The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership

by Bill Walsh

In your own professional activities, remember that a reputation for fair play—treating people right—can be a big part of a potential employee’s decision to join you or a current and valued employee’s desire to remain.

The little stunt went to my understanding that in a crucible of pressure a safety valve is valuable, something that will release tension. And I could see that the pressure immediately reduced in the 49ers as they got off the buses.

Needed this for sauer

If you care about how you’re perceived by others, including the public, it’s good to remember the following: Criticism—both deserved and undeserved—is part of the territory when you’re the one calling the shots. Ignore the undeserved; learn from the deserved; lick your wounds and move on. Sometimes you can’t have the last word.

Either way, you are putting yourself on a slippery slope when you start believing that the outcome of your effort represents or embodies who you really are as a person—what your value as a person is. I speak from personal experience.

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.

Generali

Football coaches, just like executives who push themselves to the brink and beyond, often have no support system and become isolated from family, friends, and normal interactions. I’ve described it as being in a submarine, submerged and cut off from the human race.

Coaches need coaches

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. You can’t put yourself in a smaller and smaller box where there’s only the infliction or avoidance of pain—a personal torture chamber.

I hired them, added to their expertise, and then had trouble turning some of them—especially on the offensive side of the game—fully loose to do their jobs. I was like a man dying of thirst who was sitting on the edge of a mountain stream. I denied myself what was available.

Good analogy