You need experience around you when you are a young player. You need to know how to run a team, to lead a team and to play as a team which means, your team has leaders but you still function as a team.
In any endeavor, leaders should inspire members of the team with a passion for success, but within the framework of team effort. One of the most crucial things to realize, feel and remember is that when one team member succeeds, the entire team succeeds.
I have run engineering since day one at Oracle, and I still run engineering. I hold meetings every week with the database team, the middle ware team, the applications team. I run engineering and I will do that until the board throws me out of there.
I think I had a superb campaign team. And I know it's always expected that if you lose, people point to the campaign team and say, 'Gee, they didn't do their job well.' If you win, they're all brilliant. And the team, in my view, did a superb job.
When overpowering authority or leadership intervenes in a team, it can affect the team by (1) throwing the team off track, (2) decreasing the motivation of the team, (3) reducing the commitment of the team members, and (4) causing more problems than solutions.
Quarterbacks are the leaders of the team, and I want to try to get guys going. That's a job of a leader. That's a job of a quarterback.
You can't run a team with one leader. You need multiple leaders.
Rick Tocchet is what I call a warrior. He really brings a lot to a team because he really believes in team play. He's tough on himself and he's tough on the team. As a coach, if you had even one guy like him on your team, you'd have a heckuva chance to do your job well.
Team leaders have to connect with their team and themselves. If they don't know their team's strengths and weaknesses, they cannot hand off responsibilities to the team. And if they don't know their own strengths and weaknesses, they will not hand off responsibilities to the team.
There is a group dynamic and a team behaves in principle like a team of horses: there are always leaders.
Leaders strengthen credibility by demonstrating that they are not in it for themselves, instead they have the interests of the institution, department, or team and its constituents at heart. Being a servant may not be what many leaders had in mind when they chose to take responsibility for the vision and direction of their organization or team - but serving others is the most glorious and rewarding of all leadership tasks.
The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say "I." And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say "I." They don't think "I." They think "we"; they think "team." They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but "we" gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.
We strive for a culture of constant communication. Team members know in real time if there are performance issues. Team leaders know in real time if a team member is unhappy.
No man is more important than The Team. No coach is more important than The Team. The Team, The Team, The Team, and if we think that way, all of us, everything that you do, you take into consideration what effect does it have on my Team?
I'm not trying to get back on a team, but I have tried to stay in shape just in case a team needs a point guard. A championship team. I wouldn't go to any other team.
We work as a team, and that is a huge part of why we have been successful; we run fast as a team.