The Greatest Respect You Can Give…

Recently, I was watching The Last Dance: the Netflix documentary that chronicles the 1998 Chicago Bulls and their quest to win a sixth NBA championship in eight years.

If you’re not familiar, the doc focuses on the 1998 season, for sure, but it goes much deeper than that. There are flashbacks throughout and asides that delve into everything from Dennis Rodman’s mental health to Scottie Pippen’s contract woes.

One section that stood out to me was the relationship between former head coach, Doug Collins, and his star player, Michael Jordan. Most of us know Jordan as either the greatest player of all time or someone who’s at the very top of the list.

He and Collins got along incredibly well. Collins loved coaching Jordan (obviously), but Jordan also loved playing for Collins despite Collins being very tough on Jordan.

In Collins’ words, “The greatest respect you can give a great player is to coach him and coach him hard.”

This is so opposite of what I often hear in the workplace. Leaders often leave their “rock stars” alone. They’ve “earned” not being coached as hard as other people on the team.

There is rationale here that makes some sense. If everyone is decent or even pretty good at their jobs, then there are fewer fires to put out. But what if instead of being okay with being okay, we coach our best to be even better? What if we work to create a team of superstars, of actual rock stars, who are so good that everyone on the team aspires to be like them?

If it’s good enough for the very best ever, it’s likely good enough for that middle manager you’ve been taking it easy on because they’ve been around for eleven years and do a mostly decent job.