I am currently the book Leading With The Heart: Coach K’s Successful Strategies for Basketball, Business, and Life which I picked up at a used bookstore. Written in 2000 by the iconic Duke men’s head basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, the principles are timeless.
A key portion of the book are his five keys of effective teamwork. Coach K calls this The Fist. The concept is simple but profound. Five fingers formed into a singular fist are stronger than individual fingers. In fact, a small first is often stronger than the largest finger. His point, a team of less-talented individuals is stronger than five talented individuals not working together.
Coach K says, “You develop a team to achieve what one person cannot accomplish alone. I frequently tell the players, ‘All of us alone are weaker, by far, than if all of us are together.'”
Coach K – Mike Krzyzewski’s 5 Keys Of Effective Teamwork are the following:
- Communication – Effective communication, in Duke’s environment, is displayed through talk. He notes organizations are less effective when people are not talking while performing their jobs. Effective communication/talk is accomplished through repitition. Repitition breeds confidence. Shared confidence is better than personal confidence.
- Trust – The foundation of effective leadership is trust. Coach K focuses on telling the truth and telling it as soon as possible. Many leaders struggle with confrontation. He defines confrontation as simply “meeting the truth head on.”
- Collective Responsibility – To be a great team, there is no finger-pointing or playing the blame-game. We win together. We lose together.
- Caring – This shows up most in how we use our time. If you care about your employees, teammates, or family, this is demonstrated by how much time you spend with them.
- Pride – Coach K says, “Everything we do has our own personal signature on it. So we want to do it as well as we possibly can.” He also adds, “When everyone on our team believes that our own personal signature is on everything our team does – then we have a chance to be a great basketball team.”
One final thought on the value of books. By purchasing this used book for only $6.15 ($5.97 + .18 tax), I got personal coaching from Mike Krzyzewski on effective teamwork and a number of other items such as organization, training, managing crises, and knowing how to handle success and failure. Let me ask you a question – if I called the Duke athletic department and asked how much it would cost me to get personal time with Coach K to discuss these topics, I’m confident it would be $10,000+. I got it and more for $6.15. Books, BY FAR, are the greatest value in leadership.
My favorite Coach K book is The Gold Standard: Building a World-Class Team. This book is a classic!!! It chronicles Coach K leading the USA Olympic Basketball team. Comprised of some of the biggest NBA stars, Coach K had to work with huge egos and personal rivalries in order to create an American team that could win against the best competition in the world and restore Team USA to the gold standard of basketball. This is more than a celebratory book – it’s Coach K’s first-hand account of how he dealt with such stars as Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, Carmelo Anthony and all the rest to buy into his “total team” play. You can purchase the book HERE of on the image provided.