people who have full, three-dimensional lives

Belichick strongly believes you must see your team not just as players, per se, but as people who have full, three-dimensional, and often messy lives.

"There are a lot of things that affect what happens on the field that occurs off the field," he says. Players "have wives and girlfriends. And they have babies. And they have personal situations. They have parents that are sick. All of it runs in together."

Work and life, in other words, are inseparable, and it's incumbent on leaders to help their people sort through it. "The more you and the organization can help take care of personal situations," he says, "the smoother the ship runs on the football end."

Suzy Welch

"Bill Belichick reveals his 5 rules of exceptional leadership" CNBC. 4/13/2107

every battle is won before it is fought

"The only sign we have in the locker room is from 'The Art of War.' 'Every battle is won before it is fought,'" says Belichick, who started breaking down films of opposing teams when he was 7 years old and hanging out with his dad, Steve, an assistant coach at Annapolis.

"You [have to] know what the opponents can do, what their strengths and weaknesses are ... [and] what to do in every situation," he says.

That ability — to adapt on a dime — is why Belichick says he spends so much time building teamwork, from having the team train with Navy SEALs, to organizing trivia nights, where, incidentally, all social media is banned.

"Nobody is against [social media] more than I am. I can't stand it," Belichick says. "I think it's important for us, as a team, to know each other. Know our teammates and our coaches. To interact with them is more important than to be 'liked' by whoever on Chatrun." (In the same conversation, he also derided "InstaFace" in all seriousness.)

Suzy Welch
"Bill Belichick reveals his 5 rules of exceptional leadership" CNBC. 4/13/2107

8 executive habits for safety leadership

1. Executives must lead by example in the area of safety as well as every other aspect of ethical business. This includes, for example, the correct wearing of appropriate PPE in the workplace. One minor lapse observed by persons two levels down in the organization will undo untold other positive efforts to achieve excellence in workplace safety.

2. Executives must verbally communicate about safety in meetings with other managers. While what people do is sometimes more telling than what they say, it is the rare executive who can effectively lead without verbal articulation of his position on the matter. What executives say to each other one-on-one about safety while safety staff or other support staff is not present speaks volumes and has the greatest effect on crucial aspects of company culture.

3. Executives must put their money where their mouths are and fund safety adequately. This does not mean employing arbitrarily large staffs of SH&E professionals. Instead, it means in all business decisions that executives seek to treat the safety of all employees as the ethical right thing to do, a prudent act use of corporate funds and of corporate governance, and an intangible factor of business relationships that is almost always also a good investment.

4. Executives must hold their subordinates accountable for managing safety and must require that subordinates report on safety matters. Make sure that the roles and responsibilities for safety and health are defined (in writing and in practice). Doing so is part of treating safety just like any other important part of the business. Safety should be simply part of an overall performance measurement process.

5. Executives must provide appropriate feedback regarding safety performance. Monitor the results of management system audits and provide feedback. Personally praise exceptional performance, ignore average performance and confront substandard performance on the part of subordinate operations managers/supervisors. Realize that human exposure to injury risk has an element of randomness and may not be well described by current statistical analysis methods such as the frequency rate of recordable, reportable or lost-time injuries. Therefore, acknowledge and appropriately reward efforts in risk-reduction even if short-term injury results are poor.

6. Executives must make sure that the risk profile of the organization is continuously improved. New hazards and potential risks to the business (not just safety or health) are introduced continuously, and large corporations that are good managers of risk will be successful in the long term. When something bad happens—and it will—get to the root cause and try to systemically build in whatever must be feasibly done to ensure that it won’t happen again.

7. Executives of organizations that use potentially toxic materials must ensure that there is long-term support for the anticipation, recognition, evaluation and control of industrial hygiene in the organization. The past actions or inactions of corporations in the developed world are judged today by a society with extremely high expectations as compared to even the recent past. One can safely assume that societal norms for a safe and healthy work environment will continue to increase in the future in all countries of the world.

8. Executives must ensure that safety and health processes are being fully integrated into the primary management system processes of the business. Safety and health cannot be effectively managed long-term separate from the management of the routine affairs of the business. In today’s companies, this includes the deep integration of safety and health matters into systems such as the enterprisewide management software and process control systems.

Dan Petersen and Kyle Dotson

"Eight Executive Habits for Safety Leadership" Professional Safety. Nov. 2006.

flipping the triangle

...[A]fter Harden hits the 3 to give the Rockets their 53rd win, something doesn't feel right. In his office, D'Antoni grabs a marker from a cup on the table and takes to the wall, which is a floor to ceiling whiteboard. In the background, Hall and Oates are imploring Sarahto smile a while. Every other coach and player has gone home.

D'Antoni says he knows everything's OK with this team, but he repeats that sentiment often enough to indicate that he might not trust it. With the playoffs looming, he can't help but worry about chemistry and egos.

He pops the cap off the marker and draws a triangle with the point facing up. "This is the player's viewpoint," he says. He points to the peak and writes "player" next to it. At the wide base of the triangle, he writes "team." To the player, the individual is at the top of the triangle, the focus, the pinnacle. Self-preservation is vital. The team, down there at the bottom, is less important.

He draws another triangle with the point facing down. "This is the coach's viewpoint," he says. He writes "team" across the wide flat top and "player" at the point facing down. To the coach, the team is at the top of the triangle, the focus, the pinnacle. Communal preservation is vital. The individual, down there at the bottom, is less important.

The triangles are presented in a basketball context, but the top-down triangle is why Laurel and Mike have been married for more than 30 years. The message echoes a sign in the D'Antoni kitchen that bears an Italian proverb, the last thing they see as they leave and the first when they return:

When the game is over

The king and the pawn

Go back in the same box

It's cave-quiet untill Laurel asks, "What do the players think when you show them the triangles?"

"They think it's cute," he says.

He caps the marker, tosses it on the table and sits down. He says he's probably worrying for no reason, and Laurel agrees. It's time to go home, but not before he takes one more look at the whiteboard. Flipping that triangle in the minds of his players - getting them to see the game the way he sees it - is the fundamental conflict of his professional life.

Tim Keown
"All Their Hoops And Dreams" ESPN the magazine .08.5/8/2017

the collective voice

[I]magine you’ve got a problem that feels too risky or futile for anyone on your team to speak up about individually. Perhaps it’s about a business policy or process that your boss is wedded to or can’t change himself anyway, or perhaps it’s a problem with your manager’s own behavior or performance. This is often where silence prevails. We found in our interviews, though, that sometimes people did well when they banded together to speak up collectively. In some cases, it involved talking as a group to their direct boss (for instance, at a weekly meeting) or finding an opportunity to approach a skip-level boss together; in others, it involved scheduling a series of one-on-one meetings (because it was hard to get everyone free at the same time) and being sure to use “we” language in those meetings.

We heard about “collective voice” episodes in about one-third of our interviews and, to our initial surprise, learned that the participants considered the outcomes positive in every case. Upon reflection, we understand that this success stemmed from their ability to both reduce the risks and increase their efficacy in speaking up. People noted explicitly that there is “strength in numbers” and that it “felt a lot safer to approach the manager together.” And they pointed out that they were less likely to “be written off as one disgruntled person” once the boss saw they were raising a systemic issue. They recognized the potency of solidarity and benefited from what scholars call “social proof,” the influence that comes from seeing others committed to a course of action. Collective voice was also more likely than individual voice to lead to action because the necessary coordination and buy-in needed from colleagues to solve certain problems had already been obtained by the time the boss was approached.

James R. Detert and Ethan R. Burris

"When It’s Tough to Speak Up, Get Help from Your Coworkers" Harvard Business Review. 3/4/2016