Paying it Forward: Stanley Laing on Servant Leadership

Photo by NISD's Northside Speaks

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Modern-day education is filled with many challenges. According to Stanley Laing, Northside Independent School District (NISD) Executive Athletic Director, there is nobody more qualified than the modern-day coach to provide solutions for those challenges.

“What we’re doing in coaching is the most important missionary work of our time with our young people,” professes Laing.

The origins of Laing start from the inner-city projects of a diverse Las Vegas Community. In Laing’s sophomore year, his mother uprooted the family and moved to San Angelo, Texas. After a year, the family planned to move back to Las Vegas. His High School Coach Paul Stein and wife Jan had other recommendations and convinced him to stay; the caveat was that he was to move in with them. The combination of Coach Stein and playing for an All-Time great in McMurry University’s Herchell Kimbrell was a perfect recipe to entice Laing to fall-in-love with coaching.

“I didn’t have a chance but to go into coaching, having such great men influencing my life,” said Laing.

It was the influence of impressive coaches that inspired him to be a man with the purpose of “paying it back” and “paying it forward.” But what does paying it forward look like now? Laing has long held a belief that Servant Leadership is a leadership style that can lead the charge in paying it forward.

Servant Leadership Summit.

One of Laing’s biggest endeavors has made quite an impact to the community. The root of the Servant Leadership Summit started with a conversation within NISD Athletic Leadership, the guiding question:

“We want kids to be leaders, but what does that look like,” recalls Laing.

In the conception, the leadership panel analyzed and discussed the great leaders of the past; they agreed that they all shared the attributes of a Servant Leader. Once the template was agreed on, the district launched the Servant Leadership Summit initiative by securing 25-30 influential young men and women of each of the eleven high schools.

Once the culture agents were selected, learning seminars on components of Servant Leadership were then introduced with a variety of strategies. To internalize this endeavor, each school representatives had to devise a plan-of-action to execute at their campus and community. This expectation was an all-encompassing endeavor for NISD, and it serves the community with a variety of approaches all lead by the student-athletes. Take it from the man himself as Laing interviews with SA Sports to talk about the culture surrounding NISD.

Work the Intangibles.

Paying it forward does not end with the students, it carries over to the coaching staff. Laing aims to let his coaches know that he supports them and values them. The level of advice Laing provides speaks to his commitment to nurturing his coaches when preparing them for leadership. Education does an excellent job of assessing the tangible. However, when asked what he would recommend as a recipe for success for aspiring leaders, his answer was fortified with intangibles:

Faith – Be passionate and be purposeful. “When you bring those together, that’s when great things happen,” said Laing. The conviction in what you believe in is a vessel to stay the course and trust your Philosophy.

Hope – Be a Hope-builder. Part of that process is teaching kids how to fail through athletics. “We teach kids how to overcome adversity with hope,” said Laing. “Dabo Sweeney said it best, if you believe that there is hope in the future, there is power in the present,” recalls Laing.

Love – Be an agent of Love. “When it comes to social justice, if we would just love people like we’ve been called to love them, regardless of differences, what a difference that would make,” said Laing. He is also adamant about loving yourself by doing whatever it takes to accomplish that. Keeping yourself balanced with family and health is essential for coaches to serve their community because how can one serve others if self-care is absent from their priorities.

Future Endeavors

The future of coaching has taken a serious hit with COVID-19 and the rigors of an overwhelming multi-faceted environment. “In some districts, there are as high as 30% of attrition for coaches; in NISD, this number is between 8-14%,” reflects Laing. The purpose of ensuring that quality coaches are in the pipeline is a challenge that all coaches must acknowledge and advocate for. Extending connections with career talk, promoting the coaching profession, and valuing your coaches are strategies that Laing believes athletic leaders most promote. For Laing, he is doing just that as the attrition numbers reflect positive retention in such a large district.

Servant leadership is grounded in building relationships and appreciating diversity. Laing recalled one of his most influential moments was meeting Muhammad Ali as a teenager in Las Vegas. Laing admitted, he did not remember much, but he did remember that Ali made him feel like he was the greatest in the world. When Ali died, Laing recalled that Ali had multiple religious representatives speak of different Faiths, acknowledging that he was Muslim. For Laing, that resonated with him. This experience has given him the courage to speak out on social injustices on the 2Words Character Development Campaign. Laing is committed to his community and acknowledged, being a white male in an influential leadership position is a powerful message to his community that he has everyone’s best interest at heart.

Coach Stanley Laing is a 2016 receipt of the Texas High School Coaches Association Grant Taeff Coaching Beyond the Game Award. He currently is the Executive Athletic Director for the 4th largest district in the State of Texas serving 106, 000 students. Laing currently serves as an advisor to the NISD administrative pipeline as he was also Clark High School’s Principal.

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