Trillion Dollar Coach Quotes

“Bill looked for four characteristics in people. The person has to be smart, not necessarily academically but more from the standpoint of being able to get up to speed quickly in different areas and then make connections. Bill called this the ability to make “far analogies.” The person has to work hard, and has to have high integrity. Finally, the person should have that hard-to-define characteristic: grit. The ability to get knocked down and have the passion and perseverance to get up and go at it again.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“ONLY COACH THE COACHABLE THE TRAITS THAT MAKE A PERSON COACHABLE INCLUDE HONESTY AND HUMILITY, THE WILLINGNESS TO PERSEVERE AND WORK HARD, AND A CONSTANT OPENNESS TO LEARNING.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“Bill liked to tell a story about when he was at Intuit and they started getting into banking products. They hired some product managers with banking experience. One day, Bill was at a meeting with one of those product managers, who presented his engineers with a list of features he wanted them to build. Bill told the poor product manager, if you ever tell an engineer at Intuit which features you want, I’m going to throw you out on the street. You tell them what problem the consumer has. You give them context on who the consumer is. Then let them figure out the features. They will provide you with a far better solution than you’ll ever get by telling them what to build.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“He believed in striving for the best idea, not consensus (“I hate consensus!” he would growl), intuitively understanding what numerous academic studies have shown: that the goal of consensus leads to “groupthink” and inferior decisions.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Handbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“ALWAYS BUILD COMMUNITIES BUILD COMMUNITIES INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF WORK. A PLACE IS MUCH STRONGER WHEN PEOPLE ARE CONNECTED.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“This is the power of coaching in general: the ability to offer a different perspective, one unaffected by being “in the game.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“Not what happened and who’s to blame, but what are we going to do about it?”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“When you listen to people, they feel valued. A 2003 study from Lund University in Sweden finds that “mundane, almost trivial” things like listening and chatting with employees are important aspects of successful leadership, because “people feel more respected, visible and less anonymous, and included in teamwork.”10 And a 2016 paper finds that this form of “respectful inquiry,” where the leader asks open questions and listens attentively to the response, is effective because it heightens the “follower’s” feelings of competence (feeling challenged and experiencing mastery), relatedness (feeling of belonging), and autonomy (feeling in control and having options). Those three factors are sort of the holy trinity of the self-determination theory of human motivation, originally developed by Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan.11”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“Bill believed that good leaders grow over time, that leadership accrues to them from their teams. He thought people who were curious and wanted to learn new things were best suited for this. There was no room in this formula for smart alecks and their hubris.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“Keep note of the times when they give up things, and when they are excited for someone else’s success. Sundar notes that “sometimes decisions come up and people have to give up things. I overindex on those signals when people give something up.* And also when someone is excited because something else is working well in the company. It isn’t related to them, but they are excited. I watch for that. Like when you see a player on the bench cheering for someone else on the team, like Steph Curry jumping up and down when Kevin Durant hits a big shot. You can’t fake that.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“There are people who are team players and really care about the company. When they speak up, it matters a lot to me because I know they are coming from the right place.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“BE CREATIVE. Your post-fifty years should be your most creative time. You have wisdom of experience and freedom to apply it where you want. Avoid metaphors such as you are on the “back nine.” This denigrates the impact you can have. DON’T BE A DILETTANTE. Don’t just do a portfolio of things. Whatever you get involved with, have accountability and consequence. Drive it. FIND PEOPLE WHO HAVE VITALITY. Surround yourself with them; engage with them. Often they will be younger. APPLY YOUR GIFTS. Figure out what you are uniquely good at, what sets you apart. And understand the things inside you that give you a sense of purpose. Then apply them. DON’T WASTE TIME WORRYING ABOUT THE FUTURE. Allow serendipity to play a role. Most of the turning points in life cannot be predicted or controlled.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“STRIVE TO WIN, BUT ALWAYS WIN RIGHT, WITH COMMITMENT, TEAMWORK, AND INTEGRITY.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“There is another issue with the largely cognitive approach to management, which we had big-time at Google. Smart, analytical people, especially ones steeped in computer science and mathematics as we were, will tend to assume that data and other empirical evidence can solve all problems. Quants or techies with this worldview tend to see the inherently messy, emotional tension that’s always present in teams of humans as inconvenient and irrational—an irritant that will surely be resolved in the course of a data-driven decision process. Of course, humans don’t always work that way. Things come up, tensions arise, and they don’t naturally go away. People do their best to avoid talking about these situations, because they’re awkward. Which makes it worse.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“Winning depends on having the best team, and the best teams include more women.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“Bill didn’t work the problem first, he worked the team. We didn’t talk about the problem analytically. We talked about the people on the team and if they could get it done.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“Coaching is no longer a specialty; you cannot be a good manager without being a good coach.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“People are the foundation of any company’s success. The primary job of each manager is to help people be more effective in their job and to grow and develop. We have great people who want to do well, are capable of doing great things, and come to work fired up to do them. Great people flourish in an environment that liberates and amplifies that energy. Managers create this environment through support, respect, and trust. Support means giving people the tools, information, training, and coaching they need to succeed. It means continuous effort to develop people’s skills. Great managers help people excel and grow. Respect means understanding people’s unique career goals and being sensitive to their life choices. It means helping people achieve these career goals in a way that’s consistent with the needs of the company. Trust means freeing people to do their jobs and to make decisions. It means knowing people want to do well and believing that they will.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“PEOPLE ARE MOST EFFECTIVE WHEN THEY CAN BE COMPLETELY THEMSELVES AND BRING THEIR FULL IDENTITY TO WORK.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“PICK THE RIGHT PLAYERS THE TOP CHARACTERISTICS TO LOOK FOR ARE SMARTS AND HEARTS: THE ABILITY TO LEARN FAST, A WILLINGNESS TO WORK HARD, INTEGRITY, GRIT, EMPATHY, AND A TEAM-FIRST ATTITUDE.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“Keep note of the times when they give up things, and when they are excited for someone else’s success.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“The ability to get knocked down and have the passion and perseverance to get up and go at it again.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“He looked for commitment, to the cause and not just to their own success. Team First! You need to find... people who put the company first...
But how do you know when you have found such a person? Keep note of the times when they give up things, and when they are excited for someone else's success. Sundar notes that "sometimes decisions come up and people have to give up things. I overindex [pay a lot of attention to] on those signals when people give something up. Also when someone is excited because something else is working well in the company. It isn't related to them but they are excited. I watch for that. Like when you see a player on the bench cheering for someone else on the team p117-18”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“WORDS ON A WHITEBOARD HAVE A STRUCTURE FOR 1:1S, AND TAKE THE TIME TO PREPARE FOR THEM, AS THEY ARE THE BEST WAY TO HELP PEOPLE BE MORE EFFECTIVE AND TO GROW.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Handbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“ABERRANT GENIUSES—HIGH-PERFORMING BUT DIFFICULT TEAM MEMBERS—SHOULD BE TOLERATED AND EVEN PROTECTED, AS LONG AS THEIR BEHAVIOR ISN’T UNETHICAL OR ABUSIVE AND THEIR VALUE OUTWEIGHS THE TOLL THEIR BEHAVIOR TAKES ON MANAGEMENT, COLLEAGUES, AND TEAMS.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“He was also great at email. The tendency today is to have cascading emails, a senior person sending something to her staff, who write their own version to their people, and so on. Bill always counseled us to have one email, straight from the senior person, and over the years he practically perfected the art of writing those messages.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Handbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“smarts, hard work, integrity, grit.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“If you’ve been blessed, be a blessing.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“we are always taught the value of “positive coaching,” of leading with praise and then following with constructive feedback.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

“What can’t be tolerated is when the aberrant genius continually puts him- or herself above the team.”
― Eric Schmidt, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell