What Phil Jackson, Bill Walsh, and My Best Bosses Taught Me About Power, Dignity, and Getting the Job Done.
I started out thinking that leadership was all about clutching a title and barking orders. You got the big chair, and suddenly you had to know everything and run the whole show.
The idea that control equals power was neat in theory, but it turned out to be exhausting and fundamentally incorrect. My real wake-up call didn’t come from a textbook; it was watching the great leaders I got to work with and two critical books from exceptional sports coaches that gave birth to my own Standard of Consistency.
You see, leadership is not just a job title; it’s a way of acting, sparked by people who know how to connect. It’s about three raw, human moves I’ve learned throughout my career: how to listen, build trust, and really show up for others.
The Zen of the Huddle: Learning the Power of Listening
The first fundamental shift in my thinking was the hardest: understanding that the guy who’s yelling the loudest is usually the one with the least to say. The real action, the real juice, is found in the quiet moments. The real power is in listening.
I was green. I once mistook the silence of a VP, a seriously good one, for being checked out, disinterested. I was wrong. What they were doing was the same quiet genius Phil Jackson pulled off with the Bulls. Jackson, the “Zen Master”, wasn’t dispensing constant commands in Sacred Hoops; he just created the space, the “Zen of the Huddle”, where the talent, the raw, beautiful potential, had to solve its own damned problems.
I brought a big strategy pitch to this VP once, ready to brawl, armed with spreadsheets and corporate lingo. Instead of arguing, they simply asked two or three simple, almost surgical questions and then just… went quiet. They weren’t waiting for their turn to jab; they were forcing us to pause and hear the quiet, reflective notes we hadn’t admitted were already living within the room.
It taught me that when you truly listen, you’re not just gathering information, you’re granting dignity and ownership of the problem. That’s where genuine commitment is born.
The Blueprint for Safety: Building Trust through Consistency
Listening is just the entry fee; trust is what keeps the whole damn building from crashing down. Bill Walsh opened my eyes to this. The man was an architect, not just of the San Francisco 49ers, but of a machine that operated on relentless precision. He wrote about it in The Score Takes Care of Itself, and it flipped everything I thought I knew.
Walsh didn’t just want to win, he was fanatical about his system. At first, it seemed like control freak city, but really, it was the opposite.
I had a manager like that. I admired the hell out of them. They had this obsessive focus on process and clear communication, not to micromanage, but to make it safe, predictably safe. Nothing was left to chance. No one had to play mental gymnastics to figure out the rules.
Trust, I learned, is just consistency dressed up in work boots. It’s not about being the showy genius in the room; it’s about being the one people can set their watches to. Hold a straight line on ethics and clarity, and you build the place where trust — and performance — flourish.
Walsh was right. Nail down the standards and the outcomes takes care of itself.
Beyond the Paycheck: Showing Up as a Whole Person
The deepest cut of all is showing up, no bullshit. It’s more than a job description; it’s seeing the human being in front of you.
Leaders like Jackson, Walsh, or the great managers I got to work with taught me that emotional footing is where real performance starts. Walsh stood by his guys off the field. He was a mentor, an advocate. The best managers I had did the same. They used their clout to push me forward, had my back when life threw a curveball, and knew how to sit through a tough talk without flinching.
Showing up flips leadership on its head — from “I pay you” to “I’ve got skin in your game.”
The real lightbulb moment? It wasn’t about learning a slicker way to manage. It was about a rawer, truer way to connect. Leadership isn’t a lone wolf act of barking orders. It’s a beautiful mess of listening hard, building strong, and showing up like you mean it.
Life is lived,
Willy