Would You Rather Be Loved Or Admired?

Leaders always ask: How can I inspire my team to not settle for good and to only accept excellence? The hardest and potentially the shortest step any leader faces lies with being able to convince team members to dig deeper, to want more, to expect more and most of all, to move from being good to great. Great leaders do this with a consistent approach, with a genuine belief in the level of excellence required. Great leaders never shy away from confronting the team when it’s not rising to a level of excellence. Great leaders never shy away from coaching their best player, because if you allow the best player to have freedom from obtaining collective excellence, your ability to lead diminishes. Remember, it's your team. You're either coaching it or allowing it to happen.

On any great championship team, there is always one, perhaps two team members who understand the game from a coach's perspective — who never settle for good and are always looking for great. They have an insatiable appetite for preparation, for meeting the challenge, for demanding more of themselves than anyone else. No team can win titles without an alpha dog, male or female, without someone sharing the same message of the coach, without someone else being the driving force for the players. All great teams have one thing in common — they have a strong leader in the locker room to keep pushing everyone and demonstrating through their work habits, detailed preparation, and performance that will to become great. Greatness never happens overnight or in one day. It's a long journey. When we as leaders can develop this kind of player, then leading becomes more manageable. Sometimes we are lucky enough to inherit that kind of player.

The Last Dance, a new ESPN docuseries on Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, will allow us a peek into the Jordan Bulls. Jordan is fearful we might not like what we see from him. According to Richard Deitsch’s column in The Athletic, Jason Hehir, the director of The Last Dance, claimed Jordan told him people might not like him after watching:

What separated Jordan from most — beyond his once-in-a-lifetime talent — was his ability to understand that being appreciated as a leader was far better than being loved. As leaders/teachers, we all want to be loved — it's human nature. But when we look back on the great teachers/leaders that have impacted our lives, the common thread is they all drove us to be the best we could become. This does not imply they all acted like maniacs or screamed in our faces. Whatever their style, they made us better. We might not have loved them then, but we admire them today.

When Nike ran its famous Be Like Mike ad, the company was right. We all need to have that inner drive, that willingness to do what it takes to make the team move from good to great. Jordan had the greatest basketball skills ever; yet, his greatest gift was his unrelenting passion for excellence. And for that, he will always be admired.

Who would ever not like that?

P.S. If you are in search of a book recommendation, our team at The Daily Coach highly recommends Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives―and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble.

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