It may have escaped your attention, but the Golden State Warriors won this year’s NBA Championship. My son has been watching the whole season and inevitably I’ve been drawn in. Part of this meant that a couple of months ago I watched the Netflix series about Michael Jordan, called The Last Dance. Even if you’re not a basketball fan it is worth a watch, just to revisit Jordan’s journey. His competitive nature, his will to win, is compelling. What it also showed me was more about the people that surrounded him, and how they all interacted. One of the stand outs was his coach at the Chicago Bulls, Phil Jackson. Jackson won 2 championships as a player, 6 with the Bulls and 5 as the coach of the LA Lakers, where he coached Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant.
Jackson was regarded as a bit of hippy in his playing days in the 1960s and 70s. Though brought up by Christian parents he felt drawn to explore other philosophies including Zen. He then brought some mindful concepts into his coaching practice. This included getting his players to meditate to improve their concentration. Another aspect of his coaching methodology included letting his players figure things out for themselves rather than always telling them what to do. This is a cornerstone of the thinking embedded in non-sports coaching. You are not there to tell people what to do or how to do it, but you are there to be the catalyst by which they can discover these things for themselves. When other coaches would call a timeout to reorganise defensively when their opponents went on a scoring run Jackson would instead wait. He wanted to let his players know that they needed to resolve the problems that arise on the court for themselves, rather than expecting him to fix everything for them. This is something I see Pep Guardiola doing at Manchester City. He looks very reluctant to make changes when things aren’t working out on the pitch, but readily makes substitutions when things are going well. Although there are many learnings that we can take from Phil Jackson’s coaching the biggest one for me is that he set the game and the winning within a broader life context. To quote Jackson “In the long run, nothing’s more important than the evolution of consciousness. Winning championships is the greatest feeling in the world, but it passes.” As I say to trainers on my NLP Trainers Training, you are only as good as your last training. What we all need to do in our lives is to find that greater sense of purpose within which our own lives are playing out. And make sure that the things we aredoing are actually moving towards this higher purpose too.
My son has said to me before, it is easy to win championships if you have Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, or Kobe Bryant on your team. Easier, maybe, but you still have to do it, and none of these players won a championship before Jackson was in charge. This is what coaching is about, bringing people’s potential out of them. Maximising the impact of the talent that you already have.
Finally, let us not lose sight of the effort that we need to put in too. This is highlighted in another Jackson quote “The reality is that winning is a function of hard work, skill, and belief in what you’re doing.” When I was younger and before I came across NLP, if I thought I wasn’t making progress in my life I would check three things before deciding what to do next.
- Was I making enough effort? If not, I would make more effort.
- Was I doing the best process for the task at hand? If not, I would seek out a better method.
- If I could honestly answer yes and yes to the first two questions, then I would start to explore that maybe this wasn’t actually the right path for me and see where that exploration led.
Life can be effortless when we allow it to be what it is, instead of constantly trying to make it into what we think it should be. But effortless doesn’t mean without activity or work. Any great, in any field aims for excellence, practices hard, and constantly works on improving their craft. Treat your life in the same way and you too can be a champion. And by the way this year’s NBA Champions, the Golden State Warriors, are coached by Steve Kerr, another Phil Jackson ex-player.
