Leadership Faith
A few weeks ago, as part of promoting his new book, Game, NBA Hall of Famer Grant Hill appeared on J.J. Redick’s podcast.
Both Hill and Redick attended Duke, and they started talking about why Duke men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski places so much emphasis on the entire team maintaining positive energy.
Redick said: “You can have 13 guys come with a great, positive attitude to work. And you have one guy or two guys bring the wrong energy into a locker room, or into a practice, or into a game—it just saps you.”
Hill responded: “I'm glad you brought that up because, typically, any team might have a 7- to 9-man rotation at the college level [or] NBA level. So you put a lot of emphasis on: Who complements who? Who’s going to play? OK, we have a star player; do we want to have the right pieces around him?
Hill continued: “But [players] 10 through 13, 9 to 12—those pieces are just as important because, as you said, that bad energy, that body language can ruin a team, and divide a team.”
Based on this interview, it’s clear they both understand from experience how important it is to reach 100% on “employee engagement.”
A few months back, I conducted an employee experience survey for a nonprofit organization. When talking to the wider leadership team about the results, which indicated middling scores on satisfaction and engagement, someone on the leadership team asked, essentially, “Well, how high should the scores be?”
I responded, “If the survey indicated that 99% of people were satisfied, I’d still encourage you to be focused on how you can improve, since great organizations are constantly thinking about how they can get better.”
It was then that the leadership team member really pressed on that point. He thought it would be ridiculous to continue focusing on employee experience if the score were high.
Mind you, this organization was nowhere close to 99% satisfaction, and everyone else understood that they had significant room for improvement. They also understood my overarching point about why creating a distinctive employee experience would help the organization achieve greater results.
I later reflected on that exchange, and I found myself thinking about what types of data best help leaders understand their organization from a strategic perspective. After some reflection, I came to this realization:
I don’t think I’ve ever come across someone who didn’t believe in the power of team dynamics who was later convinced by data and research.
In my experience, people fall into two camps.
In the first camp, leaders intuitively understand that team dynamics and concepts like psychological safety and engagement matter—and they act without ever having to see the research that “proves” it.
In the other camp, I’ve witnessed people who’ve stared at data from their own team—data stating conclusively that psychological safety among employees was low, or that employee engagement clearly correlated with attrition risk—and still argue that the information is not that important.
This past week, I was reading the book Hidden Value by Stanford professors Charles O’Reilly and Jeffrey Pfeffer. In the book, they argue for management practices that enable every employee to perform in an extraordinary way. They write:
“The unfortunate mathematical fact is that only 10 percent of the people are going to be in the top 10 percent. So, companies have a choice. They can all chase the same supposed talent. Or, they can do something even more useful and much more difficult to copy—build an organization that helps make it possible for regular folks to perform as if they were in the top 10 percent.”
The authors also provide this anecdote about one of the companies they profiled in their book:
“David Russo tells some wonderful stories about excuses for not doing anything different. After SAS Institute was listed two years in a row as number three on the Fortune list of best places to work in America, people came to visit SAS or invited Russo to come speak to their firms about attracting and retaining talent. And in many instances an interesting thing happened. He would describe, at the audience's specific behest, what SAS Institute did—its management practices and the philosophy and values that provide the foundation for those practices. But people would immediately begin to interrupt to explain why they couldn't do what he was describing.”
Russo then describes why he stopped trying to convince people:
“For years, companies would come to me and say, you're doing on site child care. Tell me how you do it. I'd say, "Well, we did it." They said, “What about the liability?" And I would say, "Why don't you just go away now?" When people start trying to look for reasons they can't do something, they're dead. They don't want to do it, and they're looking for reasons not to do it.” [emphasis mine]
Obviously, as a coach and consultant, I can’t give up on leaders. Even if they don’t get it, it’s my job to help them get it.
Here’s the thing: I am convinced of: Leadership is an article of faith. To put it bluntly, someone probably won’t really get it without being interested in other humans and experiencing the gamut of good and bad team dynamics firsthand.
Grant Hill and JJ Redick probably didn’t need to read the academic literature to understand it—they know from personal experience as part of teams with great leaders.
If only we could all have that kind of faith.
Leadership Wisdom
“As you know, it’s not about Xs and Os with Coach K. We didn’t win because of that. But his ability to understand who you are individually and collectively as a group, challenge you, build you up, make you buy into him and each other—that’s his genius. That’s why he’s special in my opinion.”
— Grant Hill, talking about Mike Krzyzewski