Great leaders understand each team member’s unique capabilities and subtle nuances and how they can best fit together with the others on the team.ĭesperate to win games, the Lakers have appeared to make too many adjustments too fast. Great leaders continually showcase their team’s talent and know how to best configure the talent pool given the circumstances at hand. A great leader knows how to help those on their team to learn about and respect one another – in order to collectively reach for success. Without individual buy-in, and most importantly team unity, systems are not sustainable.īecause great leaders learn how to manage the outcomes associated with designated roles & responsibilities, they can confidently step-back and focus on building team chemistry. The Lakers organization appears to have assumed that the individual sum of its parts would result in immediate chemistry and winning games – just because they implemented a system that “in theory” would work. As such, leaders must become great managers – so they can become even better leaders. Today’s leaders must touch the business just as much as they lead it. When the Lakers hired Head Coach Mike D’Antoni, he implemented “his system” – assigning specific roles & responsibilities, simply expecting this to work, and not thinking that he had to manage things further in order to reach his desired outcome.Ī leader’s role should not only focus on assigning specific roles & responsibilities to his team members, but also on enforcing accountability to assure performance is exceeding expectations. Define and Manage Roles & Responsibilities If you carefully observe how one of the most successful organizations in professional sports is managing adversity and uncertainty, you are witnessing six valuable lessons about leadership.ġ. Though radical efforts have been made to find the right formula for success, all of us – Laker fans, players, supporting sponsors and Time Warner Cable (who signed a $3 billion, 20-year agreement with the Lakers in February, 2011) – have grown tired of losing games that should have been won with no real solution in sight. Whether it is disagreement amongst the organization’s general management, a lack of cohesiveness amongst the players and/or coaching that has not effectively leveraged the team’s talent pool – there does not exist any level of sustainable cohesiveness to make you believe they can turn it around. The Los Angeles Lakers have lacked continuity in all of these areas. Like the most successful companies that embrace the promise of their culture, this requires leadership that knows how to create seamless chemistry and that can teach each team member how to rekindle the flow when it gets lost. Building a winning team requires a commitment from the entire organization to understand one another how each team member’s personality type, subtle nuances and unique capabilities can execute together. Having the best individual talent doesn’t mean you will have the best team. Whether you are a Lakers fan or not, observe their recent catastrophic collapse and you will see lessons in leadership, team management and how the best laid plans can backfire. Touted as a pre-season favorite to represent the Western Conference in the NBA Finals after acquiring Steve Nash and Dwight Howard in the off-season, the Lakers have embarrassed themselves and their fans by displaying poor leadership, resulting in a record of 19-25 (winning percentage of. The sports theme got me thinking about the Los Angeles Lakers and how they provide one of the most unique leadership case studies in recent professional sports history. Last week I wrote about what the NFL can teach corporations about diversity management.
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