Leadership is like a muscle. When we don't exercise it, it atrophies. Develop a strategy to maintain and expand leadership.
What Do Leaders Do?
- Facilitate execution within organizations.
- Coordinate people, strategy, and operations.
- Identify and solve problems.
- Carry out missions assigned by higher authorities.
- "Make future leaders."
Basketball example: Coach Krzyzewski - five fingers become a fist, far stronger than any individual finger.
Growing Leadership
As coaches, how do we train leaders? Intentional and distributed leadership exposes players to leadership.
- Model excellence
- Teach communication skills
- Be positive
- Assign leadership opportunities (lead drills, explore short topics)
- Provide feedback
Leadership Culture
Everyone can lead. Cal rugby coach Jack Clark expects all players to lead with leadership traits - punctuality, hard work, no distractions.
Create the expectation that leadership comes with the job. Remove the requirement that you need titles to lead.
Basketball example: Teach servant leadership in the mold of Don Meyer and Dick Bennett.
Leadership Journal
Leadership journals don't have to be elaborate. Write down opportunities for leadership, how they carried out leadership, and the results.
Adam Grant doesn't explicitly create a template for a leadership journal in his Organizational Psychology books. If he did, it might include:
- The leadership opportunity (situation)
- What did I do? (Take a timeout, let them figure it out)
- How did it turn out?
- Would I do something different next time?
- What's the NBA - "next best action?"
Share Examples and Outcomes
In a game against a strong opponent, a team had a solid lead (high teens) with about four minutes left. Opted to substitute in reserves and the lead rapidly dissipated although we still won. Decision intent - good, allow players to get experience against better players. Decision outcome - poor, resulted in confidence loss not growth. A more limited approach would be better.
Basketball-adjacent: Jocko Willink shared the experiences of a SEAL Team leader in "Extreme Ownership." An operation in Iraq went FUBAR including deaths because of communications problems. Willink took full accountability and offered to resign. He was kept on.
Study Excellence
The books below share experiences in sport and society based on leadership inputs.
Key New Zealand All-Blacks rugby lessons:
- "Leave the jersey in a better place." Legacy ownership.
- "Sweep the sheds." No job is below you.
- "Old men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit." You have a responsibility to your community.
- "Better people make better All-Blacks." Character matters.
- Be accountable to the "Standard of Performance" in all jobs.
- Coaches are expected to teach and monitor attention to detail.
- Champions behave like champions before they are.
- "The process creates the outcome." Teach.
- Leadership includes emotional discipline. Do it right all the time.
- Hard work accompanies leadership.
- Personal challenges forge the best leaders.
- Big themes (Preserve the Union, Preserve Democracy, the New Deal)
- Collaboration is necessary to achieve greatness
Reading List:
- Legacy by James Kerr
- The Score Takes Care of Itself by Bill Walsh
- Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin
- Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
This may be the best (most important 🤷♂️) paragraph I have written in 25 years. pic.twitter.com/YOAjw6Zi8S
— Brian McCormick, PhD (@brianmccormick) April 16, 2026
