By Jessica Lu
I have just finished “Trillion Dollar Coach – The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell,” about the famed, eponymous Silicon Valley coach, who lived from 1940-2016. Campbell coached Columbia University’s football team before going on to lead several Silicon Valley firms and eventually becoming a renowned Executive Coach.
Though Campbell was a low-key person, over $1 trillion in revenue has been gained by his “coachees,” including household names such as Steve Jobs; Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page; and Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, and Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg.
The book offers a “leadership playbook” and features numerous good leadership lessons, a few of which I’d like to discuss.
For starters, while your title makes you a manager, your subordinates make you a leader. Their approval determines whether you can become a leader.
The secret, meanwhile, is connection: Treat every team member as a whole person, listen to them sincerely, and ask for advice so that they feel highly valued.
A leader’s primary trait is to be a team coach. Be honest; develop operating discipline; stimulate a sense of winning, belonging and collaboration; and always believe your team can perform.
One of the hardest tasks as a leader, meanwhile, is to detect tension between team members, turn conflicts into win-win situations, ensure that the team is united, and consider the long-term success of the company.
Today, coaching is no longer a specialty, but a necessary skill in order to be a leader. The book argues that people who are helpful are more likely to succeed, while a manager’s success depends on whether the team can succeed. Many don’t spend too much time thinking about how to help others become better, but this tendency is at the core of every effective coach.