Eleven Rings
Eleven rings stand for eleven titles Phil Jackson won with two NBA teams. In this book he shares his journey and the eleven basic principles of Mindful Leadership he has developed to transform disorganised teams into champions.
I don’t pretend to be an expert in leadership theory. But what I do know is that the art of transforming a group of young, ambitious individuals into an integrated championship team is not a mechanistic process. It’s a mysterious juggling act that requires not only a thorough knowledge of the time-honored laws of the game but also an open heart, a clear mind, and a deep curiosity about the ways of the human spirit. This book is about my journey to try to unravel that mystery.
11 Basic Principles of Mindful Leadership
1. LEAD FROM THE INSIDE OUT
Don’t try to catch up with others. Develop a system that is authentic to you.
The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. - JOSEPH CAMPBELL
The way you do anything is the way you do everything. - TOM WAITS
Leadership is an act of controlled improvisation.
To make your work meaningful, you need to align it with your true nature.
What I liked about basketball was how interconnected everything was. The game was a complex dance of moves and countermoves that made it much more alive than other sports I played. In addition, basketball demanded a high level of synergy. To succeed, you needed to rely upon everybody else on the floor, not just yourself. That gave the sport a certain transcendent beauty that I found deeply satisfying.
It’s virtually impossible for anyone to change unless he thoroughly accepts who he is. Nor can he develop successful relationships with others unless he can discover the meaning of his own experience.
2. BENCH THE EGO
The more I tried to exert power directly, the less powerful I became. I learned to dial back my ego and distribute power as widely as possible without surrendering final authority.
Leadership is not about forcing your will on others. It’s about mastering the art of letting go.
What I’ve learned over the years is that the most effective approach is to delegate authority as much as possible and to nurture everyone else’s leadership skills as well. When I’m able to do that, it not only builds team unity and allows others to grow but also—paradoxically—strengthens my role as leader.
Buddhist sages say that there’s only “a tenth of an inch of difference” between heaven and earth. And I think the same can be said about basketball. Winning a championship is a delicate balancing act, and there’s only so much you can accomplish by exerting your will. As a leader your job is to do everything in your power to create the perfect conditions for success by benching your ego and inspiring your team to play the game the right way. But at some point, you need to let go and turn yourself over to the basketball gods. The soul of success is surrendering to what is.
In The Tao of Leadership, John Heider stresses the importance of interfering as little as possible. “Rules reduce freedom and responsibility,” he writes. “Enforcement of rules is coercive and manipulative, which diminishes spontaneity and absorbs group energy. The more coercive you are, the more resistant the group will become.”
3. LET EACH PLAYER DISCOVER HIS OWN DESTINY
One thing I’ve learned as a coach is that you can’t force your will on people. If you want them to act differently, you need to inspire them to change themselves. My approach was always to relate to each player as a whole person, not just as a cog in the basketball machine. That meant pushing him to discover what distinct qualities he could bring to the game beyond taking shots and making passes.
My intention was to give the players the freedom to figure out how to fit themselves within the system, rather than dictating from on high what I wanted them to do. Some players felt uncomfortable because they’d never been given that kind of latitude before. Others felt completely liberated.
The essence of coaching is to get the players to wholeheartedly agree to being coached, then offer them a sense of their destiny as a team.
Much of my thinking on this subject was influenced by the work of Abraham Maslow, one of the founders of humanistic psychology who is best known for his theory of the hierarchy of needs. Maslow believed that the highest human need is to achieve “self-actualization,” which he defined as “the full use and exploitation of one’s talents, capacities and potentialities.” The basic characteristics of self-actualizers, he discovered in his research, are spontaneity and naturalness, a greater acceptance of themselves and others, high levels of creativity, and a strong focus on problem solving rather than ego gratification. To achieve self-actualization, he concluded, you first need to satisfy a series of more basic needs, each building upon the other to form what is commonly referred to as Maslow’s pyramid. The bottom layer is made up of physiological urges (hunger, sleep, sex); followed by safety concerns (stability, order); love (belonging); self-esteem (self-respect, recognition); and finally self-actualization. Maslow concluded that most people fail to reach self-actualization because they get stuck somewhere lower on the pyramid.
In his book The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Maslow describes the key steps to attaining self-actualization:
experiencing life “vividly, selflessly, with full concentration and total absorption”;
making choices from moment to moment that foster growth rather than fear;
becoming more attuned to your inner nature and acting in concert with who you are;
being honest with yourself and taking responsibility for what you say and do instead of playing games or posing;
identifying your ego defenses and finding the courage to give them up;
developing the ability to determine your own destiny and daring to be different and non-conformist;
creating an ongoing process for reaching your potential and doing the work needed to realize your vision.
fostering the conditions for having peak experiences, or what Maslow calls “moments of ecstasy” in which we think, act, and feel more clearly and are more loving and accepting of others.
Rick Fox describes my approach to coaching as a play in three acts. The way he sees it, during the first twenty or thirty games of each season I’d sit back and let the characters reveal themselves. “Most coaches come into a season with an idea of what they’re going to do and impose that on the players,” he explains. “But I always felt that Phil came to the table with an open mind. ‘Let’s see how each individual expresses himself. Let’s see how the group responds under fire and whether it’s capable of solving problems.’ He never appeared too concerned about the team at that point. Never any panic. Never overanalyzing anything because that would be premature.” Act 2 would take place during the twenty or thirty games in the middle of the season, before and after the All-Star game. “That’s when he would nurture the team, when guys were starting to get bored,” Rick adds. “Phil would spend more time with each of us then. He’d give us books. I always felt that he drove me the hardest during that time.” Then, during the last twenty or thirty games leading up to the playoffs, act 3 would begin and, according to Fox, my whole demeanor would change—the way I’d look, talk, and move my body—as if I were saying, “This is my time.”
4. THE ROAD TO FREEDOM IS A BEAUTIFUL SYSTEM
You can’t break the rules until you know how to play the game. - RICKI LEE JONES
Structure is critical. On every successful team I’ve coached, most of the players had a clear idea of the role they were expected to play. When the pecking order is clear, it reduces the players’ anxiety and stress. But if it’s unclear and the top players are constantly vying for position, the center will not hold, no matter how talented the roster is.
Another aspect of Buddhist teachings that has influenced me is the emphasis on openness and freedom. If you place too many restrictions on players, they’ll spend an inordinate amount of time trying to buck the system. Like all of us, they need a certain degree of structure in their lives, but they also require enough latitude to express themselves creatively.
“The coaches’ goal was to set down some basic guidelines for us on how to play basketball together as a group. And then you were expected to create your own chart for everything else. It was an uncanny way of creating an organization without over-organizing. It wasn’t about what they thought you should be doing, the way many coaches do. They stepped back and let you find your own way.”
Good system:
Every player has a role
Depersonalised criticism -> transforms a team into a learning organization
Reliable
The system also gave players a clear purpose as a group and established a high standard of performance for everyone. Even more important, it helped turn players into leaders as they began teaching one another how to master the system. When that happened, the group would bond together in ways that moments of individual glory, no matter how thrilling, could never foster.
5. TURN THE MUNDANE INTO THE SACRED
Bring individuals together and connect them to something greater than themselves.
What moves me is watching young men bond together and tap into the magic that arises when they focus—with their whole heart and soul—on something greater than themselves. Once you’ve experienced that, it’s something you never forget.
The symbol is the ring. In the NBA, rings symbolize status and power. No matter how gaudy or cumbersome a championship ring may be, the dream of winning one is what motivates players to put themselves through the trials of a long NBA season. Jerry Krause, the former general manager of the Chicago Bulls, understood this. When I joined the team as an assistant coach in 1987, he asked me to wear one of the two championship rings I’d earned playing for the New York Knicks as a way to inspire the young Bulls players.
On a psychological level, the ring symbolizes something profound: the quest of the self to find harmony, connection, and wholeness.
“What was our motto on this team? The ring,” I said, flashing my ring from the last championship we won, in 2002. “The ring. That was the motto. It’s not just the band of gold. It’s the circle that’s made a bond between all these players. A great love for one another.” Circle of love.
I wanted to give players something besides X’s and O’s to focus on. What’s more, we often invented rituals of our own to infuse practices with a sense of the sacred.
At the start of training camp, for instance, we used to perform a ritual that I borrowed from football great Vince Lombardi. As the players formed a row on the baseline, I’d ask them to commit to being coached that season, saying, “God has ordained me to coach you young men, and I embrace the role I’ve been given. If you wish to accept the game I embrace and follow my coaching, as a sign of your commitment, step across that line.” The wonder of wonders, they always did it. We did this in a fun way, but with serious intent.
Another lesson I learned was about the importance of pregame rituals. The shootaround had yet to be invented, so most coaches tried to squeeze in whatever pregame instructions they had during the fifteen or twenty minutes before the players stepped out on the floor. But there’s only so much a player can absorb when his body is pulsing with adrenaline. This is not a good time for deep left-brain discussions. It’s the moment to calm the players’ minds and strengthen their spiritual connection with one another before they head into battle.
So I scheduled a special team meeting before the start of the playoffs and asked everyone to write a short paragraph about what the season and our team had meant to them. It was touching to hear a group of hardened NBA players revealing themselves to one another in this tender way. After each person spoke, I asked him to put his message in a coffee can. Then we turned the lights out, and I set fire to their words. I’ll never forget that moment. The quiet aura in the room. The fire burning in the darkness. The intense intimacy we felt sitting silently together and watching the flames die down. I don’t think the bond among us had ever been stronger.
To tap into the sacred in work as well as in life, it’s essential to create order out of chaos.
Circle of love. That’s not the way most basketball fans think of their sport. But after more than forty years involved in the game at the highest level, both as a player and as a coach, I can’t think of a truer phrase to describe the mysterious alchemy that joins players together and unites them in pursuit of the impossible. Obviously, we’re not talking romantic love here or even brotherly love in the traditional Christian sense. The best analogy I can think of is the intense emotional connection that great warriors experience in the heat of battle.
It takes a number of critical factors to win an NBA championship, including the right mix of talent, creativity, intelligence, toughness, and, of course, luck. But if a team doesn’t have the most essential ingredient—love—none of those other factors matter.
Tribal Leadership and 5 stages of tribal development
In their groundbreaking book, Tribal Leadership, management consultants Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright lay out the five stages of tribal development, which they formulated after conducting extensive research on small to midsize organizations. Although basketball teams are not officially tribes, they share many of the same characteristics and develop along much the same lines:
STAGE 1—shared by most street gangs and characterized by despair, hostility, and the collective belief that “life sucks.”
STAGE 2—filled primarily with apathetic people who perceive themselves as victims and who are passively antagonistic, with the mindset that “my life sucks.” Think The Office on TV or the Dilbert comic strip.
STAGE 3—focused primarily on individual achievement and driven by the motto “I’m great (and you’re not).” According to the authors, people in organizations at this stage “have to win, and for them winning is personal. They’ll outwork and outthink their competitors on an individual basis. The mood that results is a collection of ‘lone warriors.’”
STAGE 4—dedicated to tribal pride and the overriding conviction that “we’re great (and they’re not).” This kind of team requires a strong adversary, and the bigger the foe, the more powerful the tribe.
STAGE 5—a rare stage characterized by a sense of innocent wonder and the strong belief that “life is great.” (See Bulls, Chicago, 1995–98.)
All things being equal, contend Logan and his colleagues, a stage 5 culture will outperform a stage 4 culture, which will outperform a 3, and so on. In addition, the rules change when you move from one culture to another. That’s why the so-called universal principles that appear in most leadership textbooks rarely hold up. In order to shift a culture from one stage to the next, you need to find the levers that are appropriate for that particular stage in the group’s development.
“On a good team there are no superstars,” Red insisted. “There are great players who show they are great players by being able to play with others as a team. They have the ability to be superstars, but if they fit into a good team, they make sacrifices, they do things necessary to help the team win. What the numbers are in salaries or statistics don’t matter; how they play together does.”
“The real mark of a star was how much better he made his teammates.”
It was a clash of visions. Tex Winter believed it was foolhardy for a team to rely so heavily on one person, no matter how talented he was. Michael Jordan argued that his creativity was opening up exciting new possibilities for the game. “There’s no I in the word ‘team,’” Tex would say. “But there is in the word ‘win,’” Michael would counter with a grin. As far as I was concerned, they were both right—up to a point.
A team leader’s number one job, I explained, was to build up his teammates, not tear them down. “You can’t be captain if nobody follows you.”
6. ONE BREATH=ONE MIND
Although mindfulness meditation has its roots in Buddhism, it’s an easily accessible technique for quieting the restless mind and focusing attention on whatever is happening in the present moment. This is extremely useful for basketball players, who often have to make split-second decisions under enormous pressure. I also discovered that when I had the players sit in silence, breathing together in sync, it helped align them on a nonverbal level far more effectively than words. One breath equals one mind.
Basketball is a great mystery. You can do everything right. You can have the perfect mix of talent and the best system of offense in the game. You can devise a foolproof defensive strategy and prepare your players for every possible eventuality. But if the players don’t have a sense of oneness as a group, your efforts won’t pay off. And the bond that unites a team can be so fragile, so elusive.
Oneness is not something you can turn on with a switch. You need to create the right environment for it to grow, then nurture it carefully every day.
One of the basic principles of Buddhist thought is that our conventional concept of the self as a separate entity is an illusion. On a superficial level, what we consider the self may appear to be separate and distinct from everything else. After all, we all look different and have distinct personalities. But on a deeper level, we are all part of an interconnected whole.
The key to inner peace is trusting in the essential interconnectedness of all things. One breath, one mind. That’s what gives you strength and energy in the midst of chaos.
At its heart, mindfulness is about being present in the moment as much as possible, not weighed down by thoughts of the past or the future.
Principles of mindful meditation (from “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind”):
Sit with your spine straight, your shoulders relaxed, and your chin pulled in, “as if you were supporting the sky with your head.”
Follow your breath with your mind as it moves in and out like a swinging door.
Don’t try to stop your thinking. If a thought arises, let it come, then let it go and return to watching your breath. The idea is not to try to control your mind but to let thoughts rise and fall naturally over and over again. After some practice, the thoughts will start to float by like passing clouds and their power to dominate consciousness will diminish.
On managing anger:
Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - THE BUDDHA
Managing anger is every coach’s most difficult task. It requires a great deal of patience and finesse because the line between the aggressive intensity needed to win games and destructive anger is often razor thin.
trying to eliminate anger never works. The more you try to suppress it, the more likely it is to erupt later in a more virulent form. A better approach is to become as intimate as possible with how anger works on your mind and body so that you can transform its underlying energy into something productive. As Buddhist scholar, Robert Thurman writes, “Our goal surely is to conquer anger, but not to destroy the fire it has misappropriated. We will wield that fire with wisdom and turn it to creative ends.”
Anger is an energizing emotion that enhances the sustained attention needed to solve problems and leads to more flexible “big picture” thinking. No question, anger focuses the mind. It’s an advance warning system alerting us to threats to our well-being. When viewed this way, anger can be a powerful force for bringing about positive change. But it takes practice—and no small amount of courage—to be present with such uncomfortable feelings and yet not be swept away by them.
My practice when anger arises is to sit with it in meditation. I simply observe it come and go, come and go.
The more wars you fight together the more you understand the people you’re in a battle with. One breath. One mind. One spirit.
7. THE KEY TO SUCCESS IS COMPASSION
A few kind, thoughtful words can have a strong transformative effect on relationships, even with the toughest men on the team. I share Lao-tzu’s view that compassion for all beings—not least of all oneself—is the key to breaking down barriers among people.
I learned a key lesson: how important it was to relate to each player as an individual, with respect and compassion, no matter how much pressure I might be feeling.
In the Buddhist view, the best way to cultivate compassion is to be fully present in the moment. “To meditate,” said the Buddha, “is to listen with a receptive heart.” In her book Start Where You Are, Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron contends that meditation practice blurs the traditional boundaries between self and others. “What you do for yourself—any gesture of kindness, any gesture of gentleness, any gesture of honesty and clear seeing toward yourself—will affect how you experience the world,” she writes. “What you do for yourself, you’re doing for others, and what you do for others, you’re doing for yourself.”
The Dalai Lama calls it “the enemy’s gift.” From a Buddhist perspective, battling with enemies can help you develop greater compassion for and tolerance of others. “In order to practice sincerely and to develop patience,” he says, “you need someone who willfully hurts you. Thus, these people give us real opportunities to practice these things. They are testing our inner strength in a way that even our guru cannot.”
8. KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE SPIRIT, NOT ON THE SCOREBOARD
Most coaches get tied up in knots worrying about tactics, but I preferred to focus my attention on whether the players were moving together in a spirited way.
By “spirit” I don’t mean anything religious. I mean that deep feeling of camaraderie that arises when a group of players makes a commitment to stand up for one another to achieve something greater than themselves, no matter what the risks.
Greatness is a spiritual condition. - MATTHEW ARNOLD
By “spiritual” I don’t mean “religious.” I mean the act of self-discovery that happens when you step beyond your routine way of seeing the world. As Maslow puts it, “The great lesson from the true mystics . . . [is] that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, friends, and family, in one’s backyard.”
Spirituality is a personal journey, period.
9. SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO PULL OUT THE BIG STICK
In the strictest form of Zen, monitors roam the meditation hall, striking sleeping or listless meditators with a flat wooden stick, called a keisaku, to get them to pay attention. This is not intended as punishment. In fact, the keisaku is sometimes referred to as a “compassionate stick.” Coaching isn’t all fun and games. Sometimes no matter how nice a guy you are, you’re going to have to be an asshole. You can’t be a coach if you need to be liked.”
10. WHEN IN DOUBT, DO NOTHING
Focusing on something other than the business at hand can be the most effective way to solve complex problems. “The unconscious mind is a terrific solver of complex problems when the conscious mind is busy elsewhere or, perhaps better yet, not overtaxed at all.”
I’ve discovered that you can solve many difficulties with what Lao-tzu called non-action. This approach is often misinterpreted as passivity, but actually it’s just the reverse. Non-action involves being attuned to what’s happening with the group and acting—or non-acting—accordingly.
The best way to handle most flare-ups is to sleep on them. The point is to avoid acting out of anger and creating an even stickier mess.
11. FORGET THE RING
Being fixated on winning (or more likely, not losing) is counterproductive, especially when it causes you to lose control of your emotions. What’s more, obsessing about winning is a loser’s game: The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome. The ride is a lot more fun that way. What matters most is playing the game the right way and having the courage to grow, as human beings as well as basketball players. When you do that, the ring takes care of itself.
You’ve got to play to win, not play to avoid losing.
The mistake that championship teams often make is to try to repeat their winning formula. But that rarely works because by the time the next season starts, your opponents have studied all the videos and figured out how to counter every move you made. The key to sustained success is to keep growing as a team. Winning is about moving into the unknown and creating something new.
There always seems to be just a bit more to let go of. Zen teacher Jakusho Kwong suggests becoming “an active participant in loss.” We’re conditioned to seek only gain, to be happy, and to try to satisfy all our desires, he explains. But even though we may understand on some level that loss is a catalyst for growth, most people still believe it to be the opposite of gain and to be avoided at all costs. If I’ve learned anything in my years of practicing Zen and coaching basketball, it’s that what we resist persists. SometimesSometimes the letting go happens quickly; other times it may take several sleepless nights. Or weeks.
In my view, the key to becoming a successful NBA player is not learning the coolest highlight-reel moves. It’s learning how to control your emotions and keep your mind focused on the game, how to play through pain, how to carve out your role on the team and perform it consistently, how to stay cool under pressure and maintain your equanimity after crushing losses or ecstatic wins.
The Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron talks about letting go as an opportunity for true awakening. One of her favorite sayings is “Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.”
Chop wood. Carry water. Forget mistakes, forget failures, forget everything, except what you’re going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day. - WILL DURANT