Love the Big Egos

“To me, team­work is the beau­ty of our sport, where you have five act­ing as one you become self­less.” — Mike Krzyzews­ki, Coach, Men’s Olympic Bas­ket­ball Team USA

I had the absolute plea­sure of hear­ing the amaz­ing Mike Krzyzews­ki speak at a Chica­go con­fer­ence about what it was like to get the best out of pro­fes­sion­al ath­letes. The CEO of one of my clients arranged for us to attend the keynote to kick off our strate­gic plan­ning sessions.

Coach of Duke University’s bas­ket­ball team for the last 40 years, and more recent­ly of the Men’s Olympic Bas­ket­ball Team USA, Mike shared his wis­dom and insights as I fever­ish­ly took notes. One thing he said real­ly hit home on a top­ic I’d nev­er heard artic­u­lat­ed so well.

He talked about coach­ing the men’s bas­ket­ball team and how the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom is to check your ego at the door.

He sug­gest­ed that made no sense in the world. He essen­tial­ly said, ​“I want you to bring your ego and bring it all, in all of its glo­ry — because your ego is that thing that dri­ves you to be great — to push hard­er, fight hard­er, train hard­er — and we want all of that.”

His chal­lenge and job as a coach was then to take the indi­vid­ual mass of egos and align them into one com­mon ego – into the thing that we call team.

“Cre­ate own­er­ship,” he said, ​“by let­ting them come up with their own rules for how they work and live.”

The light bulbs and fire­works went off in my head! Of course! Since I heard Mike Krzyzews­ki speak, I’ve even caught myself a few times, try­ing to squish the ego rather than direct it. And I see lead­ers make the mis­take of check­ing the ego of an amaz­ing, high per­form­ing per­son. They clip their wings, and keep them from soar­ing by try to make them smaller.

By the way, by ​‘ego’ I make a dis­tinc­tion between a con­struc­tive and a destruc­tive ego: between some­one who walks around telling every­one they are the best thing since sliced bread – ver­sus some­one who takes incred­i­ble pride in their work, is high­ly com­pet­i­tive, and has a strong desire to be the best – with­out dimin­ish­ing others.

In my work with high per­form­ing exec­u­tives on lead­er­ship teams, the most suc­cess­ful com­pa­ny has peo­ple who are incred­i­bly proud and dri­ven. Because I nat­u­ral­ly love and appre­ci­ate that per­son­al­i­ty style I gen­er­al­ly try to make it stronger — to pull out the best in them. That’s my job as a coach.

Cre­at­ing a Com­mon Ego

About 10 years ago a client, who owned a num­ber of very suc­cess­ful restau­rants, shared one of the secrets of his success.

“Kevin,” he said. ​“I have learned that if you can learn how to hire and work with divas, they are the most tal­ent­ed and high per­form­ing peo­ple in a retail envi­ron­ment. It takes a dif­fer­ent skill set that most peo­ple have – and they end up fir­ing them. But I love them! They are per­form­ers! They are dra­mat­ic and they bring my restau­rants to life.”

Your chal­lenge, as a leader, is to learn how to man­age and appre­ci­ate the egos of the peo­ple on your team – to see how you can improve your skill set to bring them togeth­er – and direct them towards com­mon goals, and the greater good of the organization.