Shaka Smart on Relationships

Shaka Smart hasn’t taken a transfer in four years. The reason why goes beyond basketball

By Rustin Dodd, The Athletic

Every morning, Shaka Smart does three things. First he meditates, hoping to calm a restless mind. Next, he walks outside for a dose of morning light. Then he sits down to read, jotting down meaningful passages in a journal and sending screenshots to a sprawling group of players, coaches and friends. Smart, the head basketball coach at Marquette, started crafting the routine eight or nine years ago, when he was still the coach at Texas.

The principal reason was simple: He was an incredibly anxious person.

For most of his life, he had coped by doing — by hitting the accelerator first thing in the morning and attacking the day head on. But as he got older, that approach no longer worked. His wife, Maya, suggested a book called “The Untethered Soul,” a self-help guide about consciousness by the writer Michael A. Singer. The paperback version was only 181 pages, short enough to cruise through, and when he was done, his copy was filled with annotated sections and underlined sentences. Soon enough, he read it again.

The book helped untangle the thoughts in his head, quieting the inner voice and sending him down a path of exploration. He read books by Jon Kabat-Zinn, a professor and mindfulness teacher, and Eckhart Tolle, the German-born spiritual guide. He sought out leadership ideas from coaches across sports. He developed a central idea that he calls the paradox: No matter how hard he worked, no matter how much he cared, no matter how much time he poured into his job, his work was not who he truly was.

In time, his morning meditation sessions became focused on two questions: Who am I? Who am I not?

Smart is telling me this story over the phone about seven weeks before the start of the college basketball season. The ostensible reason for the call is simple. In college basketball in 2025, Marquette is an anomaly. In an era of the transfer portal — of yearly roster churn and de facto free agency — the program has not taken a transfer player in four years.

Some of the reasons are structural. Marquette, a private Jesuit institution in the Big East, does not have the budget or resources of a blue blood program. The other reasons, however, offer a story about leadership, which is why Smart is explaining his morning routine. Like many coaches, his philosophy is rooted in a deep belief about the power of relationships — the kind that have powered the Golden Eagles to the NCAA Tournament for four straight years. Unlike most, his process includes in-depth study of other coaches, morning meditation and daily consciousness work.

“If you really analyze Shaka, he’s an intellectual that coaches basketball,” said Keith Dambrot, the former head coach at Akron, where Smart was an assistant. “There’s not really many of those in college basketball.”

Smart is the rare coach who will quote Maya Angelou and Nick Saban within a few minutes. He shadows NFL coaches, finds inspiration in rugby, and uses the African philosophy of Ubuntu, a concept of shared humanity and interconnectedness, which he actually borrowed from NBA coach Doc Rivers, a Marquette alum.

The way Smart sees it, one of the greatest ways to lead is to learn from others. Which leads to an intriguing question:

What can we learn from Smart?

One day in the midst of the pandemic, Smart logged onto a Zoom call with Tom Perrin, a former college basketball assistant at Virginia who left coaching to build a practice as an executive coach for CEOs. The men had connected through Lance Blanks, a former NBA executive. Blanks told Smart that Perrin could help him. On their first call, Smart had one request.

“Tom,” he said. “I want to know what I’m missing.”

Smart had long been curious about the human condition. During his first month at Kenyon University, a Division III school in Ohio, he took an Intro to Psychology course and learned about the fundamental attribution error, a bias that explained a reality of human nature: We are more likely to view another person’s mistake as reflective of their character while judging our own errors as a product of circumstance. Smart found it fascinating. The son of a single mother, he had spent his childhood studying and emulating others. But this was the first time he realized that psychology could be applied to sports. Not long after, he started thinking about coaching.

His first Division I assistant job came at Akron, a mid-major program trying to find its footing. One day Smart sat down with his mother, Monica, inside his apartment in Akron. As a child, Smart says, his mother had treated he and his siblings “like only children,” nurturing their varied interests. For Smart, that meant basketball, and she shared with him a maxim once made famous by Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes: You win with people. Together, Smart and his mother went through the Akron roster, diving into each player’s personal history and identifying their leadership traits. The conversation served as the foundation for what Smart later called the “Five Star Leader,” a simple framework for the five ways a person can lead.

1. EXAMPLE — Take care of your own stuff

2. ENCOURAGEMENT — Giving energy

3. MENTORING — Directing and empowering

4. ACCOUNTABILITY — Say what needs to be said

5. OWNERSHIP — Take full responsibility

Smart kept building on the idea during a one-year stint as an assistant at Florida and later when he became head coach at VCU in 2009 at the age of 31, one of the youngest Division I coaches in the country. He based his style on a quote from Angelou, the legendary poet and civil rights activist: “If you know better, you do better.”

He scoured the country, looking for ideas on leadership and culture. When he stumbled upon an interview with Jack Clark, the rugby coach at Cal-Berkeley, he didn’t just steal his definition of leadership (“Leadership is making those around you better”), he made sure Clark spoke to the graduate students in VCU’s Center for Sport Leadership program. Then he set aside an hour to pick his brain.

“The words that come to mind for me when I think about Shaka is that he’s just very intentional,” Clark said. “Which is not what a lot of coaches are. The things he believes in are very real and they become very real to the team that he’s coaching.”

A lot of coaches have slogans, Clark told Smart, but there was a power in writing things down, in creating a nomenclature and glossary for his players to understand.

“If leadership is the thing we’re going to talk about and we’re gonna aspire to, let’s define it,” Clark said.

Smart took the idea to the extreme. When he guided VCU to the Final Four in 2011, he built his program around five core values: appreciation, enthusiasm, competitiveness, accountability, and teamship, an idea that focused on the collective. Then he took over the Texas program in 2015, and his team finished 11-22 in his second season. By most measures, it was the worst year of his career. But it was also the period he learned the most.

To capture the lessons, he started writing them down, creating what he calls the Culture Document, a 27-page road map for a program. It’s a living document, never finished, updated each year. The version at Marquette outlines the program’s three core values — Relationships, Growth, Victory — and the seven principles that undergird them.

The section on relationships alone is eight pages — complete with photos and graphics that show the behaviors in action. One excerpt:

OUR BOND DETERMINES OUR SPIRIT

(Opposite: We’ll be high energy without caring about one another)

The more closely we are connected around our mission, the stronger our spirit grows. When our minds are clouded, our spirit is weak. When our minds are clear and unified, our spirit is incredibly powerful. This is very challenging for people outside our program to understand. But we understand.

This is where Smart was as a coach when he decided to approach Perrin, the executive coach, and ask for more help. He still worried he was missing something.

“He’s almost maniacal about improving himself,” Perrin said.

Perrin emphasized the importance of “alone time.” Many leaders, he said, don’t give themselves enough time to think. He zoned in on a common fallacy in coaching — that a team can outperform a staff.

“This whole idea of improving and developing yourself by turning inward and spending time there,” Perrin said. “Nobody disagrees with it. It’s just nobody gets to it — except Shaka.”

On the inside of his office door, Smart has a sign with the following question:

“Why can’t you love me right?”

The quote is from a story he heard from George Raveling, the pioneering college basketball coach who later became an executive at Nike. There was once a player, Raveling told Smart, who opened himself to a coach who felt distant. “You say you love us,” the player said. “But the message resonated with Smart. If he was going to tell his players he loved them, he needed to go about it the right way.

When Smart first arrived at Marquette in March 2021, he had to build a roster while re-recruiting some of the players already there. One of them was Oso Ighodaro, a big man who hadn’t played the year before. Just days after arriving, Smart and his staff put Ighodaro through a series of grueling workouts; Ighodaro kept dropping his head.

Smart likes to preach “Giannis posture” — everyone in the program must have the body language of Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Milwaukee Bucks’ MVP — so he struck a deal with Ighodaro. For each time he dropped his head, every member of the basketball staff was going to do a minute-long plank. Ighodaro did it 21 times; Smart and the staff then cranked out 21 minute-long planks.

“It was probably a human resources violation,” Smart said. “We even had the ladies that work up in the office.”

Ighodaro came to learn that Smart “lives the stuff” he preaches. He stayed at Marquette and became an NBA player.

There is no one way to construct a college basketball program, but Smart believes in the power of connection. The best relationships take time. He has learned this is who he is; this is how he wants to coach.

“We think that the best way to maximize that growth is to unpack your bags and really put roots down,” Smart said.

On the wall of his office, he has 16 pictures of himself with different players. The photos are not from the beginning, and they are not from the end. They’re all from the middle.

“The best part is the middle,” he said. “It’s the journey. It’s imperfect. It’s hard. It includes twists and turns. My favorite stories are the ones that are in the middle.”

One afternoon in September, I received a text from Smart. During our interview that morning, I had mentioned that I’d read The Untethered Soul, the book his wife had recommended to him years before. He wanted to know what I thought.

“What was your biggest takeaway?” he asked.

Maybe he was just being nice, but this seemed to be one of those moments that everyone — coaches, friends, acquaintances — kept telling me about. He seemed genuinely interested in my opinion.

Here was another chance to connect, to learn and share and answer the two questions that seem to drive him as a leader: Who am I? Who am I not?

I told him the book had offered a greater understanding for the idea of consciousness — for the voice in my head. It reminded me of something I read in “The Inner Game of Tennis.” Even when I know it’s a facade or persona, I said, it was hard for me to quiet those thoughts.

There was also a part in a chapter about the idea of Tao. It stuck with me.

“Eventually, you will see that in the way of the Tao, you’re not going to wake up, see what to do, and then go do it. In the Tao, you are blind and you have to learn to be blind.”

“Powerful stuff,” Smart texted back.

Then he added there was a podcast version he sometimes listens to. He was going to share it. He thought I might like it.

The Science of Swearing

Can swearing have a positive effect on your team?

Interesting look at Karen Deboer and some changes he made at Alabama.

https://247sports.com/college/alabama/article/kalen-deboer-and-the-science-of-swearing-261184632/

“I Don’t Know Enough To Have An Opinion”

How often do you say the words “I don’t know enough to have an opinion?” We all fall into the trap of feeling like, as a leader, we are supposed to have an answer. Don’t be afraid to admit you aren’t prepared to give an answer to a tough question.

Phil Jackson says, “When in doubt, do nothing.” Sometimes the best answer is not to give one and paint yourself into a corner. It shows your strength and control as a leader.

Leaders who are quick to offer their opinion on nearly every topic harm their long-term credibility. Because they like the status of their authority, experience, and expertise, they enjoy putting their two cents into any discussion.

But this unknowingly makes all their opinions, including those that should carry significant weight, less impactful.

In contrast, a leader who is judicious in expressing their views until they have enough facts and data to offer a thoughtful opinion gains in reputation with others.

The intellectual humility they expose by limiting their opinions goes a long way in making themselves more believable. When they do articulate their views on matters where they possess insight, people take them more seriously.

How often do you use the phrase (or something like it): “I don’t know enough to have an opinion.”

Make it a part of your leadership vocabulary. Others will respect you for it.

• Admired Leaders

Their Own Power

"You have to look at leadership through the eyes of the followers and you have to live the message. What I have learned is that people become motivated when you guide them to the source of their own power.” - Anita Roddick

Create More Leaders

“Leadership is not defined by the exercise of power but by the capacity to increase the sense of power among those led. The most essential work of the leader is to create more leaders.” - Mary Parker Follett

The Capability Gap

Great stuff here from Nick Saban.

“The Capability Gap is what you’re capable of relative to what you’re doing...if you understand the truth about that, you can actually take information that can help you close that gap.”

https://x.com/SahilBloom/status/1975917327938900364

Billy D - The Journey

https://x.com/TheHoopHerald/status/1974078931927216158

“If you’re goal is the trophy and not the journey, you are going to be disappointed with the result.”

Success

“Success has many fathers. Defeat is an orphan.” - John F. Kennedy

Nick Saban - Transformational

“Negative experiences without teaching kill morale.”

https://x.com/gb1121/status/1972443300264087996

Ryder Cup Leadership

Paul Azinger shares his thoughts on his leadership approach in pulling together a Ryder Cup team with The Athletic:

When Paul Azinger took over as the captain of the United States team ahead of the 2008 Ryder Cup, the Americans were at an all-time low.

They had lost three straight Ryder Cups for the first time ever, and Azinger’s 12-man team eventually included six rookies.

Azinger’s crew went out and crushed the Europeans at Valhalla in Louisville, Ky. Azinger won acclaim for his unconventional approach to the biennial competition between the best players from the United States and the best from Europe. Azinger created a “pod” system, in which he grouped players into four-man mini teams that stayed together throughout the three-day event. (He wrote a book about the process titled “Cracking the Code.”)

I love the Ryder Cup. I also find it to be an especially interesting lens through which to look at leadership. Golf, by its nature, is an individual sport. There is no one else to blame for a bad shot. (Although who hasn’t tried to blame a bad lie or a surprise gust of wind for a shank?) And yet every two years some of the best individual golfers in the world must come together and form a cohesive team.

Ahead of this year’s Ryder Cup, which starts on Friday, I called Azinger to talk about exactly that.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

There’s such an inherent contradiction between golf as an individual sport and the Ryder Cup as a team event. What was the biggest challenge that you had to figure out or solve in that regard?

My goal was to figure out how to get 12 guys to bond in a span of about three or four days to go play their best. I started to realize that it was impossible to get 12 guys to bond. So I ended up creating these four-man pods, these four-man teams, because it was easier for four people to bond.

I copied it from a Navy SEALs concept of team-building, which is where you take large groups and break them down into smaller groups. And then I took it a step further by using like-personality types. I observed their personalities. I had Dr. Ron Braund with me, who really helped me. We understood the personality styles and types that we were looking to identify, whether they were dominant/controlling or steady/supportive or influencing/relaters. Just through observation. They didn’t fill anything out. Once we told Ron who these personality types were, he put them together creating green-light, caution-light and red-light personality types that you don’t want together.

We tried to get all green lights together on our four-man teams, and that was our secret. It was very structured and it worked.

I read that you came across this Navy SEALs idea through the wonderful habit of not changing the channel and you stumbled across a show about it on TV.

I watched a documentary — I don’t know if it was on National Geographic or Discovery. But I was interested in how they took the larger groups and made them into small groups. I just immediately thought about the Ryder Cup. Instantly.

Payne Stewart and I used to talk about the Ryder Cup all the time and try to figure out how to create more continuity because every captain does his own thing. Europe’s not like that. Everybody on the European side does pretty much the same thing. They have the same formula. We don’t.

I think this concept made it easier to pair players, and the players did truly bond. I put all the onus on them because they’re professionals, and I let them do their thing. The only thing you’re really able to do as a captain is create an environment. You hope it’s a good one and it’s one that gets the most out of them.

I wanted them to be confident. I wanted them to be sure of themselves. That was me messaging and then I just let the pod system take care of itself.

They strategized among themselves who was going to play alternate shot, who was going to play best ball. They were all empowered within their little four-man groups, and I think that made a big difference. They told me who would play alternate shot and who would play best ball in their pods. It was brilliant.

Why was empowering them so important to you?

I kind of did it at the last minute because I had so many choices from who to pick from who were good personality types. It gave me another chance to re-explain to the players how we were doing it and then I was able to say: “I’m going to empower you. I’m going to give you ownership. I’m going to let you pick who fills out your pod.”

So the three guys that I had in each pod picked the fourth player. They’d all run through a wall for each other.

Stay in the know by selecting your interests on The Athletic:

The pods picked Hunter Mahan, they picked Chad Campbell and they picked J.B. Holmes.

Sorry to cut you off, but can you take one pod and explain to me what the personality type was, why they were in the same pod and what you mean when you say they picked the fourth person?

I gotcha. So I picked Steve Stricker as a captain’s pick as the ninth man on the team. Then we had three three-man teams we created where we had the green light personalities together.

The next step was, who is going to fill out the last spot for each of those three-man teams? I decided to call the aggressive pod first. I called all three of these guys individually: Justin Leonard, Anthony Kim and Phil Mickelson. Those three together, I gave them a list of six players that they could choose from that I thought were playing well enough and were green light personality types for their pod. I told them I wanted the three of them to call each other and get back to me in an hour and let me know who they want to fill out their pod.

They ended up picking Hunter Mahan, so I got to call Hunter and say: “Look, man, this is how we’re doing it. I’m never taking you out of your four-man group unless there is an injury or illness. You guys are going to prepare together, have a strategy together and those three guys could have picked a number of players and they picked you, Hunter.”

Now those four guys love each other, just like that. That’s how that worked.

I think I misunderstood initially. I thought you had already picked all the players for the team. But they picked Hunter Mahan not to be just in their pod but to actually be on the Ryder Cup team. Almost like a captain’s selection.

Oh yeah.

Same with Steve Stricker, Stewart Cink and Ben Curtis. Those three guys all had made the team. That was the steady/supportive personality group, and I let those three guys choose between Rocco Mediate, Scott Verplank or Chad Campbell. I told them: “I’m giving you ownership of your pod. I’m going to let you who fills out your group. You can choose from these three players.” And they chose Chad.

Paul Azinger, right, celebrates with Justin Leonard after winning the 2008 Ryder Cup. (Photo by Richard Sellers / Sportsphoto / Allstar via Getty Images)

The pod thing is what made you famous as a Ryder Cup captain. But the part I find most interesting is the personality part of it. How did you arrive at that point where you said: “Instead of trying to match skillsets, I want to match personalities.”

I completely ignored the skill set part. I figured they were all massively talented players.

I asked Ron Braund to help me and I explained to him the Navy SEALs concept. He was curious because he doesn’t know anything about golf. He said, “How are you going to put them in their small groups?” I said: “Well, we usually put like games together. Long hitters with great wedge players. Stuff like that.” And he asked me: “Have you ever considered putting similar personality types together like Myers-Briggs?”

It probably was three months later and we talked more about it and I decided that was how I wanted to do it.

It was really Ron who wanted to do the personality-type thing. And I didn’t even know how to explain Ron to people. I told people he was my runner or my shrink – I don’t know what I called him. But he was really my assistant, and I would say to him: “Man, I’ve got to say something to Anthony Kim right now.” And he’d say: “Well, you’ve got to challenge that guy. Go challenge him.” You had to challenge one guy and encourage the next.

So I walked up to Anthony Kim and I looked at him and said: “Bro, I thought you were going to show off for me today. You’re showing me squat.” He was like: “Relax, man. They’re not going to beat us.”

I think that was the biggest nuance that’s never been duplicated or repeated. I heard for a while after that Mickelson was in the team room. He loved what we did. He was using biorhythms and all this weird stuff to try to get foursomes together. Just crazy stuff. Nobody has ever really put players together again by personalities again.

Europe is bonded by nationality and small groups: the Spaniards, the Swedes, the Irishmen, the Englishmen. They play together, and that’s an advantage. They’re bonded already in small groups. We weren’t.

You once said: “Whenever I got in a situation or had to respond to something that was negative I ran stuff through him a lot. All week he rode with me in the cart, just to make sure my messaging was correct.” Give me an example.

I didn’t say much to players during the rounds, but when they got in trouble, I did.

I had dinner one night with J.B. Holmes before the Ryder Cup, watching “Sunday Night Football.” He’s quiet. He finally just says: “Man, I hope somebody pisses me off this week, Zinger.” I said: “How come, man?” He goes: “If somebody pisses me off, I’ll kick their ass.”

The first afternoon, he was out there and I’m in the dining room getting a drink, watching it on TV. My radio goes off and it’s Olin Browne. He says: “You’ve got to get down here. J.B. is in trouble.”

I was watching it on TV and I noticed after Olin called that Dan Hicks on the broadcast was talking about Lee Westwood shooting dirty looks at J.B. Holmes.

I got in the cart, high-tailed it down there and he was in the right rough on nine by the time I got there. He was walking 100 miles an hour. I said: “Hey, man, slow down here a little bit.”

I walked about two or three yards away and then I stopped and said: “Hey, by the way, they’re talking about Westwood shooting you guys dirty looks on TV.” He said: “Are you s—— me?”

It was on. They came back and almost won it.

Everything you did seemed to be on the individual level. And yet what ended up happening was creating this team atmosphere and camaraderie. It almost sounds like a contradiction in some way.

It’s all kind of counterintuitive when you think about it, but you’re right. I hadn’t really considered that.

In the end, we had three four-man teams. We didn’t have one big 12-man team – but we did. It’s like how infielders practice together, linebackers practice together, in other sports.

Now that you’ve had a real chance to reflect back on that experience, what was the best or coolest thing you learned about leadership looking back on that experience?

I learned that if you apply solid principles, you can go in completely inexperienced and lead 12 guys. They respected me, I feel, from the get go, but I believe they loved how I communicated with them and how candid I was with them.

I think my lack of experience as a leader was somehow trumped by my ability to be a people person. Ron said I had a high EQ: emotional quotient. When I communicated to the players, I was articulate and clear and I let them all know: “This is how we’re doing it.”

I feel like my lack of experience as a leader, which was zero, was trumped by the style I chose, the information I sought and I ended up having great players. The main thing is I feel like we created the greatest environment for those guys to have success, and they did it all on their own. There was no guesswork. But I would never shy away from a leadership position thinking you can’t do it. You just have to apply proven, solid principles. That ended up being the key.

Leaders Are Made

“The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born-that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born." -Warren Bennis

Full Commitment

How do you get everyone on your team fully committed?

There are 3 aspects of an elite culture that increase commitment and engagement.

1. Recognition is common.

2. Relationships are important.

3. Data-driven feedback is provided.

Recognizing your team or individual members is something that often gets lost in the coaching world. I know I have been guilty of it. You set a high standard and you expect your players to meet it, to do their job. It’s so easy to spend most of your energy on the guys who are making mistakes, and you take for granted the guys who consistently do their job well. At times, I would literally schedule myself to recognize players and the team, no matter how bad I felt about how things were going. You can’t overlook recognition if you want your team to remain committed.

Connection is also crucial. How are you making sure your relationship with your team is genuine, as well as making sure they are connecting to one another? You can be hard on your team and demand a lot out of them without bringing a negative tone every day.There is nothing as powerful as a team - or a teammate - knowing that you always have their back. No matter what. Make sure you are working on relationships, both with and within your team, every day.

Feedback is also a crucial support tool for your team’s commitment. You can use data to make sure your team is aware of what you value. If you want a team to be unselfish, track the number of passes you make on offense. Celebrate the extra pass, the hockey assist, or the great screen.

With my first championship team as a head coach at Rhode Island College, I used to ask them the day after a game if they could tell me who took the most shots on our team the night before. We just had a very unselfish group, and sometimes I would look at the box score after the game and be surprised that one of our guys off the bench who wasn’t necessarily a key offensive player led the team in shot attempts. Sometimes it took our players four or five guesses to figure out who took the most shots. It was data driven feedback that reinforced the commitment we were making to each other.

Full investment is essential for elite, high-performing teams, we all know that. Think about the specific ways you can take action steps to make sure you team if fully committed to each other and the task at hand.

“Family”

Do you consider your team a family?

I’ve never liked the comparison. First of all, I think being a part of a team is special. Using the word family implies that in certain areas - how we care for each other, the commitment we make to each other - teams come up short, and I’m not buying that. Being a part of an athletic team is unlike any other “team” or “family” environment.

The law firm you join may be a “team” but you aren’t all getting up at 6 AM to run hills together in the summer with the law clerks. And your family isn’t running extra sprints after a two and a half hour practice. Being a part of an actual team is special, and should be treated as such.

There is also one significant difference between a team and a family: My love for my family is unconditional. But being a part of a high-performing team is HIGHLY conditional. There are standards that need to be met every day, with full commitment, or you won’t be a part of that team anymore. My Uncle doesn’t get suspended from the family because he shows up late to Thanksgiving dinner every year.

I’ve always felt uncomfortable with using the word “family” for my team.

Admired Leaders has some more good stuff about potential issues with calling your team a family.

It’s not uncommon for some leaders to treat their teams as families.

They ask everyone on the team to care, trust, respect, and support each other unconditionally, regardless of their performance or contribution.

As leaders, they show concern for others both professionally and personally, and work hard to make everyone feel included, accepted, and valued as an integral part of the team.

Just like in a family, leaders and teammates celebrate successes and milestones together, and share ideas, concerns, and feedback without the fear of judgment.

Over time, the goal is for everyone on the team to care deeply and genuinely about each other and to make the necessary sacrifices for the family to prosper and develop.

Research suggests that teams that operate like families are more trusting and collaborative and instill more pride, commitment, and loyalty for their members.

The strong sense of belonging and connection members feel increases retention and shared responsibility for the work.

Leaders who treat their teams like a family don’t believe the approach must weaken expectations and accountability. Instead, they believe high standards coupled with high caring can create high morale with sustained long-term success.

Sounds pretty good.

Yet, most leaders don’t bring the family metaphor to life with their teams. They instinctively know that, despite many known benefits, family-like teams are commonly plagued with issues that undermine long-term effectiveness.

Here are a few:

• Family-like teams often blur the lines between personal and professional life, leading people to feel pressured to sacrifice their well-being for the team. This often produces burnout and work-life balance issues that diminish job satisfaction.

• Unlike families, team members sometimes want to leave or to separate their private lives from their work lives. The family approach makes them feel an exaggerated sense of guilt any time they feel their actions might disappoint their “work family.” This creates stress and the dissatisfaction that comes with it.

• Because they are dedicated and loyal to team members, leaders may delay or avoid making necessary decisions that affect people negatively. When they do what’s right for the enterprise, it contradicts the notion of family and produces strong reactions of hypocrisy and accusations of leaders acting cruel and uncaring.

• In a family-like setting, feedback and performance reviews become more personal rather than constructive. This can often create defensiveness and conflict that would not occur in a more typical team. Like in families, feedback is often withheld so as not to upset people. This undermines performance.

• Without realizing it, leaders can easily become caught up in unhealthy power dynamics where they act parentally and treat team members like children, directing their actions, rewarding them inconsistently, and demanding that they make sacrifices to maintain the family harmony. Like with parents, favoritism often occurs or is perceived.

• Family-like teams encourage conformity and discourage dissent and disagreement. Diverse voices and viewpoints are seen as disloyal and out of step with the family. As a result, any debate becomes constrained, and people often go along without expressing their honest views.

• Leaders and team members in a family focus often have a difficult time setting professional and personal boundaries. Protecting personal time or advocating for themselves can prove troublesome. In work families, saying “No” can be seen as an act of disloyalty at times.

The list goes on.

When it comes to the workplace, the team metaphor is far superior to the family trope. The best leaders don’t treat work groups as families. Instead, they harvest the honey of trust and connection without recreating the hive.

Know Your Personnel

Knowing the personalities of your players is essential to coaching them the right way. Understand who they are as people and figure out the best way to get the most out of them. But there is a difference between making them better and trying to fix their flaws.

Understanding that difference will make you a better coach.

From Admired Leaders:

People are shaped by a unique blend of biology, experiences, and environment.

Some things about them are highly malleable, while other features are more permanent.

In other words, some personal attributes can be changed while other qualities can’t. Understanding this distinction is crucial for leadership success.

A leader’s role is to change how people act, engage, and respond to make them more effective while at the same time accepting that many of their flaws and failings can’t be influenced or modified.

Qualities steeped in personality and biology are highly resistant to change, and good leaders know what to focus on and what to ignore or accept.

For instance, a team member who is naturally introverted may learn to become more comfortable in social situations over time with the right guidance, but their core preference for independence remains.

Personality traits, like introversion, are relatively stable throughout adulthood. While people do grow and evolve as they mature, these changes occur at the margins rather than in dramatic leaps.

Leaders who attempt to “fix” qualities rooted in biology and personality are doomed to fail and make the target of their repairs feel scrutinized and disfavored.

The better path is to avoid fixing people and attempt to change behavior instead.

While some may contend that behavior emanates from personality, the actions, habits, and routines that make people more effective do not.

For example, anyone can learn how to give a more compelling and persuasive presentation by incorporating best practices regardless of their personality traits and biological tendencies.

Showing others a more effective strategy or tactic is fundamentally different than trying to fix their personality flaws and gremlins. Too many well-intentioned leaders spend way too much of their time trying to fix people instead of attempting to change their behavior.

This is not to say that all personality characteristics must be overlooked or accepted. Some of the qualities people bring to the table may eliminate them from ever being highly effective.

Team members with high anxiety, emotional instability, low self-discipline, and the need to dominate, among other traits, likely render themselves incapable of performing on a team.

Such uncorrectable weaknesses must be discovered during the selection process and not addressed by leaders in the business of performance.

Leaders can’t fix people and nor should they try. Leadership is not about repairing issues rooted deeply in a person’s DNA. It’s about coaching and guiding people to incorporate new behaviors and best practices that will make them better at what they do.

Are you a fixer? Do you have a strong need or desire to repair the dysfunctional personality traits of your team members? You’re likely doing damage to your relationship when you do. And with nothing to gain.

It’s time to change your approach. Stop trying to fix people. Coach them up instead.

Steve Kerr/Pete Carroll

Some great stuff from Steve Kerr and what he learned from visiting Pete Carroll with the Seahawks.

Steve Kerr’s four core values:

1. Competitiveness

2. Mindfulness

3. Passion

4. Joy

One of his team rules: “Protect the team.”

https://x.com/TheHoopHerald/status/1958717812995670421

Making People Feel Good…

“I do think at times in this job you have the choice between doing things one way — making the decision you think is best — and making people feel good,” he says. “That is a constant dynamic in this job. If you keep doing things that make people feel good, you’re not going to be doing this job very long.” - Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah

Valuing Input

Zack Scott, a former MLB GM and the founder of Four Rings talks about when the Red Sox traded for Dave Roberts in 2004, a move that ended up changing the course of history in Major League Baseball. He uses this as a great example of the importance of valuing input from everyone on your team.

Not every great trade comes from sophisticated analysis. Sometimes it’s about delegating and setting others up to succeed.

The Dave Roberts trade almost didn’t happen. And if it hadn’t, the 2004 Red Sox probably wouldn’t have become the first team in history to come back from down 3-0.

Theo Epstein asked an intern to research available outfielders. The initial list was terrible, but instead of dismissing it, he challenged the young staffer to think differently. That’s when the intern heard the Dodgers were trying to acquire Steve Finley. Since they already had plenty of outfield talent, maybe they’d be willing to trade away Dave Roberts. The intern rushed to Theo’s office with the idea. Within hours, we’d made the trade.

You know how that story ended—bottom of the ninth, Game 4 of the ALCS. Roberts steals second, scores the tying run, and we complete the greatest comeback in baseball history. That trade happened because Theo had created an environment where everyone’s input was valued.

Motivation - Daniel Pink

To engage deeply with work, Dan Pink explains that we need three key elements that are examples of intrinsic motivation::

• Autonomy – the chance to do things our own way, follow our instincts and feel like we matter

• Mastery – a sense of growing confidence and competence, informed by rapid feedback that lets us understand whether what we’re doing is ‘working’

• Purpose – the feeling that our work is having a genuine impact, and contributing meaningfully to something bigger, and part of a greater good, whether that’s for our colleagues, clients, or society at large

When all three come together, the depth of our motivation can inspire us to overcome all sorts of challenges, helping us navigate times of change and respond to setbacks with determination and resilience.

Pete Carroll - Leadership

“They teach them how to think.”

As a leader do you tell your team what to do? Or do you teach them how to solve problems?

https://x.com/_willcompton/status/1951444260395561278

Michael Lewis - Luck

Spend the 15 minutes to listen to Michael Lewis’ speech to Princeton graduates from 2012. Terrific.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiQ_T5C3hIM