Leadership and Team Building. In Search of the Lost Leader.

In Search of the Lost Leader

What Is Leadership?

In today's post, we'll take a different look at one of the central topics in our Team Building sessions. We'll talk about a real, highly successful case, an example of how a Team Building day can help you improve certain skills.

Leadership, that vast set of skills that millions of pages, articles and studies, epic novels and poems have been written about — with such a long historical tradition that we'd perhaps need to go back to the dawn of humanity to fully understand its origin — and yet it remains a highly current topic, and a source of great debate in our culture, from perspectives as varied as business, social, psychological or sporting.

What Does Leadership Involve?

The dictionary defines it as an individual's ability to motivate others toward a shared goal. And this applies in the business world (the boss), sport (the coach), education (the teacher) or spirituality (the master).

If it's not easy to find the right person to lead our team or group, how is it possible to find someone who can act as boss, coach, teacher or even master?

In this post I'd like to pay tribute to a great man who, through a set of values and a transformational leadership style, achieved extraordinary results in his students, producing an exceptional increase in performance among the people who made up his teams and were under his guidance.

Leadership Is a Fundamental Skill to Work On During a Team Building Day

"We live obsessed with results, constantly competing and comparing ourselves to others, when I really think the first thing we should consider is whether we're giving our best."

Some time ago I had the good fortune to discover the incomparable John Wooden, a fantastic basketball coach, a great English literature teacher and an even better person, from whom a series of wonderful lessons can be drawn.

Mr. Wooden was born in Indiana, a state with a great basketball tradition, into a humble family, though he went on to become an English literature teacher and basketball coach at UCLA, California, where he achieved the greatest successes in the history of college basketball, the NCAA. One of the first lessons Mr. Wooden received from his father, who was his greatest teacher, was that he shouldn't try to be better than others, but should try to be the best he could possibly be. Obviously this is within our control, while winning or being better than others isn't at all.

Therefore, there's no room for tears, complaints or excuses — only room for the inner peace that comes from knowing you've done everything you could, regardless of the result. What's more, if we're too absorbed or worried about what we can't control, it will negatively affect what we can control, not to mention it will weaken our ability to focus. Mr. Wooden insisted that once the game ended, watching the players' attitude, no one should be able to guess the result — whether they won or lost, if you did your best, the result will be whatever it should be, not necessarily what you want it to be.

Mr. Wooden always saw himself as a teacher, never as a coach. "Coach Wooden enjoys winning, but he never places winning above everything else. He was more concerned with us developing as people, with us graduating, with us learning to make the right choices as adults and parents. Essentially, he prepared us for life." Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

After World War II, coaching Indiana State's high school team, he achieved an impressive record, but he's remembered for a game he refused to play. His team was invited to take part in the national championship, but one of his players was black, and was barred by the tournament organisers, so Mr. Wooden declined the team's participation. The following year, they were invited again, and after tough negotiations, he managed to get his player to become the first black player to take part in the national championship.

The following paragraph sums up his philosophy leading his teams. "You can't find a single player who played under me at UCLA who could have heard me say let's go win. The last thing I tell my players before they go out on the court is that when the game is over, I want you to be able to hold your head high, and there's only one way to achieve that — knowing you did your best. You gave your best, and did everything you could, there was nothing more to do."

His father also instilled in him that he should always try to learn from others, and to never give up, to always trust in his abilities, as he would later prove during his years as a coach, since it would take a long 15 years before he won his first title with UCLA, though over the following 12 years they won 10 more titles, 7 in a row, and strung together 4 perfect seasons without losing a single game. And all of it by putting values ahead of results — as Mr. Wooden repeated time and again, good values attract good people, and they will do good things, beyond their abilities as athletes or students.

He had 3 golden rules in the locker room — the first was never to be late, to be punctual. Both at the start and end of training, and he was always very strict about this, as well as certain hygiene and dress-code rules. The second rule was that no bad words were allowed. Language should always be positive, opening up possibilities and creating a safe space that offers the chance to learn at every moment. And the third rule was that you couldn't criticise a teammate, which fully complemented the second rule, since he'd already instilled in them that the only requirement was to give your best, so there could be no reproach.

His way of doing things was an example for everyone — through stories and his own behaviour, he instilled in them his philosophy of success, a true example of leadership. His definition of success would be the following: "Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you're capable of becoming." And to round off his definition of success, he shares his own distinction between character and reputation. Reputation is what others perceive of you, while character is what you truly are — so what's genuinely important, and what we should focus our attention on, is our character, which is what's within our control.

At Kaizen we've always emphasised, both in our Team Building days and in our Coaching processes, the importance of focusing our attention and energy on what's within our control, since this attitude lets you face events from an internal locus of control — that is, with the perception that events happen as a result of our own actions, fostering improved self-esteem and a positive assessment of personal responsibility, effort and talent.

I'd like to end with a quote that, for me, perfectly captures the essence of leadership, hoping it will inspire those leading their respective teams, to whom I wish all the luck in the world.

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.