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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The Cloak Room

By 11 o'clock one night, only a few senators remained in the Democratic cloak room. One was writing notes in his folio. Another was pacing back and forth in contemplation. A couple of others were listening attentively to a senior senator pull from his seemingly endless stable of jokes. Another senator--all 6 feet 5 inches of him--stood by the window taking in the whole scene. The anxiousness that he had felt for the previous 4 months as a freshman senator left him at that moment, replaced by a growing sensation of calm. "You know," he thought to himself, "this really isn't a whole lot different from the Knicks' locker room."

His former career as a professional basketball player had given him a wealth of experience from which to draw upon in the US Senate. "It turned out that how I conducted myself in the interpersonal dynamics of the Senate was the same as when I was on the Knicks," Bill Bradley told me some 27 years after that night in the cloak room.

When Bill Bradley began playing basketball in fourth grade in his hometown of Crystal City, Missouri, he did it alone. Bradley's father, a devoted bank manager whose greatest thrill in life was never foreclosing on a customer's home throughout the Great Depression, "didn't even know what basketball was," Bradley says. "He didn't see a basketball game until I was in the seventh grade."

As a teenager, Bradley spent hours upon hours alone in the gym shooting. And shooting. And shooting. He loved the sound of the basketball hitting the polished wooden floor and echoing off of the empty stands. He became addicted to the swish of the ball sailing through the net and the feel of his fingertips in just the right places on the seam of the leather ball. The repetition of dribbling and shooting became a kind of ritual for Bradley. He stayed out on that floor day after day, week after week, year after year. Before he allowed himself to leave the gym each day, he had to make 25 consecutive shots from five different spots around the floor. "Sometimes I would get to 23 and miss the 24th and have to start all over," he said.

Bradley's work ethic was stoked by a comment that he remembers to this day. After his first year in high school, "Easy" Ed McCauley, a former pro basketball player for the Boston Celtics and a local basketball icon in Crystal City, shared words that made a deep impression on the young Bill: "If you're not practicing, just remember--someone somewhere is practicing, and when you two meet, given roughly equal ability, he will win."

While Bradley insists that practice makes perfect, he acknowledges that there are some natural gifts that helped make him a basketball star; his height and extraordinary peripheral vision are two. But as Bradley says it, "there is no greater myth in basketball than the 'natural athlete.'" Natural ability, as we will see over and over in this book, can take you only so far.

Not only did he dedicate himself to maximizing his abilities by practicing harder than anyone else, Bradley also loved the team aspect of the game. By the time he made it to Princeton, Bradley felt an overwhelming emotion about his team and a devotion to his teammates: "Something like blood kinship, but without its complications." Bradley took almost perverse joy in "the improbable pass" that made his teammate the star. "It's seeing the pass that leads to the pass that leads to the basket," Bradley says. "When your teammate goes back door because the other guy is overplaying him and you drop a bounce pass perfectly in his hands, arriving at the exact place he needs to get the ball in order to finish the shot and he makes it, it's a transcendent moment. You're then taken someplace out of this world--at least for 5 seconds."

Bradley has always been ambitious both for himself and for the teams and organizations of which he was a member. He was a master at setting concrete goals and pursuing them with focus, action plans, hard work, and dedication. One of the characteristics of Bradley's goals and achievements, similar to most champions, is that they are like building blocks, one resting on top of the other. For example, he wanted his Crystal City High School team to win the Missouri state basketball championship (they did, helping him become a three-time all-American in the process). He wanted his beloved Princeton team to win the (National Collegiate Athletic Association) crown (mission almost accomplished; his senior year the team finished number 3 in the NCAA tournament, the best finish in the university's history). Bradley set individual goals as well. He wanted to earn academic honors and become a Rhodes Scholar (he did, and went on to Oxford University's Worcester College for his master's degree). He wanted to earn a spot on the US Olympic team and help the team win a gold medal (not only did he make it, he was elected captain of the 1964 team that indeed won the gold). He wanted to make it into the NBA and be a part of a championship team (his career with the New York Knicks included two NBA championships and election into the Basketball Hall of Fame). He wanted to be elected to the US Senate (his three terms allowed him to serve for 18 years). Finally, he wanted to be elected president of the United States (well, even Bradley couldn't accomplish that one). "The fact that I lost the nomination [in 2000] and therefore lost the chance to be president was a real blow for me," Bradley confided. "But then I realized that it would be foolish to define myself only in terms of being president of the United States. That would be the ultimate form of letting your identity and success be defined from the outside."

LAYING THE GROUNDWORK

Not every talented athlete can make it to and succeed in the pros. And not every professional athlete, even the most ambitious, most popular, brightest, and hardest working one, can succeed to the degree of being elected to the US Senate. What made the difference for Bradley? For starters, early in his career he laid the groundwork for his long-term goal of a career in politics and public service. During the off-season, he traveled extensively in the United States and internationally, meeting with social activists, journalists, government officials, academics, and business professionals to expand his knowledge and develop important relationships. He also participated in basketball camps serving disadvantaged youths and taught at the Urban League in Harlem. Beyond New York, Bradley also worked as an assistant to the director of the Office of Economic Opportunity in Washington, D.C., developing a reputation for intelligence and teamwork in influential Democratic circles. In 1978, coupling his reputation as a "thinker" and team player with his popularity from the Knicks, Bradley was able to garner the votes needed to be elected to the US Senate.

With this goal achieved, he set a new one: becoming a highly respected senator known for wise international policies and getting legislation implemented. His attitude and approach were a direct carryover from basketball. Bradley recognized that the objectives were similar: to get people from disparate backgrounds to come together and to cooperate in achieving a common end. He conducted himself in the Senate as he had when he played on the Knicks. "We used to have a joke," he said, "that how a Democrat succeeded in a Republican Senate was to have a good idea and let them steal it." Bradley believes that the improbable pass and its equivalent in a workplace setting is just as rewarding off the court as it was on the court. "If you are truly interested in the success of your endeavor," Bradley says, "then credit is something that you can easily trade away in order to achieve it."

Success rarely falls from the sky and drops in your lap; you generally achieve it in each place you visit, and it grows in your travels along the way. More than 4 decades later, Bradley's Princeton classmates look prescient in retrospect. In their "1965 Senior Class Poll," a half-serious, half-kidding list of 81 different awards, ranging from "Biggest Socialite" and "Most Impeccably Dressed" to "Most Ambitious" and "Most Brilliant," Bradley racked up a few honors that were to foretell his future. He was named "Most Popular," "Best Athlete," "Most Likely to Succeed," and, best of all, "Princeton's Greatest Asset."

An all-American basketball player at Princeton University, Rhodes Scholar, member of the NBA champion team the New York Knicks, long-serving United States senator, and US presidential candidate in the 2000 Democratic primaries. What conceivable relevance could Bill Bradley's career path possibly hold for you or me? Actually, much more than meets the eye.

THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF GREATNESS

Let's start with what it is about Bradley that helped him achieve the goals he set for himself. For starters, credit his natural attributes--Bradley's height, his gifted intellect, and a visual capability that allowed him to "see" the entire court (his peripheral vision allows him to see almost 180 degrees). But how many people with all the brains or physical gifts in the world sputter, only to leave their potential unfulfilled? It was obviously much more than that. Add to his naturally endowed capacities Bradley's prodigious work ethic, which he channeled into highly directed practice. Beyond practicing with his team, he pushed himself in daily personal training sessions, which emphasized repeating and measuring important specialized actions that when mastered--the foul shot, the fadeaway jumper, the hook--enabled him to deliver when it counted most in competition.

Talent and hard work are a good start. These two attributes are enough to make almost anyone a strong performer in sports, business, law, medicine, or any other field. But what separates the high school star from the professional athlete, and the everyday pro from the Hall of Famer? What is it about the corporate executive that sets him apart from the middle manager, and what prevents that same executive from reaching the rank of top-performing chief executive officer?

To achieve greatness requires something more, something subtle. It demands the acquisition and application of traits common to the most superior performers in sports, business, or any other endeavor: mental toughness and the ability to stay calm and collected at the big moments. In sports, it's called being in the zone. In business, it's having the knowhow to get the most important things done when it counts most, thereby delivering the best results. Whether it was on the court for the final shot, in the Senate negotiating rooms during the late-hour brokering sessions to get legislation passed, or in boardrooms coming to terms in final deal points, Bradley has been able to move into the zone, get things done, solve the most difficult problems, and deliver results time and time again at critical moments.

So, are these ingredients--natural ability, hard work, and mental toughness- -the secrets to a special formula for greatness? While living by these attributes day in and day out is a proven success formula, it isn't really much of a secret. As I pursued the research for this book, I believed there had to be something else; some undefined qualities that separate the star performers from the rest. I set about searching for those characteristics in order to expand on a set of questions I've been studying for more than a decade. Namely, what does it take to achieve greatness? What are the building block components? Can they be learned, and if so, how?

Over the years, I have addressed these questions first and foremost by interviewing and evaluating many of the world's best business leaders. Along with a colleague, I also analyzed the work experiences of more than one million professionals to distill the patterns of extraordinary careers. But now I wanted a different perspective, and ultimately I decided to study an alternate area of success. Namely, sports. What could I learn from the world's most inspiring athletes? What could be applied from their backgrounds, training regimens, mental disciplines, and competition experiences to help unleash all of the performance potential that resides in each of us? As a lifelong athlete and student of leadership, I was certain that there were hidden linkages between the world's top athletes and the greatest leaders in business. As a corollary, what could I learn from the process of speaking with the world's top athletes to maximize my individual potential and discover my inner--and deeply buried--Olympian?

MASTER CLASS

As a senior partner at Spencer Stuart, my professional life is dedicated to helping leading organizations around the world build their senior leadership teams. A core component of our work involves identifying the most talented leaders in business and developing trust-based relationships based on providing high-value advice on a confidential basis. In our executive search engagements, we work to align our clients' leadership requirements with the skills and aspirations of the most talented and highest-performing leaders. I have always believed that in every significant recruitment, whether recruiting Terry Semel to become chairman and CEO of Yahoo! in 2001, Jon Miller to become chairman and CEO of AOL in 2002, Antonio Perez to become COO (later CEO) of Eastman Kodak in 2003, Dan Glickman to succeed the legendary Jack Valenti as CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America in 2004, Bill Nuti to become CEO of NCR in 2005, Paula Kerger to become CEO of the Public Broadcasting Service in 2006, Joe Uva to become CEO of Univision Communications in 2007, or any one of the more than 350 other top executives I've recruited, there is a little part of myself left behind as a legacy.

As a complement to my work recruiting top executives, I have long been a dedicated student of leadership and success. I have contributed five books to the canon of the tens of thousands of published works on this subject. Outside of work and intellectual pursuits, I am an athlete and have been my entire life. Starting as an age-group swimmer at 8 years old, performing as a three-sport varsity athlete in both high school and college, and competing as a triathlete, marathoner, golfer, and tennis player as an adult, I have always been passionate about sports and fitness. I have experienced and observed powerful lessons from sports, and now I've studied its relation to performance, both mental and physical, and success in the professional workplace.

We live in a sports-crazed, youth-obsessed, and celebrity-oriented world. With 24/7 exposure magnified by sophisticated marketing, it is no surprise that some of today's heroes are the sports champions whose physical splendor, profound dedication, and icy mental toughness are held up to inspire. And in many cases, inspire they do. Go on, "Be a Tiger." "Put your Lance face on."