An Integrated Approach to Leadership from Phil Jackson
In the book Eleven Rings, former NBA coach Phil Jackson describes the leadership lessons he gained while leading the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers to 11 championships.
What I most enjoyed in the book is how Jackson integrates lessons from varied experiences—his devout Christian upbringing, the study of Native American, Zen, and Buddhist traditions, and experimentation with his own practices. It’s not surprising, then, that his perspectives on leadership are similar to those of a diverse set of other authors.
Some of the key perspectives include:
On analytical clarity coming from time spent in reflection
As a player, Jackson was sidelined for two years with a major injury and became an unofficial assistant coach. He writes of viewing the game from the sidelines:
“This forced me to start thinking of the game as a strategic problem rather than a tactical one. As a young player, you tend to focus most of your attention on how you’re going [to] beat your man in any given game. But now I began to see basketball as a dynamic game of chess in which all the pieces were in motion.”
This experience is similar to what Raymond Kethledge and Michael Erwin describe in Lead Yourself First as the new perspectives leaders can gain when they step back, create solitude, and reflect. They write:
“Clarity is often a difficult thing for a leader to obtain. Concerns of the present tend to loom larger than potentially greater concerns that lie farther away. […] The most inspiring leaders are ones who find a clarity of meaning that transcends the tasks at hand. And that meaning emerges through reflection.”
Jackson himself describes using long motorcycle trips through the West and regular meditation sessions to generate reflective solitude.
On leading without ego
One of Jackson’s leadership principles was to “bench the ego.” He writes:
“After years of experimenting, I discovered that the more I tried to exert power directly, the less powerful I became. I learned to dial back my ego and distribute power as widely as possible without surrendering final authority. Paradoxically, this approach strengthened my effectiveness because it freed me to focus on my job as keeper of the team’s vision.”
In Good to Great, Jim Collins describes transformative leaders in the same way:
“Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It’s not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed they are incredibly ambitious—but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not for themselves.”
On leading with freedom
Jackson writes that he learned to give players space from John Heider’s The Tao of Leadership. Citing that book:
“‘Rules reduce freedom and responsibility,’ [Heider] writes. ‘Enforcement of rules is coercive and manipulative, which diminishes spontaneity and absorbs group energy. The more coercive you are, the more resistant the group will become.’”
Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer describe a similar approach of leading with context rather than policies at Netflix in their book No Rules Rules.
“Leading with context [...] is more difficult, but gives considerably more freedom to employees. You provide all of the information you can so that your team members make great decisions and accomplish their work without oversight or process controlling their actions. The benefit is that the person builds the decision-making muscle to make better independent decisions in the future.”
Having read so many of these leadership books, the individual perspectives don’t stand out as much. For me, what does stand out and what provides credibility is when leaders draw the same conclusions from completely separate domains. And these lessons are just that.
Leadership Wisdom
“To make your work meaningful, you need to align it with your true nature. ‘Work is holy, sacred, and uplifting when it springs from who we are, when it bears a relationship to our unfolding journey,’ writes activist, teacher, and lay monk Wayne Teasdale in A Monk in the World. ‘For work to be sacred, it must be connected to our spiritual realization. Our work has to represent our passion, our desire to contribute to our culture, especially to the development of others. ’”