Imagine you’ve just immigrated from Poland to the U.S. in the 1940s and you’ve somehow seen the future: Your son will follow a path to great success and be admired for his leadership. How would you prepare him?
Bill and Emily Krzyzewski didn’t have the benefit of this foresight, but they instilled in their son Mike a fierce work ethic, resilience, and strength of spirit—values that were part of their everyday being. Today, Coach Mike Krzyzewski says, “My parents were the best people in my life.” From his humble beginnings on the north side of Chicago to building a family and career with his wife, three daughters, and fifteen “sons” every basketball season, “Coach K” feels blessed.
“I have so many blessings to be thankful for, but there’s one area I’ve had to balance the scales because they weren’t in my favor: As I continued to get older and coach well into my seventies, my players were always the same age—eighteen to twenty-two years old. I had to adapt over the years to their evolving learning styles, backgrounds, and coaching preferences.”
Adaptability is one of the four rules Coach K likes to talk about when he’s asked to speak on leadership. I recently shared the first two, and today the last two leadership rules bring us one of the toughest games Krzyzewski has ever coached.
Picking up where we left off after leadership rules #1 and #2 …
3. Accountability
Krzyzewski was the head coach of the U.S. team at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. During a semifinals game against Serbia, they hoped to win and play for the gold medal. Two of the top players on that team were Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. But during the game, “Kobe started taking ‘Laker shots,’ not ‘U.S. shots.’ His Laker shots had a low-scoring percentage,” says Coach K.
“I’m sitting there, and LeBron approaches me and he just looks at me. I said, ‘Don’t say anything. I’ll take care of this.’ When you coach that level of talent, Coach K chuckles, there’s always a second look from the player. So LeBron looks at me again. I said, ‘Trust me.’ So that night, I stay up all night thinking about how I have to hold one of the best players in the world accountable. Wow. Yeah, I’m a little bit afraid.”
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The next morning, Coach K is prepared. He’s got all of Bryant’s low-percentage shots on tape. He calls him into a meeting room. “I look into his eyes, and I say, ‘Yesterday, you took really bad shots; if you keep taking these shots, we’re not going to win the gold medal.’ He looks at me, and I’m holding my breath. He says ‘Okay,’ and my heart dropped. I’m thinking, I stayed up all night for ‘Okay’!” So Coach K asks, “Are you sure?” Bryant says, “Coach, I won’t take those shots again.”
No matter how high the stakes are or how difficult it is to take ownership, you have to step up when you’re the leader. Your team is depending on you to uphold the standards they agreed on at the outset. If you don’t, you lose trust with your high-performing, accountable players and you dismantle your team culture one slip at a time. But because Coach K stepped up and Bryant did the same, the other players recognized this and could focus on winning.
4. Attitude
“Fast-forward three weeks from my conversation with Bryant, and I’m in the toughest game I’ve ever coached up to that point.” Coach K is in the gold-medal game against Spain, and the U.S. is winning, except Spain makes a comeback and cuts the U.S.’s lead to two points. Coach K calls a timeout, and the tension is high. “I’m getting ready to drop a play, and all of a sudden, Bryant’s hand rests on mine and he says, ‘Coach, we don’t need a play. We’re ready. We’ve been trained for this.’ I get chills thinking about this great moment. Then LeBron James chimes in. Carmelo Anthony and Dwyane Wade chime in too. And we left the bench without a play.”
Coach K and the team came off the bench in that moment without a play but they had something better—a winning attitude. Not only did they make one play, but they also made another and another, until they clinched the gold medal. Accountability makes room for everyone to find their flow and perform their best. When that happens, a winning attitude has a multiplier effect. Whether you’re a coach of a team or a leader in the workplace, accountability and attitude hold people to a higher standard, which in turn raises everyone’s game and their belief in what’s possible.
