The Score Takes Care of Itself (25 page)

On the other hand, I’ve known people who played poorly or not at all because some distant relative they hardly knew had died months earlier and it was still on their mind; they couldn’t get over it, couldn’t perform. They allowed themselves an excuse for poor performance. Character was at the core of both kinds of responses.

My point is that the Otto Grahams of this world are hard to find. The other kind are all over the place. 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.”

Of course, sometimes you get both. Jack “Hacksaw” Reynolds, who played such an important role in our first Super Bowl year, was a tremendous competitor with character. He also
was
a character. On many occasions, before games, he would put on his San Francisco 49ers uniform at his house, smear the eye black under his eyes, and call a cab to take him to the game. He would arrive at Candlestick Park ready to go, in full uniform, including cleats! And then Jack Reynolds would deliver the goods out on the field.

You go nowhere without character. Character is essential to individuals, and their cumulative character is the backbone of your winning team.

Don’t let anybody tell you that a big ego is a bad thing. Tiger Woods, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Cal Ripken Jr. have lots of ego, and so does anyone anywhere who is dedicated to taking his or her talent as far as it will go. I’ve got a big ego too.

Here’s what a big ego is: pride, self-confidence, self-esteem, self-assurance
.
Ego is a powerful and productive engine. In fact, without a healthy ego you’ve got a big problem.

Egotism
is something else entirely. It’s an ego that’s been inflated like a hot-air balloon—arrogance that results from your own perceived skill, power, or position. You become increasingly self-important, self-centered, and selfish, just as a hot-air balloon gets pumped with lots of hot air until it turns into some big, ponderous entity that’s slow, vulnerable, and easily destroyed.

Unfortunately, a strong, healthy ego often becomes egotism. When Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, fired his head coach Jimmy Johnson immediately following the team’s second consecutive Super Bowl victory, ego may have been replaced by egotism in one or both men. The consequences were ultimately devastating for the Cowboys and took years to repair.

In evaluating people, I prize ego. It often translates into a fierce desire to do their best and an inner confidence that stands them in good stead when things really get rough. Psychologists suggest that there is a strong link between ego and competitiveness. All the great performers I’ve ever coached had ego to spare.

However, when I sense ego turning into egotism, I sit down and talk with the individual to help him understand his problem, to recognize why he’s on the team, to see if we can’t get his perspective back in balance and minimize his inflated sense of value to the organization. Either the egotism goes away or the individual flaunting it does, because the damage a swaggering egotist can do to the organization always outweighs the good.

Have there been times when your own ego has turned unhealthy, been pumped up for various reasons into egotism? Have there been instances where you hurt yourself because you got caught up in your self-importance? Be careful. People can sense it, they can see it. When they do, your effectiveness is dramatically reduced. At times it can even be fatal. That’s why it’s worth monitoring in yourself and your staff.

While the dynamics within a professional football team are unique in many ways, the element of dealing with egotism, arrogance, and the self-styled big shots is perhaps similar profession to profession.

In football, if your team’s any good, what you have in the locker room is a superstar or two, along with a few people who have immense egos but aren’t superstars, perhaps are not even very good, just adequate. Peer pressure is one way for dealing with the egotists—maybe the best way—but the leader ultimately is the one who has to control the situation. If I talked enough about “professionalism,” how we carried ourselves and performed, how we
interacted
and respected one another, the huge egos were sometimes embarrassed out of their behavior because they understood that they were out of whack with the rest of the team.

Most of those who strutted around were the less intelligent players. And being less intelligent, they couldn’t understand my message and ended up being isolated by their teammates—ostracized to one degree or another. That’s the single best way, the most effective corrective method, because almost everyone seeks some peer approval or acceptance. One way or another, however you do it, you as a leader must recognize and remedy the egotists within your organization before they can damage what you’ve built.

At the beginning of each year’s training camp, I made the following promise to our team: “Every single one of you guys will have at least one chance to win a game for us. I ask you to prepare for that opportunity with the attitude that it’s a certainty, not a possibility. Prepare and be ready when your time comes, because it
will
come. Can you do that for me?”

When Joe Montana first heard me say this, he may have thought, “Is Bill crazy? That’s what I’m here for, to win games.” But of course, my statement wasn’t directed at Joe.

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. In business it may be a customer-service representative or another less prominent “player” who fails to address a problem due to lack of readiness or a feeling that his or her particular job doesn’t really mean that much in the big picture.

Future Hall of Fame players such as Steve Young, Jerry Rice, Roger Craig, and others with plenty of playing time didn’t need me to remind them to get physically, mentally, and emotionally ready for action. Rather, it was the bottom 20 percent who were more likely to feel overlooked, unimportant, and unattached to our organization.

Additionally, when they did play it was often in a physically dangerous situation such as a kickoff return, the football version of being a kamikaze pilot, where your career can end suddenly with an injury. They risk life and limb and yet can often feel unappreciated.

While these employees may have a limited role, in just one play they can destroy the efforts of everyone else; their impact, though limited, can be calamitous. Or they can save the game.

Members of this group can become a serious distraction and liability, because as their attitude worsens, their commitment wavers and their carping increases. 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.

For reasons I’ve never quite figured out, the bitching of the bottom 20 percent often overshadows the positive enthusiasm of the other 80 percent. I always thought it should be the other way around, but it isn’t. The whiners seem to have a disproportionate impact. Thus the need for my “be ready to win a game for us” speech at the start of each training camp, which attempted to give those who might come to feel disenfranchised a reason to stay plugged in, positive, and ready to perform. And this was only the start.

I was conscientious in repeating that message privately through the season and acknowledging them publicly; talking about their roles and their potential impact in the future; working to keep them feeling that their contribution to the team was important (because it was very important); working hard to ensure that they were integrated and assimilated into everything we did so they didn’t feel left out or part of a second tier on the team. If I noticed the same groups always sitting together at lunch or dinner, I would have the assistant coaches start mixing them around so that people got more familiar with one another. This also meant there was less likelihood of the same little group of complainers sitting together and adding members.

During team meetings I would often give a one-hundred-dollar bill as a reward to a role player who had made a big contribution in the previous game. It was another chance for them to be recognized by me in front of the whole squad, for me to give them ownership in the organization’s results. While coaching at Stanford University, I instituted a “12th Man Award,” which, of course, didn’t involve money, but did acknowledge publicly the effort being made by those who were less visible. I wanted them to know they were an essential part of the success of the team and, as such, should focus and train for the moment they would have a chance to make a big play. I strove to avoid having a “second tier” of lower-class players or staff members.

A leader who ignores this element of the organization—the “bottom 20 percent,” those who play subsidiary or special roles—is asking for trouble. When these individuals begin to feel extraneous, their discontent can spread through your entire organization just like a cancer spreads through a body.

Be conscientious in evaluating the effectiveness of the steps you take in connecting the role players on your team to the team itself. Helping them understand that they make a difference can be the difference in making it to the top.

On the steppes of Africa, a “dance of death” occurs when a wildebeest is run into exhaustion by a lion. Waiting to be killed as the lion circles, the wildebeest meekly submits to its fate—head drooping, shoulders slumped, eyes glazed over. It is the posture of the doomed, the same look you often see in competitors in sports and business who have given up after deciding that failure is inevitable, their competitor unbeatable.

During my ten years as head coach of the 49ers, we won more than our share of division, conference, and Super Bowl games; we also
lost
sixty-three games. During some of those defeats, the dance of the doomed could be clearly seen on the faces of some 49er players, even by fans in the upper decks of a stadium. And certainly by our opponent right across from us on the field.

On those occasions I would say to the team in various ways, “Fellas, I guess we’re gonna lose today. How do you want to do it?” They knew what I meant. I was asking them to stand up and fight and if they lost, at least to lose with dignity.

The impact this can have was demonstrated in an amazing comeback against New Orleans when we trailed at the half, 35-7. It came during that stretch in our second season when we had just lost seven out of nine games and were trying to pull out of the death spiral our season had become. As we ran off the field at the half, 49er fans let us know how disgusted they were with us, booing disdainfully and hurling paper cups and debris down on our heads.

In the locker room my comments were honest in describing what was at stake, and it wasn’t the final score: “Some of you may think we have already lost this game,” I began. “You might be right. We may lose this afternoon, and if we do, I can live with it. This is only a football game. However, if we go down, you must decide how you want it to happen. How do you want to go down? 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.”

That’s all I said. No rah-rah speech along the lines of “It’s never over ’til it’s over!” No angry shouting about lack of effort or stupid mistakes; no threats. I simply pointed out that we had arrived at an important threshold of discovery—that moment when you find out what you’re made of.

When I finished my brief comments, there was complete silence. We looked at one another—Dwight Clark, Freddie Solomon, Lenvil Elliott, Earl Cooper, Randy Cross, Keena Turner, Joe Montana, Dan Bunz, and all the others—in a way that probably happens in the military before the battle; you’re looking into one another’s competitive souls.

I turned and left the room while our assistant coaches gathered with their own units to go over changes to be made in the second half. Those tactical changes were not significant. The big change had to be in their attitude.

What I had attempted to do was remind our guys of the Standard of Performance that I had been teaching from the day I arrived. Among the multitude of rules, concepts, and prescribed attitudes it embraced was the matter of poise: Even in the worst circumstance (and this was pretty close to being the worst), do not unravel mentally or emotionally; continue to fight and execute well, even if the cause appears to be lost; act like professionals.

“Who are you?” I asked them. I wanted to know; in the second half I found out. The 49ers outscored the Saints 28-0 and won the game in overtime on Ray Wersching’s field goal, 38-35. At the time, it was considered the greatest comeback in the history of NFL football. And it was not a fluke. Our team had resisted the temptation to perform the dance of the doomed.

The second half of the game demonstrated to me that the values, rules, and ideals I had been inculcating for the previous eighteen months—the Standard of Performance—were beginning to sink into the consciousness of the team, defining us to the core.

Among other things, I had taught players—those who needed to be taught—to comport themselves in a manner that demonstrated pride, poise, and a determination to never, ever quit, even if we trailed by a hundred points.