- archivesbyazam
- Posts
- Trillion Dollar Coach
Trillion Dollar Coach
Bill Campbell's leadership advice to Silicon Valley's C-suite
Azam Malik
April 07, 2024
Dear you,
Before I share what I learnt from Silicon Valley’s ‘Trillion Dollar Coach’ Bill Campbell, here’s a re-cap of my reading track-record per goodreads:
2021 - 23 books, 7038 pages
2022 - 11 books, 3047 pages
2023 - 3 books, 992 pages
As you can tell, the trend is downwards but I’d say this has been partly because I prefer reading real-time news via printed newspapers and magazines but it is nice to pick up a hard-copy book once in a while. 5th on this year’s list was a non-fiction book that I blitzed through because it was just full of leadership gems that kept me coming back for more.
A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be
Bill Campbell was a former football coach at Columbia University who ended up on the board of directors at Apple and went on to coach head honchos like Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos and Sheryl Sandberg. Here’s the kind of leadership advice that Bill passed on:
Your title makes you a manager. Your people make you a leader. Team meetings are as much about content as it is about setting the tone. Structure 1:1’s to be effective and allow time to cover performance, peer relationships, management and innovation.
Get to the table. This was in reference to gender diversity but I took it as a push to take initiative in being a part of the decision-making discussion.
Trust is the currency of relationships along with respect
Address the elephant in the room. Big problems come first in the agenda.
Pick the right players when hiring who are switched on, work hard, maintain high integrity and display grit.
💬 Made you think
Coach: You see Derice, I’ve made winning my whole life. And when you make winning your whole life, you have to keep on winning, no matter what, you understand that?
Derice: No, I don’t understand, Coach. You had two gold medals, you had it all.
Coach: Derice, a gold medal is a wonderful thing, but if you’re not enough without it, you’ll never be enough with it
Derice: Hey Coach, how will I know if I’m enough?
Coach: When you cross that finish line, you’ll know.
I have to give credit to Sahil Bloom for this one. He calls it the gold medal fallacy which most simply put is the mindset that “if I get [X], then I’ll be happy.” In other words, happiness isn’t an external job, it’s internal. I thought the line if you’re not enough without it, you’ll never be enough with it was pretty powerful. Sometimes all it takes is one coach to shift your perspective when you most need it.
Wishing you a blessed Eid in advance.
Stay cool,
Azam
Reply