Personal Glory vs Team Success with 11 X NBA Championship Coach Phil Jackson
PHIL JACKSON, arguably the greatest coach in the history of the NBA. He is well known as the head coach of the Chicago Bulls from 1989-1998; during his tenure, Chicago won six NBA titles in nine years. His next team, the Los Angeles Lakers, won five NBA titles in ten years, from 2000 to 2010.
In an interview with DailyGood, he discusses the shift towards sacrificing personal glory for team success:
“Teams that are less talented but more selfless and group-oriented can have more success…. The Bulls were a very successful team because of that ability. And the Lakers, when I first started watching them in the late nineties, were not successful—even though they were very, very talented—because they couldn’t do that. You see, the real reason the Bulls won six NBA championships in nine years is that we plugged into the power of oneness instead of the power of one man. Sure, we had Michael Jordan, and you have to credit his talent. At the other end of the spectrum, if players 9, 10, 11, and 12 are unhappy because Michael takes twenty-five shots a game, their negativity is going to undermine everything. It doesn’t matter how good individual players are—they can’t compete with a team that is awake and aware and trusts each other.”
Phil Jackson explores the power of trust in his book, The Five Stages of Tribal Leadership. We look at Phil Jackson and his work with The Chicago Bulls in our Championship Teams program. Sporting teams provide a very strong metaphor for business due to the definitive ‘win-loss’ nature of their work. In many ways we play win loss scenarios as a team week in week out yet fail to measure it.
Championship Teams uses experiential learning and design thinking to highlight the importance of teamwork. The program is a full or half day and can be delivered anywhere in Perth or Western Australia.
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