You've got to coach worrying about your entire team: whether that gets you a championship or whether that gets you fired. I think it allows you to coach free. You're coaching with freedom because you know you're doing what you think is right.
Interpretation
Coaching requires a focus on the whole team, prioritizing the right decisions over personal consequences.
Doc Rivers emphasizes that effective coaching involves looking out for the best interest of the entire team, which fosters a sense of freedom in making decisions. This approach allows a coach to act confidently, knowing they are prioritizing the team's success rather than being overly concerned about the repercussions they might face personally, such as job security or accolades.
In practice
In a sports seminar discussing effective leadership strategies.
As a coach, you've got to do what's best for the team. If guys don't like it, they're going to leave. If they stay and don't like it, well, your team's going to suck anyway. Even if this happens, you still have to do it. You can't coach worrying about any individual.
You're always growing as a coach, and I am not done growing, and hopefully I'm not done winning.
If you're a great defensive player, you're a great defensive player 100% of the time. You can't be a great defensive player half of the time because you didn't get the ball once or twice. That can't sidetrack you. It's got to be 'I live for my defense, and my offense I'll get. But I can't let it affect my defense. Nothing affects my defense.'
Exercising leadership is an expression of your aliveness... But when you cover yourself up, you risk losing something as well. In the struggle to save yourself, you can give up too many of those qualities that are the essence of being alive, like innocence, curiosity, and compassion.
Basically, managing is about influencing action. Managing is about helping organizations and units to get things done, which means action. Sometimes, managers manage actions directly. They fight fires. They manage projects. They negotiate contracts.
You have to take ownership and leadership of tomorrow. For that to be possible, you have to strengthen your capacity and widen your vision as a global citizen.
I can't tell you how much you gain, how much progress you can make, by working together as a team, by helping one another. You get much more done that way. If there's anything the Steelers of the '70s epitomized, I think it was that teamwork.
We look a little bit disorderly, indecisive, leaderless. That's a real problem, and that's a problem that concerns me particularly on foreign affairs. The presidency, not just President Obama, but the presidency in recent years has lost some of the terrain that they used to dominate in the making of foreign policy. I think President Obama has to make a serious effort to regain it because he lost some of it himself.
The most dangerous negotiation is the one you don't know you're in.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.