How to Be Like Mike

by Pat Williams

  This is, of course, the extremely exaggerated version of how Jordan affected his teammates. But somewhere within Kerr’s false braggadocio lies the truth. When Jordan showed he was on your side, when he helped you off the floor after a hard foul and whispered in your ear, “Don’t let them know you’re hurt,” there was a tendency to believe you could do anything.

  Trust each other, again and again. When the trust level gets high enough, people transcend apparent limits, discovering new and awesome abilities for which they were previously unaware.

  —David Armistead

  AUTHOR

  “Creating a successful team,” said Phil Jackson, “is essentially a spiritual act.”

  Jackson is a renowned believer in Zen and meditation and other esoteric concepts, but this notion is not grounded in any kind of complex Eastern philosophy. The spirituality of it—as it is within any group situation, athletic, corporate, or otherwise—is this: to surrender egotism in favor of altruism. To develop a network of employees, of teammates, who trust each other enough to believe that any of them could close the deal.

  “Respect, dignity and integrity,” Jordan said, “haven’t gone out of style.”

  7. Build Trust and Respect

  (see chapter 10)

  8. Build and Model Character

  “Your ethical muscle grows stronger every time you choose right over wrong. Your character is your destiny.”

  —PRICE PRITCHETT

  businessman

  This notion (explored more fully in chapter 11) was instilled in Jordan at North Carolina, a place where great sacrifices were met with great rewards. The more you sacrificed, the more it came to mean. That which came easily would never be valued. “The ethic (at North Carolina),” wrote David Halberstam, “seemed to come from another time.”

  It is a notion that springs from John Wooden’s era. And it is a notion that has become lost somewhere in a dusty corner as professional sports have burgeoned.

  “While individual athletes have gotten better over the years, without a doubt, team play has, in fact, declined,” said Wooden, who won ten NCAA Championships at UCLA in the 1960s and 1970s.

  Perhaps it’s the media attention, perhaps it’s the money, perhaps it’s the overwhelming cult of celebrity, but as that acceptance of sacrifice and teamwork has declined, so has the general character of the modern athlete. Today’s superstars are arrogant enough to believe that they can win on their own; early in the 2000–01 NBA season, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant immersed themselves in a feud that threatened to tear apart Phil Jackson’s newest potential dynasty, the Los Angeles Lakers.

  “The real leader of that team,” Jordan said of the Shaq/Kobe dispute, “is the one who can sacrifice and step back and let the other one be the leader.” Of course, the Lakers did resolve their problems and rolled to their second straight NBA title in June of 2001.

  Even now, as he works to improve the Washington Wizards, Jordan will remind his employees in team meetings on marketing and promotion and other business that “everything is a team sport.”

  That Jordan was able to recognize the value of the team is one of a myriad of reasons why his example should be cherished. For all of his flaws, Jordan was consistently able to recognize what was best for the greater good. The optimal teammates are those who do the right thing, those who have honesty and integrity, who share a strong work ethic and a sense of maturity and responsibility and self-discipline, who display perseverance and humility and courage. They are destined to become the crucial cogs in a machine, one that grinds in endless pursuit of something bigger than any individual could ever accomplish.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE EYES

  UPON YOU

  JORDAN ON LEADERSHIP:

  I can’t live up to the expectations people have of me. They’re exaggerated. But I have my own expectations as a leader. . . . That’s what I can live up to.

  I have it, but I’ll be darned if I can define it.

  —General George Patton

  on leadership

  We’re in the midst of a leadership crisis. Or at least that’s what they tell me. I speak to executives and coaches and managers, W and this is their lament—that there is a dearth of gifted young leaders. And so it’s become trendy to hold leadership conferences, to share divergent theories about leadership, to put heads together and attempt to analyze and isolate the problem.

  Do I have the answers to all of these issues? Of course not. But I can say that we in the NBA have seen this leadership problem affect us firsthand. Our league is floundering right now, ticket sales and television ratings are plummeting, the luster of our star players is fading, the popularity of the league is on a downward slide. The truth is, we didn’t know how good we had it when Michael Jordan was around (and before Jordan, Julius Erving, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird). As much as I credit David Stern and others in the NBA front office for the boom in popularity of the NBA, none of them was our acknowledged leader.

  Michael was our leader.

  He was the one in the commercials, the one in the promotions, the one on the magazine covers. He was our representative image. Michael sold jerseys and Michael sold hats and Michael sold tickets, and produced TV ratings which, as any half-witted sports executive will tell you, is the only thing that matters. Michael was very much aware of this undeniable truth.

  And Michael did not just sell tickets in Chicago. Michael sold tickets in New York and Cleveland and Milwaukee and Los Angeles. I once spoke to a businessman in Oakland—and I’m sure there are dozens of stories like this—who said his company bought season tickets to Golden State Warriors games in order to have their corporate box available for one game—against the Bulls.

  It’s impossible to have any success as a quarterback without being a leader, since all eyes in the huddle will be on you. If you’re uncertain about things, your teammates will know.

  —Joe Montana

  Michael’s game.

  “Michael had a special ability to lead others because he thought about the game all the time and understood it,” said former NBA coach Mike Fratello. “He didn’t just go out and play. He was always anticipating what could happen next, and how he could get his teammates involved.”

  So as the NBA’s popularity peaked in the ’90s, we in pro basketball’s front offices began to congratulate ourselves. Boy, we thought, are we good. We genuflected upon packed arenas and boisterous crowds. We restocked the gift shop and ordered a few thousand more hot dogs.

  And then Michael retired for good. And here we are, without a spokesman, without a voice, without a leader. Every time someone steps forward, he appears to shun the role or to stumble in some way. And the NBA remains a league without a pacesetter.

  Certainly, these are enormous shoes to fill, but our most effective leaders are able to shoulder great burdens. Our most effective leaders share certain qualities.

  1. Vision

  Great leaders are visionaries. They have an instinct for the future . . . a course to steer . . . a port to seek. For persuasion, they win the consent of their people.

  —ARTHUR SCHLESINGER JR.

  historian

  Woodrow Wilson had the ability to see around the corners, to see the future before it’s here.

  —Bill Bradley

  U. S. SENATOR

  Vision is not something that can be explained as much as it can be signified. True vision is more than just adherence to the typical rules of success. It is more than just setting goals. It is a transcendent sense of meaning and purpose, the radiant desire that you recognize in someone as soon as you see it. (“Vision leaks,” said pastor and author Bill Hybels. )

  Visionaries are the ones we defer to in times of crisis. They share ideas that are easily understood, that are attainable, yet are only seen in their entirety by the rarest of people. (“Vision,” said author Jonathan Swift, “is the art of seeing the invisible.” ) Visionaries focus others around their plan, keep others fueled and are driven to complete t
he entire picture of their vision without quitting when things become difficult.

  Visionaries are the people who we say were meant to lead.

  “I had a long conversation with Michael Jordan, and he broke it down to a science,” said Minnesota Timberwolves forward Kevin Garnett. “He told me about coming out each night and setting a tone with your play, both on offense and defense. Being ready. Taking that next step. He told me a lot of key things that you’d think you would know, but it’s not always the case. Killer-instinct stuff. Use your instincts. Be aggressive and if the team’s not following you, you have to be that leader to push the team over the hump. Mike’s sort of a deep guy. . . . You want to tape record when he talks, so you remember a lot of stuff.”

  Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.

  —Japanese Proverb

  2. Communication Skills

  Ninety percent of leadership is the ability to communicate something people want.

  —DIANE FEINSTEIN

  U. S. Senator

  There was a year when the Bulls split their first two home play-off games with the Atlanta Hawks. What happened after the Bulls lost Game Two is an example of Jordan, the communicator, at his most potent: he got in everyone’s face. His message was rather simple and quite straightforward. He said, “This will never happen again. We must win this.”

  You could call this “fiery optimism.” It is the foremost quality of an effective communicator.

  “You had no chance after that,” Bulls assistant coach Frank Hamblen would tell Hawks assistant Stan Albeck later that summer.

  And he was right. The Bulls won the series.

  “MJ,” Albeck said, “would not let you lose.”

  Michael Jordan was an inspirational leader. Businessman Robert Mondavi understands that: “Out of all the rigidities and mistakes of my past, I’ve learned one final lesson, and I’d like to see it engraved on the desk of every business leader, teacher and parent in America—the greatest leaders don’t rule. They inspire.”

  “Michael was a quiet leader at the start,” said former Bulls trainer Mark Pfeil, “but as the years went by, he became more vocal and took charge.”

  I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.

  —Winston Churchill

  “In 1995, the Magic beat us in the play-offs in six games, so when we played them again in 1996, it was big,” said former Bull Jack Haley. “In Game One, we blew them out, but in Game Two, they jumped all over us in the first half. At the half, you could see the fear and hesitation in our faces. Michael stands up and says, ‘Trust in me. Climb up on my back and let me carry you. I’ll take care of the rest. ’You could feel the goose bumps after that. We won the game and we swept the series.”

  What else must great communicators rely on besides optimism?

  They must be storytellers, like Phil Jackson, who is known to quote scripture and Zen literature to his players in a way that they can understand. And they must gauge the perceptions of their subjects, so that what’s being said actually gets implemented. “It’s about finding a level of confidence,” Jackson said, “so that when they hear your voice, they know whose voice it is and it’s the only voice speaking.”

  If one had to name a single, all-purpose instrument of leadership, it would be communication.

  —John W. Gardner

  AUTHOR

  Communicators must also be attentive listeners. Phil Jackson’s own theories for“mindful leadership” include this suggestion:

  “Listen without judgment—no matter what the stakes and the situation, practice listening with impartial, open awareness. Key on your team members’ body language and the silence between words. As a result, you will better understand their concerns and receive improved performance.”

  This is something that Jordan abided by as well. As difficult and demanding as he could be, the way he learned how to give his teammates that extra push, how to motivate each of them most effectively, was by paying attention to their needs, to what they responded to most effectively. “My role as a leader was to help them find different types of challenges,” Jordan said.

  By the time he was finished, Jordan could communicate without speaking, with one look, one glare across the dressing room at a player he felt was taking a night off. “Coming from a guy who never took a night off,” said John Bach, “that would get you going. Michael was never a Salvation Army worker . . . the guy who was going to solve everyone’s problems, or fix everything in the world. But he picked the times that were important.”

  Motivational speaker Brian Tracy hit it right on the nose when he said, “The world is full of people who are waiting for someone to come along and motivate them to be the kind of people they wish they could be. . . . These people are waiting for a bus on a street where no busses pass.”

  Communicators must also be relaxed public speakers. This is something that perhaps did not come naturally to Jordan, but it became instilled in him over time, and he blossomed into one of the league’s most eloquent spokesmen.

  Lastly, communicators must adhere to their own thinking above all else. They have to assert themselves, their own beliefs, and do it in their own way. For Jordan, this was often done without a great deal of verbalization.

  “I was never one of those vocal, rah-rah types of guys,” he said. “I may have given some vocal leadership, but that rah-rah stuff was immature to a certain extent. I was not the person to do that.”

  3. People Skills

  I don’t think people are going to be successful on whether they nail the technology. They are going to be successful if they nail the sociology.

  —LEE DINGEL

  business executive

  Here again, it was Jackson who set the standard for the Bulls by treating his players with maturity and respect. “With Phil,” said NBA veteran John Salley, “it’s, ‘You’re a man. I’m a man. I’m going to help you be a better man. ’ Phil understands people.” I like the Liberian proverb that says, “If the townspeople are happy, look for the chief.”

  Jackson was a teacher, a coach, a friend, a counselor. He was visible and he was available. He concerned himself with the welfare of every one of his players, both on and off the court. He encouraged and he listened. He did not exaggerate mistakes—“My attitude is, ‘I know you made a mistake, and the rest of the team knows you made a mistake . . . but it’s not personal criticism,” ’ Jackson said—and he balanced his criticism with compliments.

  I never criticize my players until they’re convinced of my unconditional confidence in their abilities.

  —John Robinson

  FOOTBALL COACH

  “Compassionate leadership,” Jackson called it—in other words, treating people with the same respect and care you’d give to yourself. Using your authority sparingly. Allowing room for a sense of humor.

  Most of us can run pretty well all day long on one compliment.

  —Mark Twain

  “Phil let us be our own people,” Jordan said. “But within a structure.”

  It was something else that rubbed off on Jordan.

  “He’s encouraging with the guys, trying to tell them what to do, where he’ll be on the court. ‘You set this pick, then I’ll use you that way. ’That kind of stuff,” said Bulls coach Phil Jackson on Jordan’s career transformation. “He’s taking guys and playing one-on-one, players like Dickey Simpkins, for the fun and thrill of it. He’s still involved in the shooting games and likes to make those little bets, but there’s also been this acceptance, which has helped us as coaches.”

  “Michael had an attitude toward us of protection,” TrentTucker said. “He basically said, ‘I must take care of these eleven guys so that when the battle hits they’ll be strong enough to take care of themselves. ’ That’s what a leader does.”

  Red Auerbach told me early on, whenever a player asks for some time off because of a wedding, birth, illness, whatever, give it to him. Give him a little extra, and
he’ll always pay you back with a little extra when he comes back.

  —Rick Pitino

  FORMER CELTICS COACH

  Los Angeles writer J. A. Adande saw Jordan’s leadership skill in action: “In 1993, the Bulls won their third straight title. However, they got a scare in the Conference Finals when New York won the first two at home. The Bulls won Game Three and just before the Bulls took the floor to start Game Four, I saw Michael in the hall outside the locker. He was dancing in front of his teammates with three fingers in the air and singing enthusiastically, ‘Three-peat, three-peat.’ I thought What confidence he has and how must that make his teammates feel.”

  In the 1993 finals, the Bulls led the series 3–1 before losing Game Five at home to Phoenix. The Bulls were stunned. The city of Chicago had been braced for a celebration. Instead, it was back to Phoenix for Game Six.

  The next day at the airport, the team was tight. They waited for Jordan to show. He was the last one there. He strutted onto the plane with a huge cigar in his mouth.

  I decided I was going to become an optimist, when I decided I wasn’t going to win anymore games by being anything else.

  —Earl Weaver

  HALL OF FAME MANAGER

  “What’s this?”asked Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf.

  “My victory cigar,” he said.

  On the plane, Jordan spoke one-on-one with every player. He started a massive card game. By the time the plane landed, the team was loose again.

  The Bulls won Game Six to finish off their third consecutive title.

  This people skills story touched the Williams family deeply. My son Bobby has had a passion for baseball from the time he discovered that baseballs are round. He worked diligently to hone his catching skills with the dream of becoming a major leaguer. In 1999, he graduated from Rollins College, where he was a backup catcher on the varsity baseball team.

  Bobby realized that his dreams of going to the big show as a player would not become a reality. Jim Bowden, general manager of the Cincinnati Reds, and also a Rollins graduate, learned of Bobby’s baseball knowledge and love of the game and hired him, at age twenty-two, to be a first-base coach for the Reds’ Billings Mustangs minor-league team, making Bobby the youngest coach ever in professional baseball history.