Motivate Your Team! Cheer Up A Friend! Inspire Yourself!
Motivate Your Team! Cheer Up A Friend! Inspire Yourself!
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| Wooden's Wisdom - Volume 13 | Issue 771 |
| Craig Impelman Speaking | Championship Coaches | Champion's Leadership Library Login | |
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"ASSIGN AND ACCEPT SHARED RESPONSIBILITY FOR OUTCOMES." – DON GULLEY Inclusion and collaboration are easy to support in principle. The real test comes when a group must make a decision, do the work and accept the result together.
The standard is simple:
"Assign and accept shared responsibility for outcomes."
The sentence has two equally important parts. Leaders must assign responsibility. Team members must accept it. And everyone must understand that the outcome belongs to the entire group.
But shared responsibility should begin with a shared voice. Coach Wooden put it this way:
"If you wish to be heard, listen. Always seek to find the best way rather than insisting on your own way." — John Wooden
Listening is where inclusion becomes real. It tells people that their experience, knowledge and point of view matter. As Coach also observed:
"When everyone thinks alike, no one thinks." — John Wooden
Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson has shown why that matters. When people do not feel safe enough to speak, the team loses information it needs. She explains:
"For an employee, managing personal risk by remaining quiet is an easy solution, and works incredibly well as a means of self-protection. But it’s a terrible solution for the organization." — Amy Edmondson
Inclusion therefore requires more than inviting people into the room. Leaders must make it safe and worthwhile for them to contribute once they are there.
Coach Wooden demonstrated this kind of leadership even after he had achieved extraordinary success. Former UCLA assistant coach Gary Cunningham recalled that he and assistant Denny Crum wanted UCLA to try a 3–2 zone defense. Coach Wooden strongly opposed that defense in principle. At the time, however, his teams had already won five national championships in six years and were 20–0. He could easily have dismissed the suggestion.
Instead, he listened. He evaluated the idea and allowed the assistants to try it. UCLA beat Oregon, 75–58, but lost to Oregon State the next night, 78–65. The experiment ended.
What happened next is as important as Coach’s willingness to listen. There were no recriminations. He did not blame Cunningham or Crum. They had offered an idea, Coach Wooden had approved it and the staff accepted the outcome together.
Coach Wooden never brought up the incident again to his staff. He believed reminding people of past failures might make them more hesitant to take initiative in the future.
That is inclusive collaboration. People are not merely permitted to speak. Their ideas receive honest consideration, and they are trusted with meaningful responsibility.
"A leader makes certain that his followers know they are working with him, not for him." — John Wooden
Simon Sinek expresses a similar idea:
"We know true collaboration happened when the idea can no longer be traced to one person." — Simon Sinek
Once responsibility has been shared, accountability must also be shared. That does not mean individual responsibilities become unclear. Each person should know the job that has been assigned and do it well. But no one gets to claim the success alone or step away when the result is disappointing.
"You may make mistakes, but you are not a failure until you start blaming someone else." — John Wooden
Accepting shared responsibility means replacing blame with honest questions: What did I contribute? What could I have done better? What can we learn? What should we do next?
"Valid self-analysis means improvement." — John Wooden
It also means disagreement remains focused on the work, not the people. Coach reminded us:
"What is right is more important than who is right." — John Wooden
When the team follows that principle, different voices become a strength instead of a threat. People can disagree without becoming disagreeable. They can challenge an idea without dismissing the person who offered it. Once a decision is made, everyone can support it and work toward the same goal.
"Life is a united effort of many." — John Wooden
Perhaps that is the clearest description of inclusion, collaboration and shared responsibility. We listen so every person can contribute. We assign responsibility so every person has a meaningful role. We accept responsibility so no one hides from the result. And we share the outcome because none of us achieves it alone.
"Much can be accomplished by teamwork when no one is concerned about who gets credit." — John Wooden
Reflect on this idea of Team Spirit. How are you doing? Write it down. Share it with someone on your team
Yours in Coaching, Craig Impelman
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Children Learn What They Live
If children live with criticism, Dorothy Law Nolte (1924-2005)
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