Leadership Thoughts from Late Great Detroit Pistons

NBA, Olympic coach Chuck Daly dies at 78

I grew up outside of Detroit during the Detroit Pistons “Bad Boys”
era so I spent a lot of time watching Chuck Daly, who just
passed away yesterday.

Daly had a reputation for being a coach and leader who could get
strong personalities to get along for a common goal — sounds like
the traits you’d want in a real leader in any type of organization.
For those who are primarily baseball fans, he was like a Joe Torre type, as
Daly got the superstars of the 1992 “Dream Team” to work together
to win an Olympic men’s basketball gold medal. He also got strong
personalities like Isiah Thomas and
Dennis
Rodman to work together for two consecutive NBA titles.

One quote from the Chuck Daly tribute pieces stood out at me and is
worth highlighting:

“It’s a players’ league. They allow you to coach them or they
don’t,” Daly once said. “Once they stop allowing you to
coach, you’re on your way out.”

Isn’t that always true — the followers choose their leader, or at
least they choose to be led. You might be “the boss”, a title
bestowed upon you, without being the real leader of the
organization. Sometimes the leader isn’t the boss (let’s say Isiah
Thomas as a player) and sometimes the boss isn’t a leader (look at
Thomas after retirement as a coach and executive).

Think of your organization — if you’re a boss, do your people
choose to let you lead? Or do they just tolerate and placate you?
If you’re not a boss, do you let your boss lead? Why or why
not?

I’m currently reading the book
The TWI Workbook: Essential Skills for Supervisors (with
CD)
and there’s a discussion of leadership in the section on “Job Relations”
training for supervisors (page 131). It says:

“The essence of leadership is to work with people in a
way that gets them to take charge or ownership of the requirements
of the work. Defined this way, a leader is a person who has
folloers, not simply a “boss” who issues orders about what to do,
by when, and how.”

Good leadership is good leadership, regardless of whether it comes
from the sports world or industry.

The news about Daly, reminded me of a story my dad had sent about
the recently-passed owner of the Pistons, Bill Davidson (who owned
the team from the 1970s through his death). Davidson was also
chairman of Guardian Industries, a glassmaker and auto
supplier.

Tackling the thorny world trade issues | Freep.com | Detroit Free
Press

Bob Kennedy, executive director of the
William Davidson
Institute at the University of Michigan, won’t ever forget
what happened when he blew one of
his bud­geted revenue goals by a whopping amount, like 50%, a
few years ago.

The late
Bill Davidson, the Detroit Pistons owner who had founded the
institute with a $30-million pledge in 1992— and could be
gruff as well as charitable — shocked
Kenne­dy with his reaction to the budget miss. “I like the fact
that you missed,” Kennedy recalls Davidson saying. “If
you give me a bunch of numbers that you always make, I might feel
like you’re sandbagging me.”

Davidson, who died last month, wanted his news straight
up. He was a clear­eyed realist who saw the world as it was and
acted accordingly.”

It seems that Dr. Deming might have appreciated that… missing
“the numbers” was something to be honest about (and then fix)
rather than something to lie about and cover up (which only leads
to bigger problems down the road).