6 Leadership Lessons from the Worst Basketball Team Ever

Life's lessons may come from almost any direction or experience. Often when and where you least expect it. More than 30 years ago, I was part of a high school basketball team that may have been the world's worst. Well, I suppose many unsuccessful teams could lay (reluctant) claim to being the worst-ever, so let's dial it back to say that my experiences on that team added up to (a) being deeply enmeshed in a dysfunctional and destined-for-failure environment, and (b) learning some lessons that still resonate with me today as I do my best to provide effective leadership from a senior business position.

I don't want to make any particular individual feel blamed or persecuted in this post. In fact, I don't think the failures of the team could be blamed on any one person. Many had their hands in the debacle, including me. So, I'll keep many details vague, and look instead to causes and understanding, leading to lessons learned.

Some background: It was the late 1970s. Disco was dying, punk rock had almost arrived, basketball players still wore tight shorts and knee socks.

*NOT* the team I played on, but a representative of the style of the era

I played on a high school team from a small midwestern town. Our talent was basically average for the region, on paper we weren't any better or any worse than most of the teams we'd be playing through the season. We practiced hard, and we sincerely wanted to succeed. But we never came together as a team, there was no cohesion and little shared vision. Failure fed failure like fuel on a fire, and by season's end we'd managed to win only 3 out of 21 games. The rare wins were nail-biters, and most of the losses were blow-outs. We were bad. Really bad. And the thing is, we should not have been.

I look back on that season not with the anger and frustration I felt at the time, but through the lens of my graduate-level training in psychology and my years of experience in trying to provide leadership to teams of various sizes and character. With the advantage of hindsight, even that season of humiliating defeat and struggle was able to provide me with a few building blocks for professional success.

For me, there are six primary takeaways:

Lesson 1: Even Bad Leaders are Leading (Unfortunately)
Like it or not, authority is often bestowed on those who perhaps don't deserve it. In the team's case, the head coach was inexperienced and insecure, which led him to a posture of defensiveness and resistance. In pop psychology, they call this the Napolean Complex. To compensate for feelings of inadequacy, the individual attempts to control everything and comes across as arrogant and close-minded. Hardly inspiring. The poisoned atmosphere around the team allowed no room for input except from sycophants (a group that included several meddling fathers pushing for playing time for their sons). The decision-making by the coach was wildly inconsistent and unpredictable. The team was at the mercy of an anxious tyrant, and pleas to the athletic director led nowhere. The was no real trust, no room for independence or creativity, no empowerment, and swift vindictiveness could happen at any moment. Case in point: early in the season, we were playing against a good team and actually keeping the score close. Midway through the second quarter, the opponent went on a 10-0 run, and the game was about to get out of hand. I was sitting on the bench, just feeling the momentum draining away. I caught the eye of our point guard, and gestured for him to call a timeout. Right thing to do, correct? Wrong. Coach saw me do it. I was benched for the next three games, with no discussion or explanation. Punished for trying to help, the punishment made more severe because the leader knew he should have been the one making that call. Lesson? Authority can be the source of failure when it's ill-placed, and even a great leader must be open to input from the front lines.

Lesson 2: A Failure to Keep Things Simple Leads to More Failure
As the season progressed and the losses mounted, frustration and desperation set in across the team. If I recall correctly, we lost our first 8 games and frankly the scores weren't even close. Our leaders' response to this was to continually install a brand new offense, with increasingly complex, multi-step plays requiring greater degrees of precision and timing. As you can probably guess, things got worse. We never got back to fundamentals at any point during the season; instead, every week was a new surprise with some sophisticated new scheme gleaned from a best-selling sports book. We never knew what to expect, and during games our own players were often confused and overwhelmed trying to remember what to do. As we failed to score on what seemed to be every trip down the floor, the coach got more and more angry and chided us loudly for not executing his brilliant plans. Lesson? Effective leadership is not about making things extra-fancy or complex, and it's certainly not about changing everything in a desperate attempt to find something that works. Start with the basics. Build a foundation. Find a small success, and build on it. Then repeat.

Lesson 3: Incremental Success Should NOT be Overly-celebrated
This point is nuanced, but I might boil it down to "winning one battle does not win the war". After 8 consecutive losses, the team finally secured its first win. It wasn't easy, it was a close game that came right down to the wire, but a raucous home crowd helped the team stay energized and eke out a win. As the final horn sounded, the coach went nuts, leaping all over the floor and whooping it up, as if we'd just won a major championship. The message? That's the best we'll ever do. Now, I'm not saying we shouldn't acknowledge and be proud of each accomplishment along the way; in fact, to do so is to lay down the path toward greater success. The nuanced point here is that wildly celebrating 1 win and 8 losses communicates the wrong message. Even as a teenager, I instinctively knew this. During the coaches leaping and shouting display, I was quietly shaking hands and patting the backs of two of our players who had done well. The next thing I knew, the coach had me by the back of my jersey, and yanked me into his office, slamming the door. He lit into me for "not being happy for the team". I was a bit shell-shocked, and mumbled something about being happy for the team but hoping for more now that we'd finally gotten into the win column. Result: I was benched for the next 2 games (big surprise). Lesson? Each success is one step on a larger journey toward a much greater accomplishment. Be happy and proud together at each success, but save the confetti and champagne for the big win.

Lesson 4: No Team Means No Success
I suppose there are some instances in life where one can truly solo to victory, succeeding only on one's own merits. Personally, I think those instances are pretty rare. Even in so-called individual sports like running, tennis, gymnastics, etc. there is almost always some sort of team involved: coaches, teammates, trainers, supportive parents, etc. When all are clicking, success is much more likely. On our basketball team, intense competition within the team was encouraged and praised. We were often required to play long, intense scrimmages against each other during practice. As we competed madly, throwing elbows and and even getting into a couple of fist fights, we grew to despise each other! It was a complete distraction from the real goal of winning actual games. It left us exhausted - I think we played harder against each other than we did against the competition. In addition, this approach resulted in the formation of cliques and rivalries within the team. When you can't rely on - and don't even like - your own teammates, it becomes every-man-for-himself during the real contests. Add in our complex offensive schemes that required multiple passes, and the recipe for selfishness was complete. We had several athletes who rarely threw a pass, instead they simply heaved up shots whenever they touched the ball, in an attempt to score points and stay in the line up. As you could predict, the losses mounted. Lesson? When personal politics and internal battles take top priority, a team will inevitably fail when faced with real world tasks. Teamwork must begin with the team; start with team-building and mutual trust, everything else can wait. Case in point: there was another team in our conference that regularly waxed the floor with us. They were no more talented across the board - another bunch of scrawny white kids like us - but their approach was as amazing as it was simple: all 12 players got in the game in a complete rotation, and all 12 absolutely played their hearts out, exhausting themselves for each other. As soon as one got winded, he'd signal for a replacement. They rotated in and out so frequently that it was hard to keep track of who you were supposed to be guarding. Playing against them felt like being in the middle of an angry swarm. They seemed to be everywhere, and they played with total abandon and unselfishness, sacrificing themselves for the team win, diving for loose balls, throwing crisp passes in an offense that literally only had 3 plays! You'd know what was coming, but they executed it so fast and so well that you still couldn't stop them. And they shellacked us by double digits every time we played.

Lesson 5: Wounds Heal Slowly
Once you've created damaged goods, it's very hard to repair them. The players that came out of that program were scarred. They'd learned to be selfish, not to trust teammates, and to be extremely wary of leaders. They'd also learned that speaking up with one's own ideas will put you on the bench, so better to stay quiet and keep in the game, even on a losing team. In a sense, the entire program became scarred: its reputation and tradition became steeped in a environment of in-fighting, rival cliques, and the bitterness of losing. It took years for the program to get back to winning, and it took a total shake up at the top to enable that to happen: new coach, new athletic director, new approach. We players stayed angry about that season for years. There were just so many missed opportunities, and a sense of failure and embarrassment. To top it all off, those cliques stayed in place. There were no jovial reunions, no laughing off a tough season, no decompression and forgiveness. Just lots of mutual frustration and blame. Losing begets losing, and it's very hard to break the cycle. Lesson? An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. Set things up the right way, build a strong foundation and a team that is cohesive, then the rough sailing can be dealt with together. Otherwise, drowning is more likely for everyone.

Lesson 6: Managing Up
In this last lesson, I want to focus on my own failures as part of that under-performing team. Looking back, I can see that I was more a part of the problem than a part of the solution. Like everyone else, I let frustration rule, and participated whole-heartedly in the divisiveness and talking-behind-people's-backs behavior that was rampant. I thought that I was trying to "manage up" by making suggestions to the coach, particularly around simplifying the offense and increasing player rotations - but I made these suggestions loudly and in front of the entire team. That is not an effective way to manage up. Unsurprisingly, he heard my suggestions as personal attacks on his power and authority, and thus not only ignored the advice but also punished me for having shared it in the first place. There could have been a better way. What if I had taken one big step back and let go of my anger and replaced it with curiosity? The coach must have felt embattled, criticized from all angles: above, below, sideways, in the press. He needed allies, not critics. Part of managing up is finding common ground, a shared set of principles. I have no doubt that the coach wanted to win basketball games. He wasn't failing on purpose! I could have worked much harder to enable his success. This would have involved private meetings, and making sure to give him credit for any kind of improvement. Unselfishness. Leading by example, particularly by building bridges between the cliques, something I was actually fairly good at doing. Lesson? Leadership depends as much on those being led as it does on authority and position.

Lessons Applied
More than 30 years later, these six lessons continue to inform my approach as a leader and my management practices. Here's how:
Lesson 1: Listen. Encourage the team to share insights and input. Everyone on the team must be involved and feel ownership of the strategic direction and even the determination of workload. Effective leadership is less about herding and more about supporting.
Lesson 2: When stress inevitably arises, simplify. Step back and ask, "Okay, what are we trying to accomplish here?" Break the complex down into achievable steps and move forward.
Lesson 3: Praise must match achievement. Spread gratitude and credit widely, but never lose sight of the really big goals. I much prefer "We are on our way!" over "We did it! Hooray!". Keep one eye on the horizon while still patting everyone on the back along the journey.
Lesson 4: A strong team will overcome great odds, a weak team will fail. Creating and nurturing a strong team involves many aspects, perhaps I'll write about that later. We must concentrate on that team first and foremost, all other priorities take a back seat. Want everyone to work really hard? Make them part of a team of smart people that has a clear mandate, is mutually-supportive, is given credit, and is motivated to perform.
Lesson 5: Build nothing until the foundation is in place. Once the course has been set, it takes a lot of energy to change it, so it's vitally important to start in the right direction.
Lesson 6: Everyone contributes to the success of the team. Make that clear, reward those who contribute in whatever way they can, and don't get caught up in pettiness and taking everything personally. Want others to recognize your contributions? Then be very quick to credit everyone on the team.