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Be yourself. I am not Vince Lombardi; Vince Lombardi was not Bill Walsh. My style was my style, and it worked for me. Your style will work for you when you take advantage of your strengths and strive to overcome your weaknesses. You must be the best version of yourself that you can be; stay within the framework of your own personality and be authentic. If you’re faking it, you’ll be found out.
All of this is an escape mechanism—a method of distracting yourself from the tough work ahead.
“There’ll be plenty of time for pencils, parties, and socializing when I lose my job, because that’s what’s going to happen if I continue to avoid the hard and harsh realities of doing my job.”
an organization is crippled if it needs to ask the leader what to do every time a question arises.
If everything goes great when you’re around but slows or stops in its tracks when you’re not there, you are not fulfilling your responsibilities.
(my first-year salary as head coach and general manager in the National Football League was $160,000, probably the lowest in the league—and I had to fight for that).
After years of coaching, I knew that by the time our players went through the tunnel and under the goalposts onto the field, my inspirational words were history—forgotten.
Nevertheless, it’s easy to get caught up in or enamored of lofty titles, praise, and flattery as you subconsciously attempt to become the character others have created out of who you are. That character isn’t you, but it’s an addictive attraction if the plaques, awards, and commendations start rolling in. Believing your own press clippings—good or bad—is self-defeating. You are allowing others, oftentimes uninformed others, to tell you who you are.
Communication means people will disagree—strongly at times—but they must understand that disagreement should not fester.
Fourteen of the assistant coaches who worked with me at San Francisco went on to head coaching jobs in the NFL or at the college level.
(The previous season, in San Francisco, the Bears had lost to the 49ers 41-0. Immediately after the final gun, Mike Ditka, a tempestuous, in-your-face coach, had reacted to our cheering fans by hurling his gum into the stands on his way to the locker room. Of course, he got three hundred pieces of gum thrown right back at him. Somebody even filed assault charges for being hit by Ditka’s wad of gum. The Chicago media, of course, played this up in the days before our NFC championship game.)
Leadership, at its best, is exactly that: teaching skills, attitudes, and goals (yes, goals are both defined and taught) to individuals who are part of your organization.
You’re not necessarily born with it; you develop it, research it, thrive on learning as much about your subject as you possibly can. The greater your expertise, the greater your potential to teach, the stronger and more productive you can be as a leader.
“The more you know, the higher you go.”
Al Davis at Oakland (and by default, the great Sid Gillman under whom Al had served in San Diego with the Chargers);
Communication is the ability to organize and then successfully convey your informed thoughts.
The best teaching uses both forms of communication, word and deed.
Your enthusiasm becomes their enthusiasm; your lukewarm presentation becomes their lukewarm interest in what you’re offering.
Persistence is essential because knowledge is rarely imparted on the first attempt.
passion, expertise, communication, and persistence are the four essentials of good teaching and learning,
11. Remember Sun-tzu: “With more sophistication comes more control.” The more you work at refining your teaching—increasing its sophistication—the greater your control of the teaching (and learning) process.
Although before the pressure and huge expectations got built up, the 49ers’ experience in the first few years was thrilling too.
I suppose you could conclude that for me the process of getting to the top was much more gratifying in many ways than the process of trying to stay on top.
Looking back, perhaps the lesson I would draw is this: If you don’t love it, don’t do it. I loved it—teaching people how to reach in deep to fulfill their potential, how to become great. And when you do that with a group, you, as the leader, enjoy the thrill of creating a great team. For me it was like creating a work of art. Only instead of painting on a canvas, I had the great joy of creating in collaboration with others.
Starting day one as head coach and general manager of the San Francisco 49ers, Bill Walsh came in and started cleaning out the building of people—fired everybody that he could fire, like assistant coaches, staff, and office personnel. He couldn’t fire the players all at once, but he was quick to start getting rid of them, too, the ones who didn’t meet his performance or attitude standards.
Those staff meetings were really something, because it was apparent he knew exactly, precisely, what he wanted to do, which included exactly what he wanted us to do. And to make sure we did it, he gave us his big red binder playbook with all of his complex formations in it. But it wasn’t like any regular playbook I’d ever seen. He had gone out and had it printed up almost like a textbook; routes and X’s and O’s were neat and clean—professional, not hand drawn and messy. Nobody had done it like that before. That’s what characterized everything Bill Walsh did: professionalism, first class.
He didn’t like showboating or anything that suggested somebody was better than anybody else in his organization. Mutual respect among all employees was big for him, and boy, if he saw evidence to the contrary, he’d go off. One of his assistant coaches owned a Corvette with a personalized license plate that drew attention to himself—that this guy was a coach with the 49ers, which suggested, “I’m a big shot.” Right away Bill spotted it in our parking lot, and that night during our coaches’ meeting, he lit into it: “Somebody in this room has a red Corvette with a stupid license plate on it. I
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You were always on a short string, on the edge of your chair, because he kept you guessing. He could turn it on and turn it off at exactly the right times. We were nervous about getting too happy and even more nervous about getting down in the dumps, because we knew Bill would tolerate neither.
Bill would get incensed if you messed with his plays. He knew they would work, but only if they were done exactly right. That’s why it was so important to him when he began hiring his assistant coaches at San Francisco that we be good teachers. He wanted things taught properly—his offense, of course, but then the defense, the special teams, the staff responsibilities. I think he felt those plays he was designing were very special, like a new invention that was guaranteed to work, but they wouldn’t work unless the coaches were good teachers.
Bill would be there at practice with three-by-five cards and one of those little golf pencils in his back pocket. If he pulled out a three-by-five card and starting writing, you just hoped it wasn’t about something you’d done wrong, because he’d let you know about it that night.
After his fourth season, which was miserable, he instructed John McVay, vice president for football administration, to tell all of us coaches to go to the East-West Game and look for jobs. [Editor’s note: The East-West Game was an all-star game with top college players that drew a large group of coaches from NFL teams.] Why? Bill was intent on quitting, and that meant we’d probably get fired by his replacement. He changed his mind, but a lot of us were asking around about jobs at that game.
We had no money initially. What we had was an organizational philosophy, the internal culture I installed, which was first-class in its treatment and respect for people. From the first day I took over, we treated people right. More than money, that’s what made the San Francisco 49ers a first-class organization internally.
Some critics claimed the 49ers won Super Bowl championships by spending exorbitantly on salaries and perks. Those critics ignore the fact that we won our first Super Bowl championship with the lowest salaries of any team in the entire NFL. As mentioned, my own pay as head coach and general manager—typically two separate jobs—was $160,000, and I had to fight to get that, even though it was at the bottom end of the salary scale for head coaches in the league.
He knew that an organization is only as good as the people who work there and that the leader determines who works there. I came to appreciate and utilize this fact after an unusual situation developed soon after I joined San Francisco as head coach. Within hours, we began diligently looking for a new general manager—the guy largely responsible for determining “who works there.” Unfortunately, nobody we wanted wanted us. Miami’s George Young, Seattle’s Dick Mansberger, and Baltimore’s Ernie Accorsi were among those who perfunctorily turned me down when offered the job as 49er GM. It dawned on
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49ers headquarters at 711 Nevada Street in Redwood City, California.
1. A fundamental knowledge of the area he or she has been hired to manage.
2. A relatively high—but not manic—level of energy and enthusiasm and a personality that is upbeat, motivated, and animated.
3. The ability to discern talent in potential employees
4. An ability to communicate
5. Unconditional loyalty to both you and other staff members.
1. You must establish clear parameters for your staff regarding the overall method by which you expect things to be done.
2. Any philosophical differences that crop up must be identified and addressed by you in private meetings with the individual(s).
3. You must recognize that staff members may work in different ways, using approaches that are at variance with yours.
4. To ensure unanimity throughout the staff, make unannounced visits to various department meetings.
5. Don’t cede inordinate power or control to a staff member simply because you are relieved to have an experienced and proven performer come on board.
6. Sometimes a staff member may intentionally teach a philosophy that is at odds with your code of conduct, in the belief that it conforms to your philosophy.
7. Be alert for those staff members who seek to use their position to teach and express their personal beliefs.
8. Remember Mike Ditka’s comment on leadership after his Bears won a Super Bowl championship: “Personal contact is part of hands-on management. Go to the other guy’s office; tell him what you have in mind so there is no misunderstanding.”
More people are more familiar with losing than with winning. Consequently, losing is not that difficult to deal with, in the sense that we’ve all faced it, lived it, and are familiar with the fallout it can produce.
Repeat winners at the high end of competition are rare, because when success of any magnitude occurs, there is a disorienting change that we are unprepared for.
