Leadership Lessons from the G.O.A.T.
Yes, I’m going there… I am completely convinced that Michael Jordan is indeed the Greatest Of All Time with regards to basketball! Truth be told though, I’ve never been much of a basketball fan. In fact, the only times in my life that I ever remember truly enjoying watching a basketball game were times where he was playing. There was so much to love about his approach to the sport. And quite frankly, I wish we’d see more people approach their chosen professions like that today!
Don’t misunderstand my intent here… I have no intention of making a case for whether or not MJ himself was a great leader, but we will be pulling several leadership lessons from his storied career!
Before we get into the meat and potatoes of leadership though, let me address the elephant in the room - or in this case the GOAT… There are plenty of people out there who seem to live for trading barbs over the career statistics between Jordan and Lebron James. I’m not one. After watching just one short compilation video of Lebron’s flops, I’m not sure he stands a chance against Bugs Bunny, let alone the likes of the 1990 Detroit Pistons that Jordan had to literally fight to make it his first Finals appearance. I’ll give JBJ one thing, he plays the refs like a fiddle. At 6’9” and 250lbs, I’d be embarrassed to fall around like that. Jordan was barely over 200lbs and went toe to toe with anyone who stood in his way!
There is one statistic that caught my attention though, one that I believe served as a foundation for the respect he earned from everyone who played with him or against him; Jordan was all-in! In the fourteen complete seasons he played in the NBA, Michael didn’t miss a single game in nine of those seasons and only missed a total of seven games in three additional seasons. If that happened today, we could easily attribute it to the lack of physicality. But I’ve seen flags thrown for targeting college football over the last few years that caused less damage than some of the routine plays in the era of basketball - plays where no fall was even called…
Wait a minute, Wes… A star like Jordan had everyone looking out for him, he had it easier than most… I’d challenge you to watch just the first two or three episodes of The Last Dance and let me know if you really think that was the case!
I’m sure someone reading this is thinking “I’ll bet the coaches didn’t work him as hard in practice so he had plenty left for the games…” I can’t speak for how tough the coaches were on him, but there’s no shortage of his former teammates who talk about how hard he worked in practice - beating everyone in even the most basic drills and sprints well into his 30’s. He gave everything he had, every time he was on the court. He knew that in any given game, it may be the only time a fan got to see him play so he never mailed it in.
None of that started after he became the legend we know today; that was his approach throughout his college career and from the first day of practice with the Chicago Bulls. That’s what led to him impacting decisions more than many coaches or general managers…
A Title Isn’t Enough…
I’ll say it once more, I’m not suggesting that Michael Jordan was the greatest leader of all time but I most certainly am willing to make the case that he is the best basketball player of all time… And from the way he played the game of basketball, I believe we can pull some powerful leadership lessons that have a direct correlation to how we lead our teams!
If you know anything about Jordan, you’ve probably heard about him being cut from his high school team. That story gave me a slight glimmer of hope for a basketball career when I didn’t make the 8th grade team. Now I know he wasn’t completely cut, he just didn’t make the varsity team as a 10th grader - which is fairly common. He worked his tail off the following summer, growing six more inches in that same time, and the rest is history… Kind of…
Truth be told, he never stopped working his tail off! In either the first or second episode of The Last Dance, he referenced what it was like when he was drafted by the Bulls. The explained the overall atmosphere of the team he had just become a part of and how different it was from everything he had been around to that point in his life. Even through college under Dean Smith, Jordan had been sheltered from much of the craziness of the world and he worked incredibly hard to succeed.
To say the culture of the Bulls was the polar opposite would be a bit of an understatement. He wanted to turn that around but that wasn’t a small order as the new kid in town! He said, “I was at the bottom of the totem pole, I didn’t have a voice. The only voice I had was how I showed up and played.” That’s exactly what he did, he showed up and he played! And that quickly provided him with a voice that his veteran teammates began to respect.
While I’m not sure the goal was to emphasize leadership, the series also provided a stark contrast to Jordan working his way up the totem pole. In describing Jerry Krause, the General Manager of the team and individual with positional authority second only to the owner, they used the phrase “little man syndrome” and talked about how he had always been viewed as the short, fat kid, explaining that he liked to throw his weight around (pun not necessarily intended).
Now let’s bring this back to where we live and breathe… Which of those approaches would you be more willing to buy into? More importantly, which do you think your team would be willing to buy into?
Don’t misunderstand me here, a strong work ethic alone won’t make anyone a leader. But it will help us earn one critical thing that leadership can be built on…
Not Many Like Mike…
I can’t remember which commercial it was that coined the phrase “Be like Mike” but I do remember Detective Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) quoting it to chide his partner, Mike Lowrey (Will Smith), in one of the Bad Boys movies… Michael Jordan’s incredible work ethic that I just referenced was certainly something that helped build the voice he had with his Chicago Bull teammates from the start. But let’s be honest, we all know people with similarly strong work ethics in their respective fields who never develop the kind of influence - even within their own circles - that MJ built within a few short months in the NBA.
In one of the first few episodes of The Last Dance, someone said that “Jordan had a rare combination of talent and charisma.” With those two things alone, I believe he could have had a really solid career. Combine those though with that incredible work ethic and there were very few aspects of the game that he didn’t impact; on the court and off!
In chapter two of The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, The Law of Influence, John Maxwell opens by stating that “The true measure of leadership is influence - Nothing more, nothing less.” In the new 25th anniversary edition, he goes on to qualify that with regards to how the world has changed since he originally wrote it back in 1997. He discusses the difference between the social media “influencers” we hear so much about today and a leader’s genuine influence on their followers. In short, having a bunch of social media followers doesn’t necessarily mean someone is leading! Just because any given individual has talent in their field and enough charisma that people pay attention to what they’re doing doesn’t equate to being a leader.
With that in mind, I do believe MJ was a leader - on each team he was a part of as well as in the eyes of the brands he represented. In The Last Dance, Will Perdue said “as a teammate, he had certain expectations.” I’m convinced that his combination of talent, charisma, and work ethic yielded him quite a bit of influence with his teammates, enabling him to have those “certain” expectations. In a clip that followed soon after the segment with Perdue, Jordan himself said it this way; “Once you joined the team, you lived at a certain standard that I played the game and I wasn’t going to take anything less.”
In many cases, that could come across as harsh or demanding. Jordan went on to say, “Ask all my teammates, the one thing about Michael Jordan was that he never asked me to do something that he didn’t f’ing do himself.” When Cindy and I work with supervisors and managers on how they can communicate more effectively with their teams, we tend to see a disproportionate number of folks in those roles with highly Driven/Demanding communication styles. While people with that primary style only represent about 10% of the population, it’s not uncommon to see 50% or more of any given group of supervisors and managers with that style. When it comes to how we, as well as those folks in the groups we’re working with, lead our teams, we need to be very aware of how demanding our approach can seem. Unlike Jordan’s expectation of his teammates who were under contract, our teams might soon have enough of those demands and negotiate their own trade deal…
I’m certainly not suggesting that we shouldn’t have high expectations, and be very clear about those expectations with our team, but I do believe we need to be somewhat cautious in how demanding we are in our delivery… One final thing Jordan shared in that particular segment that gave me more perspective for why so many of his teammates and opponents respected him was that “People see this (high expectation) and say ‘he’s a tyrant!’ That’s because they never won anything. I wanted to win, but I wanted my teammates to win and be a part of that as well.” When they understood that it wasn’t just about him, they were far more apt to accept his high expectations and demanding approach. Even when we dial it back a bit, we still need to be sure our team members know that we care about them and we want the best for everyone involved.
Knowing that he wanted everyone to experience success impacted the influence he had with everyone around him. And that influence made an even larger contribution to the results his teams achieved. Stay tuned because we’ll dig into that soon…