had to earn the trustof however many million voters
selected him to be the nextPresident of the United States.
He wasn't appointed. He wasn'tselected. He was voted in much
as Tom Gatewood was voted intooffice.
So again, do you have anenvironment where the
(12:13):
perception, at least, is thatthe best candidates are being
chosen for jobs, or do you havean environment where it seems
like people are just being handpicked for some reason, and
slotted into roles that reallydon't align with the will of the
people, so to speak? And again,I'm not suggesting, of course,
that your organization is ademocracy of any sort, not
(12:36):
suggesting that people shouldvote for who the next promotions
or the round of promotionsshould should be, but it is
necessary to make sure that youcan clearly show, clearly
demonstrate, to both yourexisting talent and future
talent that you rely on meritfirst.
And so with that, as always, Ithank you for tuning into the
(13:00):
energy detox. Thank you forjoining me on this frigid day
here at the confluence of theAllegheny Monongahela and Ohio
rivers, as we forced in someanalogies here the confluence of
Inauguration Day Martin LutherKing Day and the college
football playoff, of course. AndI'd be remiss not to force in a
(13:22):
final pun, because I am, ofcourse, standing at the gateway
to the west here at Point StatePark, as we talked about Thom
Gatewood. So with forced punsand dad jokes aside, I hope you
all have a wonderful rest of theday. And of course, Go Irish.
What do Inauguration Day, MartinLuther King Day and the college
football playoff nationalchampionship game all have in
common? Well, the obvious answeris that they will all be
occurring on Monday, January,20. But the less obvious answer
is that all of them areconnected in some way to your
ability to attract and retaintalent in the oil and gas
industry and over the nextcouple of minutes, I Joe Sinnott
(00:23):
will explain how and why thoseconnections make sense, and I
promise they do make sense.
But first, let's start with astatistic related to that
upcoming Notre Dame Ohio Stategame, and that is that Notre
Dame has not beaten Ohio Statein 88 years. Now they've only
played six times in those 88years, but still, Ohio State has
(00:45):
emerged victorious in all ofthose contests, including last
season's heartbreaking lastsecond victory against Notre
Dame in South Bend. And ofcourse, I say heartbreaking
because I am a Notre Dame fan,and I happen to be at that game,
but nevertheless, today on theenergy detox, we're going to
focus on the positive. We'regoing to focus on a victory that
Notre Dame did have over OhioState in the last 88 years,
(01:10):
albeit not a victory on thefield, but a victory in
recruiting, because in the late1960s Notre Dame won the
recruiting battle for ThomGatewood, a star athlete from
Baltimore, Maryland, and Tom washeavily recruited by Ohio State
and about 200 other schools, butultimately, he chose Notre Dame,
(01:32):
because Notre Dame's message wasdifferent. What he heard or
didn't hear from Coach AraParseghian was different from
what he was hearing fromeverybody else, from all the
other coaches, including WoodyHayes of Ohio State, because Ara
Parseghian told, Tom, look, I'mnot going to tell you that
you're going to be an AllAmerican. I'm not going to tell
you that you're going to come inhere and be a starter. All I'm
(01:55):
going to tell you is that if youcome here and you work hard on
the field, well, you know whatyou might see some playing time,
and if you work hard in theclassroom, well, then you're
gonna play for a lifetime interms of the game of life, of
course, and the value of aneducation. But beyond that, our
parsion made no promises. It wasa very understated sales pitch,
(02:17):
if you will.
And Thom loved it. Thom lovedthat this guy, this coach, was
leaning on integrity, wasleaning on the fact that merit
was gonna help him move upagain, if Thom put the effort
in. But that was it certainlydifferent from what you see
today in terms of name, imageand likeness deals and all of
the various promises andguarantees that athletes are
(02:39):
expecting from universities, butsetting aside the perhaps
refreshing nature of thatrecruiting approach in the 1960s
versus 2025 let's bring it backto you. What are you doing that
mirrors our parsecians,confident, understated approach
that doesn't try to keep up withthe Joneses, that doesn't try to
(03:01):
lean on a bunch of promises thathe may not have been able to
keep, but instead, again, leanson integrity, leans on
confidence, leans on a salespitch that really shifts things
to the recruit. Whatopportunities do you have to say
hey here at our company, or hereon my team, we really are not
(03:24):
into making promises andguarantees that we can't keep,
or that are going to leave us ina lurch down the road. So if you
trust our approach, and ifyou're willing to work hard,
come and join us. Otherwise,we're not for you.
Again, that takes confidence andnow, sure, you need to keep up
with the Joneses to a certainextent when it comes to
(03:45):
compensation and titles and workarrangements and maybe work from
home promises if necessary. Butat the end of the day, the
underlying principle should beintegrity and opportunity and a
merit based approach. So askyourself, are you communicating
that, or do you find yourself inthis sometimes sickening
(04:06):
position where you're justtrying to offer what everybody
else is offering to attract andretain talent? That being said,
let's move on to the nextconnection.
Let's move on to Martin LutherKing Day. What does Martin
Luther King and Martin LutherKing Day have to do with
recruiting? Well, as I said,Thom Gatewood was recruited in
(04:30):
the late 1960s and if you'refamiliar with the late 1960s
there's a bit of strife here inthe United States, especially
when it came to race relations.
In fact, Thom Gatewood signedwith Notre Dame just a couple of
months before Martin Luther KingJr was assassinated, and when he
got on campus, he knew, andagain, these are his words. He
(04:51):
knew that he was walking into anenvironment that was hell bent
on attracting the best talent.
Possible regardless of the colorof people's skin. Now, in
fairness, there was still only acouple of African Americans on
the Notre Dame team, but he knewthat the President of the
University at the time, FatherTed Hesburgh, had a strong
(05:13):
relationship with Martin LutherKing Jr, was sitting on civil
rights commissions and factors afamous photo of Father Ted
Hesburgh linking arms with MLK.
So Tom Gatewood knew this goingin when he accepted the offer
from Notre Dame. In fact, hishigh school coach, George Young,
told Tom Gatewood ahead of time.
(05:35):
He said, hey, look, there's twopeople at this school, Notre
Dame, Ara Paseghian and TheodoreHesburgh. If those two people
are influencing your life, theycan make a big difference. So
Tom knew this going in, but whenhe got to the university, when
this talented individual wasthere already on the team, he
had the opportunity to form apersonal relationship with the
(05:57):
president of Notre Dame. And itwas that personal relationship.
It was the conversations withFather Ted that led to insights
and understanding about themission of the university and
its leader that you might notexpect of your average college
athlete, and bringing it back toyou and your organization,
(06:18):
really, it's a matter ofexisting talent. How connected
do they actually feel to themission and the vision of the
company's leaders? Maybe not thepresident, but senior leadership
in general. Do they feel thatbond? Do they feel that
connection? You know, in thecase of Father Ted and Thom
Gatewood, Father Ted, you know,shared very openly his vision
(06:41):
for the University. In fact, heshared his vision for Tom
Gatewood. Now Tom, in many ways,mirror Jackie Robinson, had the
potential to break barriers.
So yes, I understand that in theworld of corporate America and
different sized companies, it'snot always practical that every
individual employee is going tomeet once a year with a
(07:03):
president of the company. Idon't think ExxonMobil
necessarily has the time andenergy to arrange meetings
between its president and everyone of its employees,
necessarily, but there are otherways to form those connections,
and that's the point today. Howdo you build those connections
such that you're not leaning oncorporate speak and mass emails
and, you know, the occasionalTown Hall, but instead, can
(07:27):
really share insights of whatthat leader from a personal
level level wants. How do youstrengthen the bond between the
people the very top of theorganization and every other
employee, so that thoseemployees don't feel like
they're just a cog in a system.
Much like Tom Gatewood did notfeel like he was just some cog
in some giant organization thereat Notre Dame. He wasn't just a
(07:47):
player, but he had this personalrelationship that's the holy
grail there, especially when itcomes to retaining talent. But
also, you think about what ThomGatewood then did for the
university. For the next 50years, he became one of the best
advocates possible. Do you wantto talk about attracting future
talent? Well, you talk aboutbringing somebody in like Tom
(08:08):
Gatewood, who clearly feltconnected to the Notre Dame
family because of hisrelationship with the President.
So ask yourself, How do you formthat relationship? How do you
get people to be excited andengaged to the level where they
want to go out for you andrecruit formally and informally,
because if that's not theculture in your organization, if
you don't have people that arewillingly wanting to go out,
(08:29):
perhaps on social media and toutwhat a difference your
institution is relative to othercompanies to other
opportunities, well, something'samiss, and it's up to you to
figure out what exactly ismissing. And by and large, it's
likely that connection betweenupper management and your
average employee.
(08:53):
That being said, be remiss notto focus on the fact that Martin
Luther King also, of course, hada differentiated message. So we
started with our parseciansdifferentiated message. And as a
quick aside, let's emphasize thefact that Martin Luther King
also had a differentiatedmessage, that of course, being
non violence, non violentprotests. Now in fairness,
(09:15):
though, that is a bit at oddswith the current coach of Notre
Dame Marcus Freeman, who is onrecord talking about the need
for his team to embrace violenceand play with violence and
choose violence. Butnevertheless, obviously we're
talking about different violencehere, and we're also talking
about, of course, the fact thatNotre Dame's coach Marcus
Freeman has an opportunity to bethe first African American Coach
(09:40):
to win a college footballnational championship.
Which actually brings us to ourthird and final connection that
being Inauguration Day, we'regoing to have a new president,
or an old new president, orhowever, that's going to work
here in a couple of days andInauguration Day. And what's
worth noting is that, you know,I just said that Marcus Freeman.
It stands to be the firstAfrican American head coach to
(10:03):
win a national championship,although I think he's actually
already the first AfricanAmerican to play for a national
championship as a coach. Andit's worth noting that Thom
Gatewood was the first AfricanAmerican captain of Notre Dame.
And why do I bring that up? Whatdoes that have to do with well,
Inauguration Day? Well, it'sbecause Tom Gatewood was
(10:25):
elected. He was voted in to becaptain of the Notre Dame team.
He was not appointed. He was notselected by a coach. It was his
teammates who voted him in. Andagain, Tom is on record talking
about how important that was tohim, because clearly, he was
recognized for his efforts. Itwas merit, it was hard work. It
(10:46):
was the recognition from histeammates that got him that
title. It wasn't somebody elsehanding it to him. And so again,
what did that have to do withyou and your organization? Well,
again, if you actually have anorganization that relies on
merit to recognize people, andif you actually have an
organization that promotespeople who are clearly in,
(11:08):
clearly connected with theirpeers, with their colleagues,
well that's a winning formula,right? Versus companies that
seem to make selections that arebased on God knows what, just
politics based on a coin flip,based on personal favors, again,
regardless of what the realstory is, if there's a
(11:29):
narrative, if there's aperception at your organization,
that it isn't a matter ofchoosing the person that
actually has the best influenceon everybody else, that has
actually achieved results,that's actually earned the right
based on merit? Well, again,you're not going to have long
term success, and you'recertainly not going to have a
culture that is going to attractand retain talent, because much
(11:53):
like President Trump, who ofcourse, won the election, you
know, he had to earn the trustof however many million voters
selected him to be the nextPresident of the United States.
He wasn't appointed. He wasn'tselected. He was voted in much
as Tom Gatewood was voted intooffice.
So again, do you have anenvironment where the
(12:13):
perception, at least, is thatthe best candidates are being
chosen for jobs, or do you havean environment where it seems
like people are just being handpicked for some reason, and
slotted into roles that reallydon't align with the will of the
people, so to speak? And again,I'm not suggesting, of course,
that your organization is ademocracy of any sort, not
(12:36):
suggesting that people shouldvote for who the next promotions
or the round of promotionsshould should be, but it is
necessary to make sure that youcan clearly show, clearly
demonstrate, to both yourexisting talent and future
talent that you rely on meritfirst.
And so with that, as always, Ithank you for tuning into the
(13:00):
energy detox. Thank you forjoining me on this frigid day
here at the confluence of theAllegheny Monongahela and Ohio
rivers, as we forced in someanalogies here the confluence of
Inauguration Day Martin LutherKing Day and the college
football playoff, of course. AndI'd be remiss not to force in a
(13:22):
final pun, because I am, ofcourse, standing at the gateway
to the west here at Point StatePark, as we talked about Thom
Gatewood. So with forced punsand dad jokes aside, I hope you
all have a wonderful rest of theday. And of course, Go Irish.
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