Leadership comes in all shapes and sizes - on the court and in the office. Some leaders lead by example, some by force of personality. There's active and passive leadership, leadership from above, from within, and from below. Leadership can be functional or emotional.
The types of leaders, their leadership styles, and methods of leadership on your team and in your organization will determine the type of culture that you'll build. The No Asshole Rule warns of the wrong type of leader. Let's talk about the right kind of leaders, how we identify them, and why it is so important to have them on your team.
Players only
Coaches, managers, and executives are a necessary source of leadership. Primarily functional in nature, they provide strategy and context, the game plan and direction for the team or company. Coaches and managers also handle administration and planning to allow their team to focus on basketball or engineering activities. Executives do the same at a more abstract level. Both roles include soft leadership responsibilities such as dealing with personnel issues and motivating the team. Good coaching and management are extremely helpful for a team to succeed and bad ones are almost always detrimental. But while coaching and management are necessary, they are not sufficient. High performing teams are not created by coaching and management, they are supported by it. High performing teams are created by exceptional leadership from within the team.
Be Damian Lillard
Leadership from within must primarily be leadership by example. It means living the culture and principles valued by the team and the company - every day. Great leaders on a team often do the big things, they carry the scoring load, and solve the big problems. Even more importantly, they do the small things. They set screens and make the extra pass, box out and rebound. They listen and empathize, they have fun and lead with humor, they encourage and praise and guide their teammates. And they help everyone, even with trivial or menial tasks - all the time!
Great leaders take the big shots and win the big games, they complete projects, and build big things. But they also make mistakes and call them out. Great leaders fail, publicly, and then demonstrate growth and learning from that failure. Great leaders ask stupid questions - all the time!
Highly effective leadership from within the team has to come from a place of empathy and equality. Coaches and managers can provide one but rarely the other. Great leaders on a team are able to demonstrate and instill work ethic and process, culture and communication. Listening and teaching and praising among all teammates fosters belonging. Helping is contagious and can lower the skill and title differences among the team. Leaders that do these things daily encourage the same behavior in others much more effectively than coaching or management can. Additionally, leaders asking for help and opinion, especially from lower skilled or junior members on the team, stimulates confidence and cohesion and can prevent splintering of the team into tiers or cliques.
Great leaders work hard but not too hard. They demonstrate when to get things done by playing through an injury. But also when it’s ok to push back, to say no, to sit out a game and to rest a sore knee.
Don’t Be Kobe
Leading with empathy and demonstrating equality with communication and behavior every day has the power to create a team of confident and self-reliant individual contributors that own their roles and support each other. The alternative is to lead with strength, overwhelming talent, or charisma. These modes of leadership create teams of dependent followers looking to support their leader instead of each other. Leadership through strength can organize and optimize but can rarely motivate. A large skill gap between leaders and teammates promotes imposter syndrome and impedes team cohesion. Worst case, the super star takes most of the shots and everyone else just rebounds. Charisma, while helpful to any leader, can focus too much attention on the leader themselves and not enough on the team.
These types of leaders and their teams may produce short-term results but are rarely harmonious and usually fall apart.
Be aging Tim Duncan
Great leaders on a team are confident in their abilities, highly competent, and very skilled. However, they do not need to be, and probably should not be, the best player on the team or the smartest person in the room. They are able to deliver when it counts but not necessarily without help from others. They can score 40 or resolve a technical road block. But more often they lift up their teammates to reach higher, provide opportunity, and shine the spotlight on others. Great leaders are catalysts for the production and impact of all team members. They are Steph Curry, Nikola Jokic, and Jason Kidd. The are Jimmy Butler and aging Tim Duncan. They make everyone around them better.