Expert Ownership Podcast
Expert Ownership Podcast
The Four A's of Leadership
We recently heard Coach Mike Krzyzewski at the Global Leadership Summit outline four keys to dynamic leadership that helped him coach teams to national championships and Gold Medals. Tune in as we dive into these and apply them to leading a business.
Enjoy.
Today, jason and I, we find ourselves in Chicago, illinois, at the Global Leadership Summit. We're in our hotel room again, so we don't have our cool microphones, but hopefully the sound quality is good enough and you guys will get this. We're going to talk on this podcast today about the four A's of leadership. They all start with the letter A and we just heard Coach K from Duke University, coach Krzyzewski of the Olympic team, give us the four A's of leadership. So Jason and I are going to regurgitate our notes from his session. And it was fire. I loved it, I tell you. I loved hearing him.
Speaker 1:We were at the Global Leadership Summit, as David said, in Chicago, and when he walked out on stage man, I don't know, he just kind of has a gravitas. He's got two replaced hips, two replaced knees and he's just having like a heel replacement which I've never even heard about. So the dude can barely walk. I don't know why he was so beat up, but you could feel just the leadership mantle and anointing on him. I don't know where he is with God, but certainly he showed us exactly what a leader should be like, and when he started telling stories it was just so fun to listen to. I mean, he literally was the coach. I think he said something about coaching Michael Jordan once I wonder when that was but then he coached. I know he coached against Michael Jordan, but he coached LeBron, he coached Kobe, he's coached the richest, most famous, most powerful athletes in the world and yet those guys and he had to get on to them and he had to do all sorts of stuff, and yet those guys all respect him immensely. And I just think about our role as leaders and I think about coaches, because we need coaches in our lives and stuff. But when I look at these young kids nowadays and I see so many of them playing sports and you know sports is a way for kids to learn leadership principles and teamwork principles and all that kind of stuff but I just see so many coaches who are coaching for success rather than development. But when Coach K was talking, I could hear him. The way that he coached his teams was he coached for development, not just success, and I think that's why his teams were so successful.
Speaker 1:And so I think as leaders, especially as faith-filled entrepreneurs, that we need to be looking to develop our kids, we need to be looking to develop our teams and we develop them as people and when we develop them like that, success will come. We don't just lead them for success. Yeah, we do want success, of course we do. We don't just stick with that and focus on numbers and all that kind of stuff. No, we got to develop people and as we develop them, then success will come. And we have to understand, as Christians, we are planting seeds, and seeds don't harvest overnight. So we're not looking for immediate success or even immediate results from the seeds we're sowing into our children or into our employees or into the other relationships that we have in our businesses. It just takes time. You know, success is today. Today's idea of success in the culture is that it comes in a microwave, but true success, according to God's way, it comes in a crockpot. Yeah, it's slow bake.
Speaker 1:And so let me say this real quick before David dives into these four A's of leadership from Mike Krzyzewski is that there was a person who was speaking before him and a couple things I got from them. It was a woman leader. I can't even remember her name, but she said as leaders, people can't be what they can't see. And I just love that phrase because David and I, growing up, we learned from our dad. The things that are caught are far more valuable than the things that are taught. Yeah, dad taught me a lot of lessons, but the thing that I remember most about my dad are the things that I caught. And specifically, that was every single morning that we woke up. We caught him either reading his bible in the kitchen or on his knees in front of the couch praying. We saw that every single morning and you know know what In time, that made us have an appetite inside of us to want to read our Bible first thing in the morning and to pray first thing in the morning. So I think that's a really good leadership principle.
Speaker 1:And then something else she said. She said there were three phases of business. It's move, fail, recover. So you move, you move toward that goal that you have. You know, especially as we're leading our businesses, we move toward that goal. Chances are you're going to fail in some area. You may ultimately accomplish the goal, but you might fail in some areas and you fail. But you know what we either win or we learn. We don't ultimately lose unless we don't learn from that. And that's where she said the whole recover. It's in the recovery process that you heal and you learn from where you failed, but you just keep moving.
Speaker 1:So, anyways, that was the foundation that was shared with us just before Coach K took the stage and gave us these four A's. All right, so I'm going to give you the four A's. He did it in the context of training the Olympic team in 2008 when they won gold, and that was really tough because we played against some very difficult teams and had lost the gold in 2000. I guess it was in 2004. Anyway, so in the context of his Olympic team, he said I trained them on the four A's of leadership. Number one was agility, then adaptability, then accountability, then attitude Agility, adaptability, accountability and attitude. He said agility Agility is the ability to make a read, like when you see the change that needs to be changed. So he said you know the point guards at Duke, or the point guards that year for the 2008 Olympics, was Jason Kidd. He needed Jason Kidd to come down and we would set a play and, as kids coming down the court dribbling the ball, he had to have agility, which was the ability to make a read. We're going off that play but we're going to a different play.
Speaker 1:So with agility, you can't be so rigid as a leader. And, by the way, craig Groeschel is also leading the Global Leadership Summit and we just happened to work out with him last night. He asked me and Jason. He said will you guys come eat some Chicago deep dish with me? I only do it once a year and then he wanted to work out with us. So we went and smashed some deep dish pizza with Craig and then we went into the workout room at the hotel and put Craig through a Tabata smash and he got hammered. It was awesome. But anyway, craig says. Speaking about agility, he says the greatest pilots are constantly making adjustments based on the wind shear and based on your fuel levels and based on the weather and all these other things.
Speaker 1:Same thing Mike Krzyzewski said is you have to be agile as a leader. You can't be so rigid. You can't be so dogmatic about something. Now, of course, about truth, we're always dogmatic because that's what God wants us to be. But when it comes to certain things like I made this decision, well, sometimes you have to deviate off the decision. Yeah, that's the thing. As a leader, you just have to make sure that you don't fall in love with the direction that you've set. You don't fall in love with your vision, you don't fall in love with the plan that you put in place. It's like, okay, so this is the plan I put in place, but if we get halfway into it and it's not working like we want, then we're going to deviate. I think sometimes leaders, they just fall so in love with their plans and their vision that they don't allow themselves to deviate and they'll ultimately end up hurting not only themselves but the people that they're leading.
Speaker 1:So after agility would be adaptability, and shishetsky said you got to be able to adapt with your communication. He said this he goes, I'm the only. He says college coaches are the only coaches where we get older, but the age of our people that we're leading stay the same. He said I was always leading 18 to 22-year-olds and now I'm 77. He said I retired at 75. So I was 75, and they were still 18 to 22. And he said so I had to communicate differently. And then he said something that was so funny he goes. You know, in my 70s I had to learn how to pretty much communicate with pictures. Everybody started laughing. He's like it was just so different communicating with the kids later in my life than earlier in my life, but it's important that the leader be able to get your message across. You got to be able to adapt to the environment.
Speaker 1:Now, I'm not saying you adapt truth right. This is. What happens is when, especially pastors and church leaders will not speak about truth because they feel like they're going to lose influence or whatever. They won't speak about marriage or life or some of these other very important things of truth that are now considered quote political. Well, they adapt their messaging to avoid those issues. No, that's not what we're talking about. That is not adaptability. That's not good leadership, that's bad leadership. Adaptability is how do you now communicate that truth in a way where they will hear it? And so he said that my communication had to be different between Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. I had to have completely different leadership styles with them to get the same message across to each of their sets of ears, and I like the way that he said one of the best things to do for adaptability is to ask force multiplier questions to the people that you're leading, and a question like that would be instead of going in and saying, okay, so here's what we're going to do, and you pitch a vision to your team. He says you go in and you ask them okay, so how would you guys feel if we did this? And then you get them to respond to that? And he said those are force multiplier questions that get their buy-in. You're still leading them to the place you wanted them to go, but now you're getting their buy-in on it and they feel like they're a part of the decision. He said to be adaptable that way is a really powerful leadership principle Two specific force multiplier questions how do you feel and what do you think? He said start adding that into your discussion and your communication and that's really going to help you. He also said, in terms of adaptability, that he adapted Instead of having rules for his team.
Speaker 1:He said I had a standards meeting. We had standards for our team. He said because you can't own rules, but you can own standards. He would say, okay, we're going to have a standards meeting as a team. Whether he did this at Duke, but he also did it at the Olympics in 2008. He said I told all of the players on the Olympic team we're going to have a standards meeting. This was one of our first meetings and they were like standards meeting. They all come into the meeting and he said listen, we're not going to have rules. He said, but we will have standards and I want you guys to come up with 10 standards. And he said honestly, he said it was so crazy they came up with the 10 most simple human standards. Don't be late. Don't be late when someone is talking to you. Make eye contact. Make sure, when someone is speaking, you're listening to. The best that you can Be respectful in your interactions. These are the Olympic, these are the greatest athletes on the planet and this is the standards that they were putting in. And so Shachetsky said I didn't have to have the rules because these guys had set the standards.
Speaker 1:And here's what I like about this whole idea of thinking about standards rather than rules, especially when you're leading a team, is that standards are basically what they do, because they're better than rules. They show you the level you need to live up to in order to accomplish the goal that you have. So if the goal for them was to win gold, he's like okay, if we want to win gold, let's come up with 10 standards that we're all going to agree to and we're all going to live by. That will help us accomplish that goal of winning gold. That's what it is. That's why is the is the level that you've got to live up to in order to accomplish your goal, and so the that brings us into the third a, and that's accountability, because you cannot have standards. Standards mean nothing if you can't be held accountable to it.
Speaker 1:And he mentioned um, that um, they were playing against austral and Kobe Bryant had taken some really bad shots. He said they were Lakers shots, but not USA basketball shots. And everybody started laughing and he said he knew while he was sitting on the bench he goes. In my mind, I'm sitting there thinking, okay, I'm going to have to hold. Well, he said LeBron James, hold on, I was about to do that. He goes. He's sitting on the bench, he goes. I know. In my mind, I'm going to have to hold Kobe Bryant accountable for these bad shots and he goes. And I'm just sitting there thinking and he goes and I look over and LeBron James is staring down at me. Then he stands up and walks down to the end of bench and stands right over the top of me and here it's this monster of a man staring at me and not saying a word and he goes and I just put my hand up and said I know LeBron, I know I'm going to talk to him. And then he said and LeBron looked away. And then he looked right back at him and he said no, I I'm going to talk to him. Lebron didn't even say a word, but they knew I have to deal with this. He said so.
Speaker 1:I stayed up all night. I was just, you know, sweating it out, thinking okay, how am I going to, how am I going to put this to him? And he said so. The next morning I saw Kobe. I said hey, kobe, can we talk for a second? I need to. I want to look at a few clips of the game film from yesterday. So Kobe said sure. So they sat down, he opened up his laptop and he's rolling through some of the shots on game film and he said and I just said to Kobe, I just put it right out there, kobe, these are bad shots and if you keep taking shots like this, we will not win gold in the Olympics. And Kobe says okay, and Krzyzewski goes. I stayed up all night for Okay, you know. He said uh, but, but Kobe fully accepted responsibility and he said he completely eliminated those bad shots out of his repertoire. He said but I had to hold him accountable because our, our goal was gold. We had standards and Kobe was not abiding by those standards, at least with his shot selection, so I had to hold him accountable. That's the.
Speaker 1:That's the third a of accountability is you have to be able to take full responsibility for the truth. And when he said the word truth, of course I'm sitting there thinking, you know, I know Krzyzewski isn't like I don't believe he's a man of faith. He says he's a Catholic, but anyway, just based on some of the conversations, I don't know that he's been discipled for sure. But he said we have to hold people accountable to the truth. And he said have the courage to speak the truth, have the courage to say what needs to be said with no regrets. And he's like that's a hard thing to do, but when you do that, it 100% sets the stage for your people.
Speaker 1:And what's the fourth A? The fourth A is attitude. And of course you know none of this happens if you don't have a winning attitude, if you've got a negative attitude, a sour attitude. It's no good, he said he. He called a timeout in china. We were playing against china, we were down two. Um, that he called a timeout with. I think it was a couple of minutes left. Correct me if I'm wrong. You can go back and watch the game, but it was a very tight game. This was to get to the gold medal game, so it was the semifinals and they were down two.
Speaker 1:He calls a timeout. He said it was the hardest game he has ever coached and he knew I've got to set up a play. So he's sitting there, he grabs the whiteboard Everybody gets around him and as he's setting up the play, kobe Bryant's hand reaches in and puts his hand over the top of Shachetsky's hand and says no, coach, we know what to do, we're prepared. And so he says I stopped writing and I looked around at the players and they're all just kind of nodding their heads and I said, all right, great, let's put it together. And they said break went out on the floor and he goes and there's my team walking out on the floor with no play.
Speaker 1:He said, but what they did have was they all had, in that moment, they all had winning attitudes. They all knew they were going to win, whatever it took. I mean that was incredibly inspiring to sit there and hear about look, you've got all of these things in place, we have our standards in place, but if you don't have a winning attitude, especially when the heat turns up in a situation like that, it doesn't matter how many cool plays you can draw up, it doesn't matter how many great systems and processes and procedures and SOPs you have in place. You have to have a winning attitude. Yeah, so those are four A's right there. Thank you, coach K, for that.
Speaker 1:Agility, adaptability, accountability and attitude, and that's very helpful. So we just wanted to pass that along to you guys. All right, hey, before you finish, he said this. He said that LeBron James said hey, guys, we're playing for the United States. And Coach K interrupted him and said LeBron, no, you are not playing for the United States.
Speaker 1:And he said it was a long pause. All the guys were looking at him like bewildered and he said you are the United States, and isn't that awesome? He said you've got to own what you're doing. So with your family, you're not just working for the faith. No, you are a Christian, you are a man of God, a woman of God, you are a husband, a father, you are a wife, you are a mother. Walk out of that identity and when we do that, we know that God is going to move through our lives. So that's it. Hopefully you guys got a lot out of this. We definitely were blessed by the Global Leadership Summit's message from Coach K and we're just super thankful that we can summarize this for you guys and hopefully we all can be better leaders. God bless you, peace.