Photo by Jon Anderson
Reggie Torbor, a former Auburn and NFL football player who is now president of the Pylon Building Group (at right), talks with an audience member after the Hoover Area Chamber of Commerce luncheon at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium in Hoover, Alabama, on Thursday, March 16, 2023.
One of the greatest things you can do for someone is to shut up and listen to them, Reggie Torbor told the Hoover Area Chamber of Commerce today.
“Be quiet and listen to them,” the former Auburn and NFL football player and now construction businessman told the chamber crowd in the banquet room at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium in a talk about leadership. “It is extremely powerful.”
There is a listening problem among many of today’s leaders, said Torbor, who early this year became president of the Pylon Building Group, a subsidiary of Brasfield & Gorrie. Somewhere along the way, people have started equating talking with power and intelligence, but silence sometimes is much better, he said.
“It’s awkward. It’s weird for most people,” Torbor said. But when leaders swallow their words and simply listen to people in their organization or group, it can have a great impact, he said. “If you will do that for your people, they will run through a wall for you.”
Torbor also said it’s no coincidence that the words “listen” and “silent” have the same exact letters.
Torbor, a fourth-round defensive end draft pick who played four seasons for the New York Giants, two for the Miami Dolphins and one for the Buffalo Bills before retiring from the NFL in 2010, said he had an opportunity to watch a lot of great leaders while in the NFL. He talked how it’s important for leaders to create systems that work for the people they have and invest in people.
Torbor recounted something he heard from former Minnesota Viking wide receiver Cris Carter — that only 5% of the 1,500 or so players in the NFL can go to any team and flourish. For the rest of them, they need a system in which they can function and a coach who believes in them, he said.
“Minus those two things, they will not be successful,” Torbor said. “I don’t care how talented they are.”
Photo by Jon Anderson
Reggie Torbor, a former Auburn and NFL football player, who is now president of the Pylon Building Group, speaks at the Hoover Area Chamber of Commerce luncheon at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium in Hoover, Alabama, on Thursday, March 16, 2023.
Everyone has seen examples of great players who flopped with certain teams, he said. The same principles apply to people in companies and other organizations, he said. Talented people can fail if they aren’t given opportunities or the tools to be successful in that opportunity, he said.
“We must stop seeing this as their fault and start seeing this as a failure of leadership,” Torbor said. “You have one job as a leader … put your people in positions to be successful.”
Too many leaders have a system and try to force people into their system, Torbor said. “The people who that works for will be successful, but it leaves zero room for those other people. They just fall by the wayside.”
Leaders need to step back and realize they are dealing with people — and not widgets — and swallow their pride and evaluate what they need to change to make their people successful, Torbor said.
“If we don’t’ do that, we will continue to pay the consequences for it,” he said. “There is a consequence for not properly investing in the talent that is around us.”
Torbor also shared how a veteran player, Carlos Emmons, took him under his wing and showed him the ropes even though Torbor had been brought to the team to replace Emmons after a while.
This was in a cut-throat environment where some veteran players would intentionally give poor advice to newer players in order to hurt the newer players’ chances and save their jobs, Torbor said. When Torbor learned enough to begin starting, Emmons was cut from the team, Torbor said.
After Torbor and the Giants won the Super Bowl in 2008, he texted Emmons to thank him for all he had done to help him succeed. Emmons replied that he just wanted to do for Torbor what others were unwilling to do for him.
“My great-grandchildren will benefit from that,” Torbor said, nearly coming to tears.
Leaders sometimes get so protective of their own turf that they aren’t willing to invest in others, but “part of your job as a leader is to lead someone so well that you eliminate yourself,” he said.
One of the saddest things he has seen in corporate America is a man who worked for a company for 40 years, and when it was time for him to retire, he had no one to replace him, leaving his company scrambling, he said. That had to be a sad, lonely place to be, knowing he had not poured into others, Torbor said.
“If you really want to be a high-level leader, you must understand you hold someone’s career, life in the palm of your hands. You really do,” Torbor said. “You have the power to destroy, or you have the power to build up. What you do with that is solely up to you.”
