Great leaders inspire leadership

On playing fields and sports arenas, the quality of leadership is as critical to success as it is in politics, business and education. Great captains and leaders can inspire, motivate and galvanise average players and athletes into performing like champions and winners.
The role and duties of leader have to be discharged at some time by everyone — whether a businessman, professional or parent. Although there’s much truth in the army adage that everyone can’t be a general, it’s useful to assess and test your leadership style and capabilities — just in case.

First, it’s important to determine your natural leadership style. Are you authoritarian, hands-on, or laissez-faire? Each of these styles may work for different types of people in different contexts, because there isn’t any ‘right’ leadership style. However, there certainly are wrong styles. For example, winning teams and champions aren’t moulded by leaders who lead by creating fear and intimidation, or through divide et impera (divide and rule) tactics. On the other hand, good leaders though assertive, are cooperative, caring, communicative, helpful, dedicated, cool under pressure, responsible, energetic, and all-round good role models.

In my opinion, based on over 40 years’ experience as a NBA player, coach and author, good leaders need six essential qualities — vision; ability to sell the vision; ability to build teams; learn continuously; change according to circumstances; and ability to nurture future leaders.

The vision thing. All leaders need the ability to visualise. For example, as a director of the school sports teams, you need to be able to picture your team at the end of the season. What do you want them to have accomplished? How do you want them to feel about themselves and others? How do you want others to view your coaches and teams? Your vision serves to guide your actions and help accomplish your goals and objectives.

Selling your vision. From the very first meeting with your coaches — when they are excited and full of enthusiasm about the future — you should be selling them the future you envision for your programme so that they assume its ownership. The best way to sell your vision is to always speak in positive terms, using words like “we” and “our,” and exhibiting reinforcing behaviour, by being a walking, talking embodiment of your programme and vision.

Building teams. Great teams and champions don’t fall out of the sky or spring up from the ground. Successful leaders are team builders, able to get disparate individuals to work towards common goals. In today’s “me-first” sports world, respecting and supporting individual goals while getting coaches, players, parents and other members of the sports community to work together towards overall programmes or goals is one of the biggest challenges sports directors face.

Continuous learning. Even great leaders with vision and impressive communication skills are often accused of not understanding players. Therefore, good leaders make special efforts to keep learning about their players and team members. A popular basketball coach used to visit the prisons and projects of Newark, New Jersey, to enquire into the poor socio-economic backgrounds of his players. His openness to new ideas and willingness to let himself be challenged helped him accrue one of the best post-season winning percentages among NBA coaches.

Embrace change. Not only are great leaders unafraid of change, they also know how to catalyse it. I have found that most administrators and coaches genuinely believe that changes need to be made in their programmes to improve results and outcomes. So why do changes fail to be implemented? I believe it’s because humans have such deep, ingrained resistance to change that we sometimes subconsciously act to prevent it from occurring.

If you feel this is happening to you, ask yourself what you are doing that might be undermining your commitment to change. For example, let’s say you establish an open-door policy to build a rapport with your coaches and encourage them to communicate with you. But then, you don’t attend enough practices and games to maintain that rapport, or you fly off the handle if a coach communicates unpleasant information. You need to look at behavioural traits which may be interfering with your ability to precipitate change.

Develop leadership in others. Leading by example, great leaders inspire leadership in others. They lend a patient ear to team members and stimulate them with new initiatives and encourage them to solve problems. You need to interact with coaches, athletes, parents and others to develop their often latent leadership qualities. If you aspire to become a leader, encourage team members to take the initiative and think for themselves. Moreover, instead of berating people for mistakes, you need to help them learn from their mistakes while exhibiting flexibility and calmness in the face of pressure. If you exhibit these traits, you are a leader who will develop leaders, who in turn will transform average players and performers into great champions.

(Dr. George Selleck is a San Francisco-based advisor to EduSports, Bangalore)