[MUSIC PLAYING]
As a leader, you don't just wait for a big moment.
Motivation should be like a habit.
They expect that from you.
That-- yo, that'll always be open.
All right?
Back up.
Let's go double.
Go!
Go, mark!
MIKE KRZYZEWSKI (VOICEOVER): I think over the years,
if you ask my players about me, they would say--
Coach was always on.
But being on means that you're ready to motivate
in an instant.
Go, Powell.
I'm getting your man.
And then I'm going-- you go right there.
If I see something, I'm not going to wait, you know.
But this is a really good expression--
you seize the moment.
In those moments, like before action,
to lighten the room by telling a joke--
or maybe we don't have their chairs there.
They don't sit down.
And so I come in earlier, and I said, no chairs.
You're already ready.
We're not going to sit down today.
You know, we're running.
We're defending.
We're winning.
We're going to be great.
So today at practice, practice being on that stage.
Practice being in the biggest game.
And you know what?
If we can do that today, and then
tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
that commitment to that level of performance will be our habit.
And then we'll explode during a game.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
You know, AJ was going to make a mistake.
And two or three you guys said right away what he should do.
That's what we got to start doing.
MIKE KRZYZEWSKI (VOICEOVER): If you
want to be a powerful motivator, you
have to think about the levers you can pull to spark something
in your team.
Obviously, the tone you use--
We'll split up for individual work, okay?
All right, let's go.
Let's go.
MIKE KRZYZEWSKI (VOICEOVER): The time of the motivation,
and the place--
where are you at?
You know, do you do something publicly?
Privately?
The last four minutes of the game--
PLAYER: Whew!
MIKE KRZYZEWSKI: You locked them up.
Your defense was unbelievable.
And this kid right here.
PLAYER: Hell yeah!
What does tone mean?
Tone means being soft and sensitive.
Tone means being matter-of-fact.
Tone means being excited.
Tone means being unbelievably passionate.
You know, which one?
Or a number of things in between.
And what tone does the team need at that time, you know?
And who are you saying it to?
There are some guys that you coach that you never
would raise your voice to.
It would knock them back.
Where some guys want--
they like to get blasted every once in a while.
Timing is-- are you under time pressure?
It has to be done in the next 10 minutes, by tomorrow.
Or do we have time?
We're trying to take our group or an individual
to another level, and we have time to work on that.
And then the place--
is it just me and you?
Is it just me and the team?
Is it me and the team during a game
in front of tens of thousands of people and millions of people
on TV?
And you weigh all those things.
Look, I believe you follow your heart.
You follow your instincts.
And then you be you.
Be you.
And then when it's over, evaluate you and say,
I like that.
I made a mistake in this.
Man, I hit on something here.
And that's you growing as a leader.
And understand that what you did one year or one quarter
may not work in the next quarter because tone, time, and place
can change.
And definitely for me, it changes each year
because I have a different group.
I even have an--
I think this is really important.
Individually, you can be on my team one year,
and you're a sophomore.
And I've had to motivate and coach you a certain way.
But we've grown together.
And you've grown.
Your junior year, I coach you differently.
That's one of the beauties of leadership.
You have an ever-changing landscape upon which to lead.
You should want to stay on it all the time
if you want to be a leader.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Getting to know your people is really
one of the most interesting things about leadership--
getting to know them individually and collectively.
And when you do that, you figure out ways
in how you motivate them.
How do you get them to do more?
I think goals are important.
Like-- what's the goal of our group?
What are your individual goals?
How do the goals of the individual interact and really
go right in concert with the goals of the group?
You're empowering them and helping them.
It's different from inspiring.
I might have a film or whatever that would
motivate too a little bit.
But it inspires.
It moves your emotions.
Motivation doesn't necessarily move your emotion.
It moves your abilities, your talents.
It gets your talents better.
I need my best player to shoot the ball.
When you shoot the ball, it's an inexact science.
You don't hit every time you shoot the ball.
Like we wouldn't be here today as a program
if it wasn't for Johnny Dawkins, my first All-American.
And he sometimes was too hard on himself.
And in a game, if he missed three or four shots
to begin with--
I knew he was going to take 16 to 20 shots in a game--
he could miss 4 and hit 10 in a row.
But if he missed the first four, he would stop shooting.
And that wouldn't be good for our team.
So I got a thing with him where if he missed
a few, at a timeout I said, I'm calling a play for you,
and you have to shoot the ball.
You have to shoot the ball.
For the next four minutes, every shot you take is my shot.
So you're 0 for 4 with yours.
At the next timeout--
you were 2 for 3 with my shots.
Keep taking my shots.
All right?
One of our most humble players was Grant Hill.
As a freshman, after our first practice,
I had two All-Americans on the team.
This is the team that won our first national championship.
After the first practice, I bring them to me
and I said, who's the best player on the team?
And they said, Grant Hill, our freshman-- first practice.
And I said, well, he does not know that.
And he is so humble you guys need
to talk to him throughout the season to get him to do more.
And one of the great passes in a national championship
game against Kansas--
Bobby Hurley's dribbling the ball down the court.
And at half-court, he sees Grant Hill,
and he throws it from half-court on the side towards the bucket.
And Grant Hill jumps way above the rim, gets it, and jams it.
[CROWD ROARING]
I have a picture of that.
That play started after that first practice.
We made each other better by saying, you are that good.
And I love that when you have that type of camaraderie where
the old is not intimidated by the young.
There's talk both ways, like--
we're going to be better if you're better.
I'm going to be better if you're better.
Let's all get better.
And that environment is the environment
that produces championships.
[CELLO PLAYING]
Motivation isn't always tactical.
Sometimes in the moment, you can get the most out of your team
by making them feel something so strongly they
rise to a higher level.
If you'll indulge me, I'd like to tell you
a really great story.
It's an inspirational story.
With the Olympic team in 2008, we went to New York,
and we're doing a publicity tour.
But then we went out on a ferry.
And I brought all of them over to the side of the boat,
and I said, there's the Statue of Liberty.
You see that other place over here?
That's called Ellis Island.
Do you know what Ellis Island is?
And a couple of them, they knew it.
And this is true.
I said, 100 years ago, my grandfather, Josef Pituch,
came from Poland.
And he was at Ellis Island.
And I'm in the Ellis Island Hall of Fame
because of my grandfather.
And my grandfather-- and this is where it's embellished--
I said, my grandfather's sitting there with two suitcases.
Wally's on his right.
Sasha's on his-- on his left.
He said, Wally, Sash, 100 years from now,
my grandson Mike is going to coach the United States Olympic
team.
Wally and Sasha-- ah, you're a dumb Polish guy.
There's no way that's going to happen.
He says, no, no.
Mike is gonna be really good.
And the guys on the team are laughing.
And I knew a little bit about their backgrounds,
whether it be from slavery or where
somebody had to pay a price for them to be there.
And I said-- and I said, you know, you're all laughing.
But there's a reason we're on this boat, and it's not us.
It's what somebody in our families
did for us, the sacrifices and the courage they had.
And I always liked to make sure that they
looked into the future.
And I get chills even telling this story.
I said-- on August 24, we're going
to be playing for the gold medal in Beijing.
And we're going to be introduced.
And our national anthem is going to be played.
And on that day, I want you to have your hand over your heart.
And I want you to dedicate that gold medal
game to the person you're thinking about
right now who has made it possible
for you to be in Beijing and to win a gold medal.
And it got really silent.
My feeling is to create situations
like that where people feel it.
And by the way, we did win the gold medal--
because they were inspired, they were playing for something
bigger than them, they owned it, they had common ground.
August 24 comes, everyone's like this,
and there are a few guys crying.
And so God bless them.
And that journey with them-- it was a short one--
but it was so damn fulfilling.
It was so damn fulfilling.
I know what you might be thinking--
like, that may work for you in sport.
But really, on the workplace, it sounds--
eh, you know.
Don't think that way.
You know, I had to make that decision coaching LeBron
James, Kobe Bryant, all these--
the best players in the world.
They loved it.
They did not like it.
They loved it.
And then try it.
Try it.
You have to try things so that you improve.
Like with the US team, when we won in Beijing in 2008,
my daughter and I wrote a book on it--
The Gold Standard.
And Jamie, my daughter, was talking to Kobe Bryant.
And Kobe said, you know, your dad and his staff--
they motivate me every day.
He said, I'm not accustomed to that.
I'm accustomed to getting paid.
You know, I get paid a lot of money.
It's so good to be motivated.
Someone is doing the little bit extra that's
needed to get extra out of me.
Although I think I'm giving everything I can,
that little bit of motivation helps
me give a little bit more.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
The word "fear" is not a bad thing.
You know, you shouldn't just lead by fear all the time.
But fear can be used as a vehicle
in developing an outstanding team at certain times.
Fear should not be introduced when
performance is involved because you're just going to get tight.
And the relationship that you would
form with that person based on fear--
it'll have a limit.
So I wouldn't use it in performance.
I found that that is not a good thing over the years.
However, when it comes to somebody violating
one of your standards or values when they're doing something
that's detrimental to themselves or to the team,
fear is a good thing.
Like look, you've got to change that.
If you don't change that, this is what I'm going to do.
Or-- I'm already doing that.
You have-- they have to be held accountable.
Fearful-- they should be fearful.
Yeah, because they should know that you are going to back up
what you're going to do.
I would tell a kid, you know, look, I've done that before.
This is between the two of us right now.
If you don't change, I'm getting your parents involved, okay?
And we're going to do this.
In other words, it can escalate more.
But it also gives you a chance to develop a really trusting
relationship with someone.
Like-- I'm going to work with you, but if you do this, boom.
This is going to happen.
I've always worked with somebody.
And then at times--
very, very seldom-- you had to stop that relationship.
Very seldom-- but it shouldn't be that's the first thing
you do.
Because the potential-- if he's on-- he or she is on your team,
means that you saw something in them that was really good.
If this thing that they're fighting or that doesn't fit
is in the way, if you removed it, you might find a treasure,
you know?
And so I wouldn't give up on it right away.
I wouldn't give up on that relationship.
Look, it's simple-- motivating people is really
connecting with people.
Motivating your team effectively requires
thought, strategy, and feelings.
As you get ready to motivate, consider your tone, time,
and place.
These levers will help you fine-tune your approach
to the moment.
Not everyone or every team is motivated in the same way.
And when all else fails, make your team feel.
Connect with the emotion of the moment.