Bill Belichick is arguably the greatest coach in NFL history with six Super Bowl championships. Nick Saban is arguably the greatest college coach in history with six national championships. These two iconic leaders also happen to be great friends with a long personal and professional history together.
Recently, HBO was able to go behind-the-scenes when the two got together in Alabama during the spring of 2019. Utilizing personal and joint interviews as well as candid interactions between the two, the network produced the historic Masterclass on leadership entitled Belichick & Saban: The Art Of Coaching.
I want to share the lessons from the program with you. The following are 38 Leadership Quotes And Lessons From Belichick & Saban: The Art Of Coaching:
General Observations
- It is rare when apex leaders get together. This is why shows such as this are so special. Another show I would recommend is the 30-For-30 documentary The Two Bills which featured Coach Belichick and Bill Parcells discussing their relationship. Click 61 Leadership Quotes And Lessons From ESPN Films 30 For 30 – The Two Bills to read more.
- What Do Leaders Talk About When They Are Alone Together? – When Belichick and Saban were alone together, the cameras kept rolling. HBO allowed us to be a “fly on the wall.” What was it like? They simply talked football. No small talk. Nothing trivial. There was an economy of language. Immediately, both men went into football strategy and tactics.
- The Best Leaders Are Replenished Leaders – Both coaches have getaway locations. Belichick’s is his home in Nantucket where he enjoys golf and fishing. Saban’s is at his lake house in Lake Burton. While this is a time for family and decompression, their mind is also more focused because of the lack of clutter. Michael Lombardi said, “There a quote by Marcus Aemilius that apply to both of them. The secret to all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious. Vacation allows them to come back with different ideas.”
- At the end of the day, Bill Belichick and Nick Saban are simply two coaches who love football. They just happen to be the best of all-time at it. As soon as the show ended and the credits began to roll, both men started to immediately discuss football strategy and tactics once again.
Bill Belichick (all quotes are his unless otherwise noted)
- Belichick’s Greatest Learning In College Was How To Think And Solve Problems – “The biggest thing I learned in college wasn’t the material. It was how to solve problems and how to think. And how how to come up with your own solution to the problems. That’s really what our job is. There’s problems every day. What are my options? Are there any variables?”
- “Nick was the first coach I hired and the best coach I hired. Nick was really my #1 partner there.” – When Bill became head coach of the Cleveland Browns in 1991
- “Do Your Job” – “‘Do Your Job’ is a core belief in the Belichickian program… It’s hard to do your job if you don’t know what your job is. Belichick defines what your job is.” – Mike Lombardi
- Great Leaders Clearly Define Expectations – “One of the things I like most about you is I knew exactly what you expect. I knew exactly what you expected from me and I worked other places and that was never clearly defined… You defined for them and then you let them do their jobs… It’s something I’ve tried to take away that we have in our building.” – Saban
- Loyalty Is A Non-Negotiable Even After You Leave An Organization – “I’m happy for the people who have worked hard for me to get opportunities. I want to see them build their own program. When they try to tear down our program, that’s kind of where I feel the line gets crossed.”
- “I hate social media… It still comes back to fundamental communication. There’s no cell phones out there on the field.”
- Validation Should Come From Your Teammates Only – “Who cares how many Likes you get from people you don’t even know. There’s 53 guys in the locker room. Those are the 53 that matter.”
- Raising Individual And Team Expectations Is A Key To Success – “When my expectations are higher than the team’s or individual player’s, that’s not going to work out.”
- “Good players can’t overcome bad coaching.”
- Great Leaders And Teams Finish Well – “It’s so much about how you play at the end of the season than how you play at the beginning of the season.”
- Great Leaders Give Credibility To Concepts And Ideas – “If it’s good enough for Nick and he’s doing it, it’s probably good enough for me.”
- “In the end, it really comes down to the players.”
- Nothing Is More Important Than Family – “Those are precious moments that are bigger than any individual game or season.” – on his daughter getting married
- “There’s nobody I respect more in football than Nick Saban and I don’t think there’s anybody who’s a better coach than Nick Saban… I look up to him. I admire what he’s done and I’ve learned a ton from him.”
- “Everybody who plays football plays football because they love football.”
Nick Saban (all quotes are his unless otherwise noted)
- “There’s a lot of people in the world who will take the challenge to climb the mountain. But when you get to the top of the mountain, you become the mountain because everyone is shooting at you to be where you are.” To which Belichick responds, “But the great ones get to the top of the mountain and say, ‘You know what, I can be even better.'”
- The Most Well-Prepared, Smartest, And Thorough Team Almost Always Wins – “One thing you do that a lot of NFL guys don’t do – I don’t know if you ever picked one of our players that you ever talked to me before you picked them. And there’s a few other guys who do that but there’s another 30 teams that I never hear from and they pick somebody and I say, ‘How could they ever pick that guy?'” – Saban to Belichick on draft preparation
- Trust Is The Foundation Of Successful Relationships – “I’m an And and But guy. Whatever comes behind AND is usually good and you get this great recommendation but you get BUT, it’s never, ever not been correct.” – when evaluating a potential NFL draft pick of one of his players
- Everything You Need To Be Successful You Can Learn As A Child – “All the things I believe in as a coach were instilled in me as a 10-year-old playing Pop Warner football.”
- Excellence Is Often Not Reflected By The Results – “Players say, ‘We won the game. Why do we have to do it over?’ Because it wasn’t right.”
- Successful Leaders Have Replaced Bad Habits With Good Habits – “It’s not about what you want. It’s about what you’re willing to do to get it. In that you might have to give something up that might not be a good habit to replace it with a better habit.”
- Successful Leaders Are Adaptable Leaders – “You coach a lot of different personalities. You coach a lot of different styles.” – on adaptability
- Great Leaders Are Culture Builders First – “I’ve always hired coaches to do what we do… They have to be willing to be part of the team and buy in to how we do things here.”
- All Leaders Get Better When They Have A Great Rival – “One of the best days of my coaching career was when you took the Alabama job and got out of Miami.” – Belichick
- “Your talent is your greatest nemesis.”
- “Nobody wants to come in 2nd. But are they willing to do what the beast do? Nobody motivates the tiger but (we have to with) people, we have to motivate them to keep the killer instinct.”
- “The most challenging thing to me is to keep the guys motivated... Choosing the things they need to do to be successful rather than choosing what they want to do.”
- “High achievers don’t like mediocre people and mediocre people don’t like high achievers.”
- Failure Can Be Useful But It Still Hurts – “Sometimes you feel like you did a bad job as a coach… Ultimately I don’t like to walk in a room and feel like we didn’t’ give our guys a chance to be successful.”
- Survival Is More Human Nature Than To Be Special – “People respond better when things go poorly than when they go better… Survival is more human nature than it is to be special-good. And to win a championship, you have to have a whole bunch of people who want to be special-good.”
- Great Leaders Have Great Conviction – “One of the things that makes Nick Saban great is he has conviction. He has strong-held beliefs.” – Former Dallas Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett
- For A Leader To Succeed It Requires Sacrifices From The Ones They Love – “I don’t think you could invest as much as we have in terms of time and commitment to a standard of excellence and not say it’s been a sacrifice for everyone involved and supporting you from a family standpoint.”
- Once Again, Nothing Is More Important Than Family – “That was about as special as it gets and I’ll never forget that.” – walking his daughter down the aisle
- “Every year you have a team, you have a whole new team.”
Once again, this was a Masterclass in leadership. What is one thing you learned from their time together which will make you a better leader?
To receive more leadership insights from Coach Saban, click HERE or on the image to the left for my new ebook The Leadership Of Nick Saban: Timeless Truths From The Incomparable Head Coach Of The Alabama Crimson Tide. This is an invaluable resource for both sports fans or anyone interested in organizational leadership. Enjoy!