Leadership and the Olympics
On Friday night, I stayed up to watch the gold medal game for men’s basketball at the Olympics. Kevin Durant, who was the United States’ team captain, scored 29 points in leading the team to the victory.
But it’s not just that Durant is a superior scorer—earlier in the tournament, he became the all-time leading Olympics scorer for the men’s national team. Rather, it’s that he really took responsibility for leading the team, for stepping up when it mattered most.
It’s worth looking at his track record. In each of the last three Olympics, Durant averaged about 19 points per game. And in the last three gold medal games, he scored 30, 30, and 29 points, respectively.
The US coach Gregg Popovich articulated the impact of his leadership: “KD is not special because he's so talented. The way he works on his game is more impressive…. The relationship he builds with teammates, the respect he garners, the joy he has in playing, it's like osmosis. It goes into all the players."
Interestingly, there was an article this week about NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning that made a similar point.
The article quotes one coach as saying: “You will never find anybody in the history of the game that works like he worked. No one. I've been around a long time, and I've seen a lot of hard workers, coaches and players, no one measures up to him.”
Another coach said of Manning’s impact on the team culture: “...out of respect, you came prepared to meetings. You didn't walk into a meeting unprepared and just thinking, ‘Hey, I'll wing it, I didn't have a chance to prepare.’”
The stories about Durant and Manning stood out to me because they’re examples of what’s always been core to the definition of good leadership: setting the tone for others.
There’s an incredible increase in team energy when the leader works the hardest and sets a standard for everyone to live up to. And there’s a benefit to the leader taking ownership and being willing to lead from the front.
It’s worth noting, however, that “leading from the front” is a military-inspired concept that harkens back to an old-school form of aggressive, charismatic leadership, mostly associated with extroverted men. But I had a conversation with a female leader last week that centered on the question of what it would look like for her to be “out there” as the leader while managing her own energy as an introvert.
That conversation reminded me that leading from the front isn’t really about being out front. It’s about taking responsibility to influence what’s most important.
The Marine Corps doctrinal publication on tactics says, “As Marines, we believe in leading from the front since that is where most friction points occur, but they may occur elsewhere. We must choose our positions accordingly.”
That second part—“but [the friction points] may occur elsewhere”—is key. The “front” isn’t necessarily where everyone is looking or where the “action” is. It’s wherever the highest-leverage work is happening.