Was Michael Jordan a great leader? Leadership lessons for corporate athletes
How many would argue against Michael Jordan being called one of the greatest basketball players, the world has ever seen? Not that many I assume. There is also very little doubt that he continues to inspire people from across the world. As someone who is passionate about the art and science of leadership, I am aware that an individual's capability, character and commitment play an important role in inspiring followership. Is it sufficient to be called a great leader though?
Having recently watched ‘The Last Dance’, a documentary series about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls’ championship runs between 1984 and 1998, I was brought back in time to sweet childhood memories of sneaking into my older brother’s room, and being glued to a tiny TV, watching many of those NBA games live – which in Frankfurt unfortunately quite often meant 1 am. Just as back then, I was amazed at his legend and prowess, but having since developed a strong interest in behavioral psychology over the years, my attention was drawn to the question of Jordan’s leadership. More specifically, I wondered whether his behaviours on and off the court were translatable to the corporate world and whether we can extract any important leadership lessons from them.
Was Michael Jordan a great leader? In order to answer this question, let's evaluate Michael Jordan’s effectiveness as a leader against 5 different criteria: (1) Success & Winning (2) Vision & Strategy (3) Legacy & Succession (4) Authentic Leadership (5) Situational Leadership
1 - SUCCESS & WINNING
Let’s start with an obvious one. Success, winning and perceived effective leadership go hand in hand. Regardless of whether you’re a leader in the corporate world or in the world of sports, if you can’t score successes and bring home expected wins, you are not likely to be regarded as a great leader. This criterion is as well one of the easiest to measure in business through KPIs and OKRs.
In this category, Jordan is hard to beat as he earned six world championships and numerous individual and team records during his tenure with the Chicago Bulls. Jordan also gained the respect of players within and outside of his team quite early on - during his first year in the NBA as a rookie, he not only became the league’s ‘Rookie of the Year’ but also became the only rookie in NBA history to lead a team in four statistics, i.e. points, assists, rebounds and steals.
Leadership Lesson - Identify & Score Quick Wins
A survey of 5,400 leaders and their managers explored sponsored by the Corporate Executive Board discovered that new leaders who were rated as high performers had managed to secure at least one important quick win, early on when taking on their new position.
To successfully transition as a new leader, you need to be able to positively position yourself in multiple directions. When positioning upwards, scoring a big win early on will make decision makers who have put their trust in you and taken a risk to bring you in look good and will help them justify their decision. When positioning sideways, quick wins will reassure peers and colleagues at the same level that you are their equal. Finally, when positioning downwards, you instill trust and confidence in your team members and direct reports and show them that they are being led by a capable leader through early results.
2 - VISION & STRATEGY
Being able to set a compelling vision, create meaningful strategies to reach set goals, and inspire people to execute on the strategy are cornerstone qualities of a great leader.
Michael Jordan’s vision as a player was clear and straightforward. In an interview in 2019, he recalled, “When I was playing, my vision and my tunnel vision was my craft. I was a professional basketball player. And I tried to do that the best I could.” He wanted to become the best basketball player he could be and win as many championships as possible.
While this vision was certainly shared by many of his peers in the league and inspired others to do the same, the limitation of Jordan’s vision was that it was centred around his personal goal and aspirations and did not necessarily encompass the wider team and organisation. As a result, his vision was not easily transferable to another leader or period.
Leadership Lesson - Pulse check your vision & spend more time on envisioning
In a study conducted by the Harvard Business Review, tens of thousands of people were asked what they admired most in a leader. ‘Forward-looking’ came in at the second-highest rated quality, i.e. being able to set a vision and a strategy to achieve the vision.
However, it seems to be a development area for most leaders as this is not something one often needs to exhibit during the bulk of early experience in non-leadership positions. It is estimated that overall, leaders typically spent only 3% of their time on envisioning and enlisting people in a shared view of the future.
Moreover, Gallup’s ‘How Millenials Want to Work and Live’ report from 2016 found that 60 percent of Millenials do not feel a strong connection to their organisation’s vision. One of the reasons is that more often than not the vision and values of businesses are treated as static and historic documents that are supposed to stand the test of time and only live on the office walls they are plastered on. Rarely are they allowed to evolve, and many do not have a solid plan in place to truly embed them.
The idea is certainly not to change the corporate values at every month’s end. However, it is important to regularly pulse check the level of connectedness between the vision, corporate culture, values and people, especially during these VUCA times (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) we currently live in.
3 - LEGACY & SUCCESSION
Legacy
A leaders’ greatness should not only be measured by what they achieved during the time they were active but also their subsequent impact on the franchise they represented, the corporation they worked for or people in general. In terms of legacy, one could argue, Michael Jordan still touches the heart and minds of individuals from all walks of life and from around the world. To this day, his relentless pursuit for excellence and success continues to inspire people to strive and become the best version of themselves.
On the other hand, if we put on the same lens as Jim Collins did in his book ‘From Good to Great’ to evaluate leaders that went from good to great, then we have to also look at the success of the Chicago Bulls team in general, after Jordan departed them. Since Jordan left, and throughout the last 22 years, the Bulls have not won a single NBA title and in fact have not even made it to the championship finals. It would be unfair to put all the accountability on Jordan as a player, and certainly his legacy has lived on in other ways, but it is a point to consider when looking at leadership.
Leadership Lesson - Be clear on what you would like your legacy to be
One aspect that most leaders fail to spend any time and energy on is to visualise what their legacy and achievement should look like. Writing down how one would like to be remembered after retiring is a useful exercise and starting point. This should also include specific achievements that you and others value. The more specific and vivid, the better. Overall, legacy building should take the form of striving to ensure the long-term viability of the business and leaving it more powerful, productive, and profitable than it was before.
Succession
Without doubt, a great leader should spend a large amount of their time identifying, selecting, growing and grooming successors and building a talent pipeline to ensure the team is left with sufficient bench strength for the future. Jordan’s single-mindedness is a good example of how signature strengths can easily turn into overplayed strengths or even derailers. During his active career, Jordan’s personal goal was to become the best basketball player in the history of the sport. This goal however, did not leave him with a lot of drive and desire to mentor others and develop talent beyond what was necessary to win games with him.
One exception was Kobe Bryant, whose premature passing saddened the entire world at the beginning of 2019. He was the closest there was to a successor to Jordan and their relationship was the only evident example of Jordan acting as a mentor. In numerous interviews, both had spoken of how Jordan was willing to help and coach his ‘younger brother’ day and night, with Kobe sometimes even calling him at 3 am to gain his advice.
Leadership Lesson - Assess for readiness, evaluate bench strength & build a talent pipeline
“Succession planning and leadership development are natural allies because they share a vital and fundamental goal: getting the right skills in the right place”. Interestingly, businesses do not typically excel at preparing their people for leadership positions. Many would benefit from investing more time and energy in designing business simulations that mirror the critical situations in which a leader needs to be effective at their corporation and run mock assessments of these simulations to assess readiness and prepare future leaders through feedback and individual development plans for target roles.
In a similar vein, few managers are being provided with manager training and instead are expected to jump the large bridge between being an individual contributor and manager by themselves. In more technical functions there is often a problem with employees being rewarded with promotions for the individual achievements rather than their capability, character or commitment, and overall potential to become managers. This is a result of a one-dimensional career pathing model in which the next level after being a functional expert is to become a manager rather than tailoring models around people’s strengths and aspirations.
Therefore, for every leader, it is also crucial to conduct a talent audit of their team. Without understanding the signature strengths and key development areas of team members and without having an evaluation of readiness levels for the next target roles, it is impossible to create a solid talent and succession pipeline or decide on a buy-versus-build strategy for talent.
4 - AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP
Authentic leadership consists of being a value-driven, genuine and consequently inspirational leader. Remember the study that identified ‘forward-looking’ being the second highest rated quality people value most in a leader? Well, ‘honesty’ took the top spot and is regarded as the number one requirement for leaders. Leaders who act with integrity and treat people fairly and in a caring way increase the engagement and goodwill of their people.
Whilst Jordan comes across as being an authentic leader which is pivotal in inspiring followership, doubts have been raised about his level of absolute truthfulness on a couple of occasions and especially after ‘The Last Dance’ documentary aired. A couple of the stories he has told have been refuted. He himself admitted that he had made up one story to channel his own competitive fire in which he had claimed a rival player had mocked him after they lost a match against them which then inspired him and his team mates to thrash that team and annihilate that player in the next game.
Work ethic is another important factor relating to being perceived as a value driven and inspirational leader. A study found that people are more engaged if they work for a manager who is working at least as much as they are.
Michael Jordan is hard to match in this category. Jordan’s former coach Phil Jackson, often spoke with admiration of Jordan’s drive and desire to improve every day in practice. He would arrive first, leave last and work the hardest while pushing himself even harder whenever things got more challenging. His hunger, thirst and work ethic did not diminish even after he had reached the throne numerous times and inspired his team mates to go the extra mile as well.
Leadership Lesson - Make authentic leadership your North Pole
Regardless of how brilliant you are as a leader and how versed you are technically, if people regard you as dishonest they might admire your achievements but not yourself as a person and leader. The reasons they will continue to follow you then largely depend on your technical prowess and the belief that you can lead them to success. On the other hand, people will more readily follow an authentic leader through hardship and hard times and continue to be engaged while facing tough challenges and adversity.
However, leaders often face an internal battle within themselves as a person and as a leader. Authentic leadership occurs when these two mindsets and personas merge into one collective identity and when one simply stays true to the values one holds and the beliefs one possesses while being able to sincerely communicate them to others.
5 - SITUATIONAL LEADERSHIP
If we were to take a quote from Jordan to sum up his leadership style, it would be this: “I’m going to ridicule you […] If you don’t get on the same level, then it’s going to be hell for you.” In short, it was an autocratic and authoritative leadership style through which he pushed others to success, whether they wanted it or not. His former teammate, Will Purdue, recalls the impact of his style, stating: “Let's not get it wrong, he was a jerk. He crossed the line numerous times, but, as time goes on, you think back about what he was actually trying to accomplish and you're like: Yeah, he was a hell of a team-mate.”
One of the benefits of this leadership style is that it creates focused targets for everyone and it increases the speed of decision making. One of the major drawbacks of this style is that it can lead to burnout on both the leader and the team’s side which was also evident during the last and sixth championship year the Bulls team went through. Also, one of the primary reasons why this leadership style tends to work only in the short- but not long-term is that it is entirely dependent upon the skills and capabilities of its leader.
Once the leader departs, the team is often incapable to perform because the gap that is left by the leader is too large to fill. This is exactly what happened after Jordan left and for that reason, as aforementioned succession planning and building a pipeline of talent becomes even more important when the corporate culture is a more autocratic one.
50 years ago, psychologists John French and Bertram Raven identified what makes some leaders influence us and why we are to accept their power. They came up with different power bases that leaders can utilise to get the best from their people. There are legitimate, reward, expert, referent, coercive and informational power bases. In a nutshell, the more power bases one has at their disposal, the more influential one becomes.
Jordan for example mostly used only one power base throughout his career, which is the expert one and the one that is based on a person’s high levels of skill, knowledge and competence in a particular field. In other words, his team members readily accepted him as a leader because he was the very best in what he did. He also used the referent power base which involves being able to influence others through positive personal connections and can be activated when one person identifies and likes the other person in some way.
Leadership Lesson - Build and deploy a repertoire of different leadership styles
A great leader does not expect their followers to adapt to them but instead has a repertoire of different leadership styles at their repertoire and knows when to activate one over the other and what works best with each team member rather than using the same approach with everyone. In addition, a great leader is aware of the different power circles and knows how to build and use them in different scenarios.
CONCLUSION
One important factor that we have left out is that exactly like Jon Snow, Michael Jordan never openly spoke about a desire to be a leader. His passion was to become the world’s best basketball player and to win as many championships as possible. He never declared that his personal aspiration was to lead. He probably realised though that in order to achieve his personal goals there was no choice but to take on the mantle of the leader of his team and drive everyone to success.
Taking everything into consideration, would you say that Michael Jordan was a great leader? I would say the things that we can learn from him far outweigh what he could have done differently and one of his biggest strengths was his mindset towards continuous learning and development:
"I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying. I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. If you're trying to achieve, there will be roadblocks. I've had them; everybody has had them. But obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it." — Michael Jordan