How Gregg Popovich Motivates NBA Players and Establishes Accountability on the Spurs
How do you manage powerful personalities and hold them accountable to the standards of the team?
No leader deals with a more unique power dynamic than the coach of an NBA team filled with million dollar players. San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich is one of the best coaches at handling this unique dynamic, and in this excerpt he gives a great lesson on how to establish honest communication and accountability with all players - from superstars to bench-warmers.
San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich shares How to Motivate Players and Establish Accountability at the 9:30 mark of the video
Popovich on Accountability Through Honest Communication
"I think you have to have accountability. For us, the thing that works best is total, brutal, between-the-eyes honesty. I never try to trick a player or manipulate them, tell them something that I'm going to have to change next week.
If it's Tim Duncan and it's a timeout and I don't think he's doing what he should be doing, I'll ask him, ‘Are you gonna rebound tonight? Are you gonna rebound at all? Or are you just gonna walk up and down and then we're gonna go to dinner? What are we gonna do?’ And he'll listen and then he'll walk back out on the court and say, ‘Hey Pop, thanks for the motivation."‘ Because he's wise ass.”
Popovich on Holding Everyone to the Same Standards:
“But I think being honest with people is great. Somebody's doing well — you tell them they did well. But you don't have a different system for [star players]. And a lot of people are afraid of that. You want the best players to like you for all the reasons. It won't work. It'll bite you in the bum after awhile. You need to have the same standards for everyone. You can treat people differently because each one is different, but they all have to march to the same drummer, to the same standards.”
(Video Credit FIBA with the above quotes coming from around the 9:30 mark on how to motivate players)
