know your core values

Kerr is famous for being a student of leadership and always working on his craft as a coach. One offseason he went to see Pete Carroll the Seattle Seahawks head coach and Carroll taught him an important lesson: "Your leadership approach has to reflect your identity."

After that meeting, Kerr identified 'joy' as a core value he had to lead with all the time. Knowing your core values is a critical part in finding your authentic leadership voice.

John Eades

"6 Powerful Leadership Lessons From World Champion Steve Kerr". Inc. Jun. 9, 2017

provide proof of life

If you are fortunate enough to be entrusted with leadership — that is, with imagination on others’ behalf — he is clear on what you are meant to do: “I am here to provide proof of life to that ever elusive, never completely believable ‘us.’”

I am here, in that line, is precondition for everything that happens after. Being there, in and of a place, is where leading begins. Then you must move. Songs need to get played, arenas to get filled up. But those are only means. A leader’s job is to embody identity for a community — to give words and flesh to elusive ideals. (Only inside a body does an ideal get to become a story.) A leader’s legitimacy, then, rests upon “how deeply you [can] inhabit your song.”

Gianpiero Petriglieri

"Bruce Springsteen, Artful Leadership, and What Rock Star Bosses Do". Harvard Business Review. 9/27/2017