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Collapsing the Gaps: How Leadership Helps Out-Team the Competition
Hall of Fame Women’s Basketball Coach, Sherri Coale, shares insights gleaned from 34 seasons of leading teams…how they work, why they win, and what sustains them beyond the chase.
The secret sauce isn’t really a secret. The reason teams are important and effective—the reason everybody scrambles to create them—is because they can upend the math. When good people wind themselves around each other to work, two plus two doesn’t necessarily equal four. Sometimes it equals eight. Or fifty. Collective effort can become herculean when the whole of a thing grows greater than the sum of its individual parts.
But that doesn’t always happen. Teams don’t always work.
Sometimes they sputter. And when they do there can be thousands of reasons why. When they purr, though, the reason is simple—and it’s almost always the same: the people, the plan and the purpose all align. Teams that win—and win big—get the right people doing the right things in the right ways for the right reasons, together. Their ace is that they move as one.
My best basketball teams were a concoction of all kinds of kinds. Dead-eye shooters, strong finishers, crafty ball handlers, instinctive rebounders, defensive stoppers. Individually, our players’ skill sets were all over the board…and all of their games had holes. Some could really shoot but they couldn’t finish. Some could really finish, but they couldn’t shoot. Some couldn’t handle the ball very well. Some couldn’t stay in front of a driver to save their lives. And some were just asked to block-out and leave the rebounding to somebody else. We had all kinds of weaknesses, but when the talent got stirred together, the gaps collapsed. “Good at this” plus “good at that” plus “good at this other thing” often adds up to great. As strengths layer upon strengths, the texture of a team is fashioned. A texture that typically endures and out-performs.
What the players can do, however, is only a piece of the equation. How they are matters maybe even more. We needed players who went about their business in different ways. Their various dispositions and approaches to the work—and to their days—gave us girth. Too much of the same thing made us thin and brittle. And predictable. We needed rugged grinders and cerebral planners. We needed even-keelers and emotional contagions. We needed accountability zealots and encouragers who could soften their often less-than-polished blows. Our contrasting “hows” pushed our individual perspectives and challenged our comfort zones.
All of the differences were required—every single one of them—to push our collective walls and lift our lid. And we needed this contradictory cast of characters to knit themselves hand and glove so you couldn’t see the seams. Knute Rockne once famously stated, “I play not my eleven best, but my best eleven.” Teams that out-team the competition have pieces and parts that fit so well together it’s hard to tell where one of them stops and where another begins.
What binds the parts to one another is an invisible, forgiving iron string. That string is the character of the members of the team. It’s who they each are at their core. Our players never had to be from the same background or have the same life experiences—as a matter of fact, they were better when they weren’t and when they didn’t—but they did have to share a belief about the way the game should be played. Our insides had to line up. If there was an immovable moral anchor, we could survive most any tsunami and were nimble enough to pivot on demand. When our teams’ beliefs about the things that matter most were in tune, there wasn’t much we couldn’t do.
The “who” inside the jersey makes all the difference in the world.
But the plan and the purpose also have to match-up. A fantastic collection of humans who know neither where they’re going nor how they plan to get there won’t out-team anybody. The strategy must be clear. A game plan is the thing that keeps all the moving parts moving in the same direction, in an efficient, purposeful way. But the “what” of it probably gets too much credit. The “how” and the “when” of execution is what separates the good from the great. Effective teams understand that. They acknowledge context. They share a sticky language, and sometimes a practiced telepathy. They are clear about what is expected and what will not be allowed. Teams always function better when not much is left to chance.
But without a greater purpose, the winning rarely lasts. Sustained success is always tethered by a group’s commitment to a cause outside of themselves. Effective teams have a why that fuels their what and guides their how. And they believe that the work they’re doing matters. Teams playing in a hard world that’s laser locked on outcomes have to learn to measure themselves by a different tape. Our teams wanted to play in such a way so that people would walk to their cars after our games and be inspired to be a better version of themselves. We wanted to inspire others to believe they could win. We wanted to encourage others to fight against the fiercest odds. We wanted others to be impacted by our joy. Our collective why was hinged to a greater good. That sense of purpose is the juju that gives teams a perpetual edge.
When a team works, magic happens. The rare air of a competitive environment that drips with expectations—and inherent challenges—sharpens the people in it. The precarious balances of selflessness and confidence, sureness and curiosity, flexibility and rigidity are required to survive and thrive. These stretch individuals and adhere teams.
And when people grow together, the winning takes care of itself.
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