Russel Rule #4: Toughness or Tenderness: Creating Your Leadership Style

Russell Rule # 4: Toughness or Tenderness: Creating Your Leadership Style

In this chapter, the title is pretty self-explanatory. Different situations call for different leadership styles, and people vary in their ability to adopt one style or another. Russ offers three sub-rules:

1. Successful teams of any kind are benevolent dictatorships.

2. Great leaders need to be adaptable. They should be able to follow as well as to lead. There's a difference between being an inside-out leader and an outside-in leader. The former finds ways to include others, drawing them out and incorporating them in the decision-making process . The latter relies on his own intuition, logic and counsel which he then projects outward in theform of commands.

3. A great leader considers kindness an act of strength. Russ' grandfather used to say, "Praise loudly and blame softly." Great leadership sometimes requires tenderness, which is not a sign of weakness if used correctly.
When Russ took over as coach in Seattle, the team was doing badly, and he recognized at once that there was no cohesiveness on or off the floor. The only reason a couple of players would hang with one another was to reinforce their griping. Russ decided that a tough leadership style was the ticket. He ran rigorous practices, but there was also a more subtle form of toughness. He instituted five Celtics plays that would only work if every player on the floor was doing something in close coordination with the others.

One of Russ' goals was to convince the Seattle players that they could become their own best teachers without always relying on Russ. "If the plays were run correctly, with all the subtle variations that were in them, the players would have to use all their creativity and individual skills to the maximum. If they did not, they would fail. My team knew what I stood for....but they also knew what I wouldn't stand for." One unnamed player threatened (twice) to kill Russ, but Russ basically stared him down. The team did better each year Russ was there, and the core he established eventually won the championship.

I (Sam) had always thought that the term "benevolent dictator" was first coined to describe Auerbach. Actually, the first Celtics owner Walter Brown was the focus. Walter was always nice to everyone—too nice, according to Red. That was the tender, benevolent part.

For the dictator element, Brown turned the team entirely over to Red. The lesson here is that a good leader doesn't have to do it all personally as long as he can delegate effectively. Red used to ride Jim Loscutoff hard in practice, once having him dive, side-to-side for balls in a drill that covered Loscy with strawberries. Loscy always swore that, when he retired, he would kill Red. After his last game, he asked his teammates to leave him alone with Red for 15 minutes so he could carry out his threat. The guys hung around outside; and, hearing nothing for several minutes, peered through the door. Loscy was sitting in front of Red, bawling his eyes out, and telling Red how much the relationship had meant to him.