Thoughts from The Gold Standard

Mike Krzyzewski wrote this as kind of a memoir/leadership book telling the story of the rebuilding of USA Basketball. It is still one of my favorite books. It is packed with leadership principles while it also discusses the building of the 2008 USA Basketball gold-medal winning team.

On what Team USA emphasized...On our team, there were two things that we talked about every single day: the gold medal and defense, our goal and our competitive edge. Those are two pretty important things for your team to always have on their mind.

I was struck with Krzyzewski's positive impression of LeBron James as a leader. This is a great example of LeBron's leadership...
The first practice (for the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team that summer) also helped our players get reacquainted with LeBron’s voice after having been apart for an NBA season. He communicated throughout. When going from one segment of practice to another, LeBron would announce the transition to the team. This is the type of communication you want from the bench to the court during a game. When a coach says something to a player on the court, you want that player to echo your message. LeBron did that naturally in practice. We may have just finished doing some work on our inbounds plays and I would say, “Okay, let’s get going on some shooting drills off of our sets. Divide up into two groups and each go to a basket.”

LeBron would immediately take control: “Shooting off sets, guys. White over there and blue over here. Let’s go.” This echoing of instruction is something that makes a practice run much more smoothly and is essential in games.

You have to be a family first to be a team. – LeBron James

On developing his systems...

On my basketball teams, I try to instill three systems. Our offensive and defensive systems comprise those X and O strategies that we implement on the court. But most important of all is our system of communication.

What teams need...
Every team needs an ultimate goal, a purpose for which it unites and prepares. Thinking about the goal that lies ahead is what gives your team energy. It’s what you get excited about. It’s why you practice hard. No matter what intermediate steps you take, your team should always have your ultimate goal in mind and allow its pursuit to invigorate.

On Legacies...
Legacy asks the question, “Who were you? Did you win? Did you lose? Did you do something special?”