My favorite coach’s advice
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Nick Saban won seven national championships at two colleges. He is widely considered the greatest college football coach in history, but to me what made him extraordinary wasn't just his record, it was his management philosophy.
Saban didn't focus on outcomes. He focused everyone around him on inputs: effort, preparation, process, and standards. The scoreboard, he believed, was just a lagging indicator of the culture you built long before kickoff.
And respect, he insisted, required confrontation.
"If you think that not confronting people who don't do the right things is helping your organization, you're absolutely wrong. You lose respect of the person who knows they're not doing it right…and you're not confronting them. And you lose respect of the people who see you see it happen…and you don't say anything about it."
This is the competence/likability trap.
We stay silent thinking we're preserving the relationship or protecting our reputation, when we're actually eroding both, in real time, in front of everyone watching.
What a team member’s work is not up to agreed upon standard (keyword: agreed upon), or does something that hurts the team, and you don’t hold them accountable, what is the rest of the team saying…about you?
When you see accountability not as attacking the person but as protecting the standard, the group, the culture, you can:
Name the behavior specifically
Describe the impact on the team
Make a clear request for what changes
No lecture. No anger. No lengthy explanation.
Saban said this was the biggest challenge he had with his coaching staff:
"They want to be friends with the players. They want to be buddies. But if you don't make them do right — on and off the field — it doesn't matter. You're going to lose their respect."
Respect is not built on likability.
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