Know What You Care About

It’s fascinating to read the thoughts of head coaches who’ve been labelled a ‘dictator’.

Unsurprisingly, they often disagree with the title.

Pat Summit suggested that her title as The Great Dictator was a misinterpretation of her work ethic more than her thirst for power.

Sir Alex Ferguson, too, believed he was showing the prerequisites of a leader more than a tyrant, writing: “A leader who seeks control is very different from one who craves power.”

Bob Knight is another who wasn’t fond of the caricature.

In his book, The Power of Negative Thinking, Knight wrote, “I was always seen as a coaching dictator: If there was a decision to be made, I made it. I can’t imagine how that got started, because it wasn’t true.”

The Clark Gable Approach

On of the enduring lines from the movie Gone with the Wind is “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” and that’s how Knight chose what decisions he’d make, versus which decisions he’d defer to others.

“I always let my players vote on everything I didn’t care about—where we would eat on a road trip, whether we would practice at three or five o’clock—everything that didn’t make any difference towards winning, I let them vote on, so they felt they had a voice,” Knight wrote.

On the flipside, Knight was adamant the he make decisions about the things that he believed could make a difference to winning games, either now or in the future.

“We never elected a captain. I picked the captain. MVP? At the end of the season, I always picked that, too,” he outlined.

The margins between being called a dictator and laissez-faire are razor thin, and dependent on who we’re entrusting to dish out the labels (same as being called a genius or an idiot—that’ll often differ between a starter and a role player).

Ultimately, you’re hired to make decisions, and the bigger trapping is to get in a cycle of not making decisions because you’re afraid of hurting feelings, or you’re unclear about what it is you actually care about.

Cody’s Notes

• It’s a huge red flag for a head coach to say they care about everything. You have to prioritize, either because of resources, time constraints, or beliefs about team-building.

• It’s your prerogative to choose what it is you care about. I differed from Bob Knight — I cared enormously about the captaincy, not so much about the MVP.

• You can test what you care about by pitting it against something else. If you only had time for one: physical recovery at the swimming pool vs. emotional connection over dinner. Or, more simply, training at three o’clock vs. training at five o’clock.

• Effective delegation of what you don’t give a damn about is equally as important as identifying what you don’t give a damn about. For instance, it might not be advisable to delegate a decision to a staff member by saying, “I want you to do this because I don’t give a damn about it.”

• Pair this knowledge of what you care about with the knowledge of what your players care about. As this can be contextual or momentary, it’s a good use of time to make it part of regular meetings with your leadership group.