Trillion Dollar Coach

by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle

Coaching is in vogue: it used to be just athletes and entertainers who had coaches, but now we have leaders taking on executive coaches and employees learning from speaking coaches. The reality, though, is that a formal coach will see only a fraction of the moments where you could benefit from feedback and guidance.

My Google colleagues did one better: they launched a major study, which they published as Project Aristotle, to identify the distinguishing characteristics of their most successful teams. The five key factors could have been taken right out of Bill Campbell’s playbook. Excellent teams at Google had psychological safety (people knew that if they took risks, their manager would have their back). The teams had clear goals, each role was meaningful, and members were reliable and confident that the team’s mission would make a difference.

As our colleague Patrick Pichette, Google’s former CFO, puts it, when you have all of these factors in play and a team of ambitious, opinionated, competitive, smart people, there is tremendous “tension in the machine.” This tension is a good thing; if you don’t have it you will fade to irrelevance. But the tension makes it harder to cultivate community, and community is necessary to cultivate success.

To balance the tension and mold a team into a community, you need a coach, someone who works not only with individuals but also with the team as a whole to smooth out the constant tension, continuously nurture the community, and make sure it is aligned around a common vision and set of goals.

A 2014 study finds that it is the most insecure managers who are threatened by suggestions from others (in other words, coaching). So, conversely, publicly accepting a coach can actually be a sign of confidence.13

Every sports team needs a coach, and the best coaches make good teams great. The same goes in business: any company that wants to succeed in a time where technology has suffused every industry and most aspects of consumer life, where speed and innovation are paramount, must have team coaching as part of its culture. Coaching is the best way to mold effective people into powerful teams.

“Bill, your title makes you a manager; your people make you a leader.”fn2 Bill took that to heart. He once sent a note to a valuable manager who was struggling, counseling him that “you have demanded respect, rather than having it accrue to you. You need to project humility, a selflessness, that projects that you care about the company and about people.”

IT’S THE PEOPLE People are the foundation of any company’s success. The primary job of each manager is to help people be more effective in their job and to grow and develop. We have great people who want to do well, are capable of doing great things, and come to work fired up to do them. Great people flourish in an environment that liberates and amplifies that energy. Managers create this environment through support, respect, and trust. Support means giving people the tools, information, training, and coaching they need to succeed. It means continuous effort to develop people’s skills. Great managers help people excel and grow. Respect means understanding people’s unique career goals and being sensitive to their life choices. It means helping people achieve these career goals in a way that’s consistent with the needs of the company. Trust means freeing people to do their jobs and to make decisions. It means knowing people want to do well and believing that they will.

a Google internal study in 2008 (one that Bill loved) proved that teams with managers who regularly practiced a set of eight behaviors had lower turnover and higher satisfaction and performance. Topping the list of behaviors: “is a good coach.”fn3

Bill had us pay close attention to running meetings well; “get the 1:1 right” and “get the staff meeting right” are tops on the list of his most important management principles. He felt that these meetings are the most important tools available to executives in running the company, and that each one should be approached thoughtfully.

START WITH TRIP REPORTS TO BUILD RAPPORT AND BETTER RELATIONSHIPS AMONG TEAM MEMBERS, START TEAM MEETINGS WITH TRIP REPORTS, OR OTHER TYPES OF MORE PERSONAL, NON-BUSINESS TOPICS.

Bill took great care in preparing for one-on-one meetings. Remember, he believed the most important thing a manager does is to help people be more effective and to grow and develop, and the 1:1 is the best opportunity to accomplish that.

5 WORDS ON A WHITEBOARD HAVE A STRUCTURE FOR 1:1S, AND TAKE THE TIME TO PREPARE FOR THEM, AS THEY ARE THE BEST WAY TO HELP PEOPLE BE MORE EFFECTIVE AND TO GROW.

BILL’S FRAMEWORK FOR 1:1S AND REVIEWS PERFORMANCE ON JOB REQUIREMENTS • Could be sales figures • Could be product delivery or product milestones • Could be customer feedback or product quality • Could be budget numbers RELATIONSHIP WITH PEER GROUPS (This is critical for company integration and cohesiveness) • Product and Engineering • Marketing and Product • Sales and Engineering MANAGEMENT/LEADERSHIP • Are you guiding/coaching your people? • Are you weeding out the bad ones? • Are you working hard at hiring? • Are you able to get your people to do heroic things? INNOVATION (BEST PRACTICES) • Are you constantly moving ahead … thinking about how to continually get better? • Are you constantly evaluating new technologies, new products, new practices? • Do you measure yourself against the best in the industry/world?

This is consistent with the King Arthur round-table model of decision making that Bill described to Brad Smith when Brad became CEO of Intuit. (As Brad tells us this story, he points out the model of the legendary table, with a full complement of seated knights, that sits in the corner of his office.) If you have the right conversation, Bill counseled, then eight out of ten times people will reach the best conclusion on their own. But the other two times you need to make the hard decision and expect that everyone will rally around it. There isn’t a head of that table, but there is a throne behind it.

THE THRONE BEHIND THE ROUND TABLE THE MANAGER’S JOB IS TO RUN A DECISION-MAKING PROCESS THAT ENSURES ALL PERSPECTIVES GET HEARD AND CONSIDERED, AND, IF NECESSARY, TO BREAK TIES AND MAKE THE DECISION.

LEAD BASED ON FIRST PRINCIPLES DEFINE THE “FIRST PRINCIPLES” FOR THE SITUATION, THE IMMUTABLE TRUTHS THAT ARE THE FOUNDATION FOR THE COMPANY OR PRODUCT, AND HELP GUIDE THE DECISION FROM THOSE PRINCIPLES.

MANAGE THE ABERRANT GENIUS ABERRANT GENIUSES—HIGH-PERFORMING BUT DIFFICULT TEAM MEMBERS—SHOULD BE TOLERATED AND EVEN PROTECTED, AS LONG AS THEIR BEHAVIOR ISN’T UNETHICAL OR ABUSIVE AND THEIR VALUE OUTWEIGHS THE TOLL THEIR BEHAVIOR TAKES ON MANAGEMENT, COLLEAGUES, AND TEAMS.

MONEY’S NOT ABOUT MONEY COMPENSATING PEOPLE WELL DEMONSTRATES LOVE AND RESPECT AND TIES THEM STRONGLY TO THE GOALS OF THE COMPANY.

“The purpose of a company is to take the vision you have of the product and bring it to life,” he said once at a conference. “Then you put all the other components around it—finance, sales, marketing—to get the product out the door and make sure it’s successful.”

INNOVATION IS WHERE THE CRAZY PEOPLE HAVE STATURE THE PURPOSE OF A COMPANY IS TO BRING A PRODUCT VISION TO LIFE. ALL THE OTHER COMPONENTS ARE IN SERVICE TO PRODUCT.

HEADS HELD HIGH IF YOU HAVE TO LET PEOPLE GO, BE GENEROUS, TREAT THEM WELL, AND CELEBRATE THEIR ACCOMPLISHMENTS.

Bill’s perspective on boards starts with this observation: the CEO manages the board and board meetings, not the other way around.23 fn12 Board meetings fail when the CEO doesn’t own and follow her agenda.

That agenda should always start with operational updates: the board needs to know how the company is doing. That includes financial and sales reports, product status, and metrics around operational rigor (hiring, communications, marketing, support). If the board has committees, for example to oversee audit and finance or compensation, have those committees meet ahead of time (in person or via phone or video conference) and present updates at the board meeting. The first order of business always needs to be a frank, open, succinct discussion about how the company is performing.

Who should be on the board? Smart people with good business expertise who care deeply about the company and are genuinely interested in helping and supporting the CEO.

He was also quite clear about what a bad board member looks like: “Someone who just walks in and wants to be the smartest guy in the room and talks too much.”

BILL ON BOARDS IT’S THE CEO’S JOB TO MANAGE BOARDS, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.

Remember, this was a guy who went from college football coach to senior executive at a Fortune 500 company in less than five years. He was a superb business executive. And he did it through practicing the points covered in this chapter: operational excellence, putting people first, being decisive, communicating well, knowing how to get the most out of even the most challenging people, focusing on product excellence, and treating people well when they are let go.

For Bill, trust was always first and foremost; it was sort of his superpower. He was great at establishing it, and once established, he was great at honoring it.

Trust is a multifaceted concept, so what do we mean by it? One academic paper defines trust as “the willingness to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations about another’s behavior.”1 That’s a bit of an academic mouthful, but it captures the essential point that trust means people feel safe to be vulnerable.

— Easy to trust those who are self sufficient because you dont need to be on your guard to whether they need somethingfrom you

Trust means you keep your word. If you told Bill you were going to do something, you did it. And the same applied to him; his word was always good. Trust means loyalty. To each other, to your family and friends, and to your team and company. Bill was one of the few Apple executives to fight to keep Steve Jobs when he was let go from the company in 1985. Steve never forgot that expression of loyalty, which later became the basis for their close friendship and working relationship. Trust means integrity. Bill was always honest, and he expected the same in return. And it means ability, the trust that you actually had the talent, skills, power, and diligence to accomplish what you promised. Trust means discretion. When Eric was CEO of Google, one of his team members was diagnosed with a serious medical condition (he later fully recovered) but chose not to share it with Eric or the rest of the team. The only person who knew was Bill, who told no one. Eric later found out, and rather than be annoyed that Bill kept the information from him, he was happy to learn that Bill was so trustworthy. Bill could keep a secret, even from Eric, and so could act as a confidant to anyone on the team. This is very valuable to a coach, who always needs to know what’s going on, but also needs to be seen by his coachees as someone who honors their privacy.

Perhaps the idea that trust is a cornerstone of business success belongs in the “well duh, Captain Obvious” bucket. But it is missing from many of today’s business books, and it never came up as a factor in Google’s success when we were researching and writing our previous book, How Google Works. So it was somewhat of a surprise to us that when we interviewed the dozens of successful businesspeople Bill had mentored, the word came up again and again.

here.” Establishing trust is a key component to building what is now called “psychological safety” in teams. Team psychological safety, according to a 1999 Cornell study, is a “shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking … a team climate … in which people are comfortable being themselves.”

How did Bill do it? First, he only coached the coachable. Then, if you passed that test, he listened intently, practiced complete candor, believed that his coachees could achieve remarkable things, and was intensely loyal.

Bill sat back down and talked about how he chose the people he was going to work with based on humility. Leadership is not about you, it’s about service to something bigger: the company, the team. Bill believed that good leaders grow over time, that leadership accrues to them from their teams. He thought people who were curious and wanted to learn new things were best suited for this. There was no room in this formula for smart alecks and their hubris. Bill then asked, “What do you want to get out of a coach?” This felt like, and indeed was, a change-your-life-forever moment. And Jonathan couldn’t think of anything to say. Finally and fortunately, in what football fans might call a Hail Mary play, he remembered a quote from Tom Landry, who coached the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys for twenty-nine years, a stint that included twenty straight winning seasons and two Super Bowl titles. “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.” That’s what I want, Jonathan told Bill.

Bill’s opposition to bullshitters wasn’t as much about their dishonesty with others as it was about their dishonesty with themselves. To be coachable, you need to be brutally honest, starting with yourself. As Hennessy says, “People who generate a lot of BS aren’t coachable. They start to believe what they are saying. They shade the truth to conform to their BS, which makes the BS even more dangerous.”

— Maybe coaching companies as mandatory will weed out narcissists

ONLY COACH THE COACHABLE THE TRAITS THAT MAKE A PERSON COACHABLE INCLUDE HONESTY AND HUMILITY, THE WILLINGNESS TO PERSEVERE AND WORK HARD, AND A CONSTANT OPENNESS TO LEARNING.

PRACTICE FREE-FORM LISTENING LISTEN TO PEOPLE WITH YOUR FULL AND UNDIVIDED ATTENTION—DON’T THINK AHEAD TO WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO SAY NEXT—AND ASK QUESTIONS TO GET TO THE REAL ISSUE.

A straight shooter if there ever was one. Google board member and former Amazon executive Ram Shriram: “Bill was always transparent; there was no hidden agenda. There was no gap between his statements and fact. They were always the same.” Intuit cofounder Scott Cook: “He really taught me about honesty and authenticity in giving feedback. You can keep someone’s respect and loyalty while delivering tough news about their performance.” Bill’s candor worked because we always knew it was coming from a place of caring. Former Googler Kim Scott, author of the excellent book Radical Candor, says that being a great boss means “saying what you really think in a way that still lets people know you care.”12 In the Dan Rosensweig anecdote, for example, Bill accomplishes this with humor, delivering a tough message (nongrowth CEO) with a funny prop (green eyeshade). You’d have to care to wear that thing!

Diane Greene, the head of Google Cloud and former VMware CEO who worked with Bill when they were on the board at Intuit, learned from Bill to never embarrass someone publicly. “When I’m really annoyed or frustrated with what someone is doing,” she says, “I step back and force myself to think about what they are doing well and what their value is. You can always find something. If we’re in public, I’ll praise them on that. I’ll give constructive feedback as soon as I can, but only when the person is feeling safe. Once they are feeling safe and supported, then I’ll say ‘by the way’ and provide the feedback. I got this from Bill. He would always do this in a supportive way.”

NO GAP BETWEEN STATEMENTS AND FACT BE RELENTLESSLY HONEST AND CANDID, COUPLE NEGATIVE FEEDBACK WITH CARING, GIVE FEEDBACK AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, AND IF THE FEEDBACK IS NEGATIVE, DELIVER IT PRIVATELY.

Scholars would describe Bill’s approach—listening, providing honest feedback, demanding candor—as “relational transparency,” which is a core characteristic of “authentic leadership.”13 Wharton professor Adam Grant has another term for it: “disagreeable givers.” He notes in an email to us that “we often feel torn between supporting and challenging others. Social scientists reach the same conclusion for leadership as they do for parenting: it’s a false dichotomy. You want to be supportive and demanding, holding high standards and expectations but giving the encouragement necessary to reach them. Basically, it’s tough love. Disagreeable givers are gruff and tough on the surface, but underneath they have others’ best interests at heart. They give the critical feedback no one wants to hear but everyone needs to hear.”

DON’T STICK IT IN THEIR EAR DON’T TELL PEOPLE WHAT TO DO; OFFER STORIES AND HELP GUIDE THEM TO THE BEST DECISIONS FOR THEM.

This quality of constant encouragement, of being the person to give energy, has been shown to be one of the most important aspects of effective coaching.

BE THE EVANGELIST FOR COURAGE BELIEVE IN PEOPLE MORE THAN THEY BELIEVE IN THEMSELVES, AND PUSH THEM TO BE MORE COURAGEOUS.

FULL IDENTITY FRONT AND CENTER PEOPLE ARE MOST EFFECTIVE WHEN THEY CAN BE COMPLETELY THEMSELVES AND BRING THEIR FULL IDENTITY TO WORK.

That the team wins has to be the most important thing. Perhaps Charles Darwin said it best in his book The Descent of Man: “A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection.”1

WORK THE TEAM, THEN THE PROBLEM

Shouldn’t we get more details on how we are working on this? There was some back-and-forth, then Bill spoke up. Don’t worry, he said, we have the right team in place. They are working the problem. “I learned something from that,” Ram says. “Bill didn’t work the problem first, he worked the team. We didn’t talk about the problem analytically. We talked about the people on the team and if they could get it done.”

What is the situation? What are the issues? What are the options? And so on. These are valid questions, but the coach’s instinct is to lead with a more fundamental one. Who was working on the problem? Was the right team in place? Did they have what they needed to succeed? “When I became CEO of Google,” Sundar Pichai says, “Bill advised me that at that level, more than ever before, you need to bet on people. Choose your team. Think much harder about that.”

WORK THE TEAM, THEN THE PROBLEM WHEN FACED WITH A PROBLEM OR OPPORTUNITY, THE FIRST STEP IS TO ENSURE THE RIGHT TEAM IS IN PLACE AND WORKING ON IT.

PICK THE RIGHT PLAYERS “If you’re running a company, you have to surround yourself with really, really good people,” Bill said. Not one of his most surprising statements: it is a tired business mantra to always hire people smarter than yourself. “Everybody that is managing a function on behalf of the CEO ought to be better at that function than the CEO.

Bill looked for four characteristics in people. The person has to be smart, not necessarily academically but more from the standpoint of being able to get up to speed quickly in different areas and then make connections. Bill called this the ability to make “far analogies.” The person has to work hard, and has to have high integrity. Finally, the person should have that hard-to-define characteristic: grit. The ability to get knocked down and have the passion and perseverance to get up and go at it again. He would tolerate a lot of other faults if he thought a person had those four characteristics. When he interviewed job candidates to assess these points, he wouldn’t just ask about what a person did, he would ask how they did it. If the person said they “led a project that led to revenue growth,” asking how they achieved that growth will tell you a lot about how they were involved in the project. Were they hands-on? Were they doers? Did they build the team? He would listen for the pronouns: does the person say “I” (could signify a me-first mentality) or “we” (a potential indicator of a team player)?2 fn2

Bill valued courage: the willingness to take risks and the willingness to stand up for what’s right for the team, which may entail taking a personal risk. Earlier in his Google career, before he became CEO, Sundar Pichai would often speak up when he felt something wasn’t the right choice, both to us and later to Larry Page when he was CEO. That takes some guts, but as Sundar says, “Bill always appreciated it when I spoke my mind about difficult issues because he knew I cared about the company and the products, and that’s where I was coming from.”

Bill appreciated high cognitive abilities, but he also understood the value of soft skills, like empathy, that aren’t always valued in businesses, especially tech ones. At Google, he helped us learn to appreciate that this combination—smarts and hearts—creates better managers. He did not overemphasize experience. He looked at skills and mind-set, and he could project what you could become. This is a coach’s talent, the ability to see a player’s potential, not just current performance.

PICK THE RIGHT PLAYERS THE TOP CHARACTERISTICS TO LOOK FOR ARE SMARTS AND HEARTS: THE ABILITY TO LEARN FAST, A WILLINGNESS TO WORK HARD, INTEGRITY, GRIT, EMPATHY, AND A TEAM-FIRST ATTITUDE.

PAIR PEOPLE PEER RELATIONSHIPS ARE CRITICAL AND OFTEN OVERLOOKED, SO SEEK OPPORTUNITIES TO PAIR PEOPLE UP ON PROJECTS OR DECISIONS.

CORE ATTRIBUTES For the past 12 months, to what extent do you agree/disagree that each person: • Displayed extraordinary in-role performance. • Exemplified world-class leadership. • Achieved outcomes that were in the best interest of both Google as a whole and his/her organization. • Expanded the boundaries of what is possible for Google through innovation and/or application of best practices. • Collaborated effectively with peers (for example, worked well together, resolved barriers/issues with others) and championed the same in his/her team. • Contributed effectively during senior team meetings (for example, was prepared, participated actively, listened well, was open and respectful to others, disagreed constructively). PRODUCT LEADER ATTRIBUTES For the past 12 months, to what extent do you agree/disagree that each person demonstrated exemplary leadership in the following areas: • Product Vision • Product Quality • Product Execution OPEN-TEXT QUESTIONS • What differentiates each SVP and makes him/her effective today? • What advice would you give each SVP to be more effective and/or have greater impact?

GET TO THE TABLE WINNING DEPENDS ON HAVING THE BEST TEAM, AND THE BEST TEAMS HAVE MORE WOMEN.

SOLVE THE BIGGEST PROBLEM IDENTIFY THE BIGGEST PROBLEM, THE “ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM,” BRING IT FRONT AND CENTER, AND TACKLE IT FIRST.

Bill always made sure that problems were aired completely and transparently. And then, once that was accomplished, he moved on. “That’s one of the big things he taught me,” Eddy says. “When it gets to the negative, get it out, get to the issues, but don’t let the damn meeting dwell on that. Don’t let bitch sessions last for very long.” Psychologists would call this approach “problem-focused coping,” in contrast to “emotion-focused coping.” The latter may be more appropriate when facing a problem that can’t be solved, but in a business context focusing on and venting emotions needs to happen quickly, so more energy is directed to solutions.8

DON’T LET THE BITCH SESSIONS LAST AIR ALL THE NEGATIVE ISSUES, BUT DON’T DWELL ON THEM. MOVE ON AS FAST AS POSSIBLE.

WINNING RIGHT STRIVE TO WIN, BUT ALWAYS WIN RIGHT, WITH COMMITMENT, TEAMWORK, AND INTEGRITY.

LEADERS LEAD WHEN THINGS ARE GOING BAD, TEAMS ARE LOOKING FOR EVEN MORE LOYALTY, COMMITMENT, AND DECISIVENESS FROM THEIR LEADERS.

“Bill had the highest capacity to understand the people he was working with. He had an intuitive sense of people and what motivated them and how to move them forward.” He accomplished a lot of this by looking for tension, the smoke to a problem’s fire.

FILL THE GAPS BETWEEN PEOPLE LISTEN, OBSERVE, AND FILL THE COMMUNICATION AND UNDERSTANDING GAPS BETWEEN PEOPLE.

PERMISSION TO BE EMPATHETIC LEADING TEAMS BECOMES A LOT MORE JOYFUL, AND THE TEAMS MORE EFFECTIVE, WHEN YOU KNOW AND CARE ABOUT THE PEOPLE.

Love is a word you don’t hear a lot in business settings. Oh sure, maybe people will express love toward an idea, a product, a brand, or a plan. Or to that dessert they are serving in the cafeteria today. But not to a person. We’ve all been conditioned and trained to separate our personal emotions from the business environment. We all want to hire people with passion, but only in the business sense, of course, lest the lawyers and HR people get concerned. So what happens, what we live with daily, is an existence where our human selves and working selves are practically separate beings. But not Bill. He didn’t separate the human and working selves; he just treated everyone as a person: professional, personal, family, emotions … all the components wrapped up in one.

TOP TEN “BILLISMS” Bill often had a unique way of telling you that he loved you. These are his top ten favorites, as recalled by his Columbia friend and teammate Ted Gregory. They were printed on the back page of the program given to guests at Bill’s memorial service. 10. “You should have that shirt cleaned and burned.” 9. “You’re as dumb as a post.” 8. “He’s one of the great horse’s asses of our time.” 7. “You’re a numbnuts.” 6. “You couldn’t run a five-flat forty-yard dash off a cliff.” 5. “You’ve got hands like feet.” 4. “You’d fuck up a free lunch.” 3. “You’re so fucked up you make me look good.” 2. “Don’t fuck it up.” 1. “That’s the sound of your head coming out of your ass.”

THE LOVELY RESET TO CARE ABOUT PEOPLE YOU HAVE TO CARE ABOUT PEOPLE: ASK ABOUT THEIR LIVES OUTSIDE OF WORK, UNDERSTAND THEIR FAMILIES, AND WHEN THINGS GET ROUGH, SHOW UP.

Today Clay has incorporated the “Bill Campbell clap”—the BCC—into the culture of the team. When someone announces something good in a meeting, someone else will erupt with five loud claps. If someone gives a burst of applause in the office, people will ask, “What was the BCC for?” Clay includes the BCC in training given to new team members; they even practice it in orientation. That team has hundreds of people now, every one of whom has learned Bill’s percussive clap.

THE PERCUSSIVE CLAP CHEER DEMONSTRABLY FOR PEOPLE AND THEIR SUCCESSES.

“Bill fed off of the energy of people in his communities, the energy they generated as a result of being part of the community, and the same can be said for the people that he coached. In that way, he was a sort of perpetual motion machine.”

ALWAYS BUILD COMMUNITIES BUILD COMMUNITIES INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF WORK. A PLACE IS MUCH STRONGER WHEN PEOPLE ARE CONNECTED.

HELP PEOPLE BE GENEROUS WITH YOUR TIME, CONNECTIONS, AND OTHER RESOURCES.

LOVE THE FOUNDERS HOLD A SPECIAL REVERENCE FOR—AND PROTECT—THE PEOPLE WITH THE MOST VISION AND PASSION FOR THE COMPANY.

THE ELEVATOR CHAT LOVING COLLEAGUES IN THE WORKPLACE MAY BE CHALLENGING, SO PRACTICE IT UNTIL IT BECOMES MORE NATURAL.