The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership

by Bill Walsh

He stormed up to the driver and barked: “Fella, I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at the SOB who hired you.”

To ensure unanimity throughout the staff, make unannounced visits to various department meetings. You can lose elements of your team to a maverick staff member if you’re invisible long enough.

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. We have seen people lose heart, self-destruct, turn on one another, and become disloyal. We know the whole syndrome of losing, but leaders often don’t think very much about the other side of the coin—winning; especially winning big.

This response—being knocked off balance emotionally and mentally—is one of the fundamental reasons it is so difficult to continue winning; it’s true in business as in sports. 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. I, too, was somewhat thrown off by our first Super Bowl victory.

The second-richest man in America, Warren Buffett, says one of his biggest challenges is to help his top people—all wealthy beyond belief—stay interested enough to jump out of bed in the morning and work with all the enthusiasm they did when they were poor and just getting started.

When you reach a large goal or finally get to the top, the distractions and new assumptions can be dizzying. First comes heightened confidence, followed quickly by overconfidence, arrogance, and a sense that “we’ve mastered it; we’ve figured it out; we’re golden.” But the gold can tarnish quickly. Mastery requires endless remastery.

It is a process, not a destination.

Use the time immediately following success as an opportunity to make hard decisions, including elevation or demotion of individuals who contributed—or didn’t—to the victory. This window is brief. Use it.

I wanted our team to believe that we could win, but only if we worked hard.

While he was capable of being a leader under positive circumstances, he was not capable of doing it under losing circumstances. It takes extraordinary fortitude to stay with it when times are bad. Cedrick didn’t have it.

Guys like Ronnie and Roger aren’t found all over the place. Both exemplify the message of UCLA’s coach John Wooden: “I wanted players who had character, not players who were characters.”

Those comments were aimed specifically at the so-called bottom 20 percent of our team—the backups, “benchwarmers,” and special role players, those who didn’t see much action during the regular season. In a sports organization this is the group that often determines your fate—they make the difference between whether you win or lose.

When the bottom 20 percent is dissatisfied—doesn’t feel they’re a real part of your team, that is, appreciated—their comments, perspective, and reactions—their “bitching”—is seen, heard, and absorbed by those who are positive and productive.

Nobody would blame you for coasting the rest of this game, for throwing in the towel. And in fact, when you come back here in sixty minutes, only you will know if you did; only you will know if you let New Orleans continue this assault or if you stood your ground and fought back. Frankly, I care a lot more about how we lose than if we lose. Gentlemen, in the second half you’re going to find out something important; you’re about to find out who you are. And you may not like what you find.”

Your competitor must never look at you across the field, conference table, or anywhere else and conclude, “I not only beat you, I broke your spirit.” The dance of the doomed tells them they’ve broken your spirit. That message can hurt you the next time around. And almost always there is a next time around.

The most powerful way to do this is by having the courage to say, “I believe in you,” in whatever words and way are comfortable for you. These four words—or their equivalents—constitute the most inspirational message a leader can convey.

And always keep this in mind: Nobody will ever come back to you later and say “thank you” for expecting too little of them.

If your team is constantly working on adrenaline, in a crisis mode, running as hard as they can, they become vulnerable. When an emergency arises, when the competition suddenly presents an unexpected threat, your team has no next level to step up to, no reserves to draw on.

Positive results—winning—count most. But until those results come through your door, a heavy dose of documentation relating to what you’ve done and what you’re doing, planning to do, and hoping to do may buy you just enough extra time to actually do it.

Our goal in life was just to be pretty good. Bill’s goal in life was to convince us that we could be great. And he did; and we were. That’s why he was such a great leader.

The state of mind I could achieve as a game was about to begin was pure, so free of dissonance—it was just the best. The ritual created it. It was the gladiator mind-set, free of stress, distractions, and emotionalism, that got me ready for the competition and allowed me to work at my highest level.

While they were with us, we expected them to give us everything they had, but in turn, we gave them our recognition that they had the right to advance their own careers. Word got around that the 49ers treated people right.

4. Acknowledge the uniqueness of each employee and the need he or she has for a reasonable degree of job security and self-actualization. You don’t own him or her.

9. Establish a protocol for how members of the organization interact with one another. This is essential to preventing compartmentalization and “turf protection.” Let them know their first priority is to do their job; their second priority is to facilitate others in doing their jobs.

You want your team to push hard, to feel as if they will come up short without total effort. But total effort doesn’t mean total anxiety.

I said publicly he could miss the game because of it. Could he miss the game? Yes, it was a possibility, but an unlikely possibility. All I cared about was the Bengals reading the injury report about Freddie and wondering whether or not he was going to play.

Focus only on doing your best to maintain and improve your level of performance; concern yourself only with that which you can control, and you can’t control rumors.

Don’t Delay Delegating (Famous Last Words: “I’ll Do It Myself”)

However, it soon became evident that my abilities were no match for the destructive power of Henderson’s addiction.

Eventually, however, he overcame his addiction to drugs and alcohol and got his life back on track. That’s the biggest game Thomas Henderson ever won. I’m only sorry he couldn’t have achieved that victory while a member of the San Francisco 49ers.

From that point on, I focused my energies exclusively on creating a quality product, a team that was worth spending money to see. When that was achieved, we also achieved a ten-year waiting list to buy a 49ers’ season ticket.

Losing, however you define it, even the thought of losing, can become so psychologically crippling that winning offers little solace and no cause for celebration because you’ve imposed an internal accounting system on yourself that awards zero points for winning and minus points for losing. You can never get ahead on points. That’s exactly what happened to me.

When this happens, any kind of loss, mistake, or setback becomes very disturbing, even devastating, because you’ve attached your self-image to the results of the competition. Winning can become insidious for the same reason, that is, you allow the victory to begin determining your self-worth, how you feel about yourself.

Looking back, it was something I should not have allowed. I let him haul me over the coals in regard to my effort or performance when he had no basis for doing it. His only basis was that he owned the team, a pretty good basis, but not enough for me to let him excoriate me without significant cause in front of the team even once.

Looking back on it, I concluded that there are times when you must stand up for yourself even if the consequences include being fired. That’s easier said than done, as evidenced by the fact that I didn’t do it.

The pursuit of the prize had become an exercise in avoiding pain; the expectations had become unattainable; the behavior of our owner had become—on occasion—unacceptable; and the responsibilities I took on, coupled with the pressure I put on myself, were unmanageable. Or so it seemed.

“Poor bastard looked pretty beat up last time I saw him,” somebody says with a chuckle. Everybody nods. I didn’t want to be that “poor bastard” again.

And, of course, you must derive satisfaction and gratification from winning without letting it define your self-worth, just as you cannot allow defeat to define you as a person. There has to be a balance.

Had I been able to avoid the dead-end calculation of “zero points for winning,” I would have continued to coach the 49ers and, I believe, won additional Super Bowl championships. That is something that has never stopped eating at me.

Be very discreet about whom you confide in. Crying on somebody’s shoulder, if it’s the wrong “somebody,” can have negative repercussions.

In my early days, I did this too. I firmly believed that if I took care of my job the score would take care of itself.

But gradually I found it harder and harder to accept my concept that the “score will take care of itself.” I became consumed with how the score would take care of itself, whether it would be in a manner that resulted in victory for me.

I changed that completely when I became a head coach in charge of everything.

Even more, it was disgusting to see how people under stress can turn on one another and how those satellite and peripheral people will try to take credit for what you’ve done.

Also, it was unpleasant to know that doing a good job in the NFL wasn’t much different from doing a bad job. Both will get you fired; the latter just gets you fired sooner. You know you’re there as a coach temporarily, only while you’re very successful, only when you do a fantastic job. Then you learn that even a fantastic job is inadequate. The norm becomes the impossible, and when you don’t achieve the impossible, your head’s on the chopping block.

Nothing is more gratifying than creating something that you’re sure no one else has ever seen or thought of and having it succeed.

And of course there was the deep fulfillment of climbing the mountain, of going where few in my profession were able to go. Our first Super Bowl championship was profoundly meaningful and satisfying—thrilling beyond my ability to fully articulate. Thrilling. I miss all of that.

I’ve come to understand that, in some ways, my father’s life was almost Shakespearean, because what got him to the top professionally was his downfall personally;

Thus, he increasingly became driven by a simple but almost obsessive goal: to prove them all wrong. And he did.

This feeling of being discriminated against was part of the reason he created the Minority Coaches Fellowship Program while he was at San Francisco. He knew that smart, skilled black college coaches were not even being considered for head coaching jobs in the NFL because of race.