Russell Rules: 11 Lessons on Leadership from the Twentieth Century's Greatest Winner

RUSSELL RULES Rule One: Learning should be a daily experience and a lifetime mission. Michelangelo said, “I have offended God and mankind because my work didn’t reach the quality it should have.” I always believed if Michelangelo felt that way, then I would always strive for the best because anything else would not be enough. Rule Two: Craftsmanshi

IDO NOT believe leaders are born leaders. Leadership is an acquired skill. And, most important, leadership, like swimming, has to be learned through active participation and practice. It cannot be learned solely through observation. Great leaders in my opinion possess three flexible skills: toughness, tenderness, and the ability to know when is the

I learned from him then, for the first time, that he had attended every one of my high school JV and varsity games, even when I was the last man on the bench and didn’t get a minutes’s worth of playing time. He told me he had sat up in the back behind our bench where I’d be sure not to see him. I asked him why he did that and he told me he wanted t

I didn’t know how I’d be received or if the way I saw myself would bother anyone else. I didn’t care. I wore facial hair, for instance—a sharp goatee and a thin mustache. Over time, I developed a calculated air of mystery so that my teammates would never be able to take me for granted (or later on to see that I happened to like them). I had a job t

With McKelvey, who had remained a lifelong friend, it was a little different. McKelvey was an outstanding rebounder who understood postitioning and timing. I was enormously helped by visualizing his moves, but again I was constrained because what I was really doing was imitating, not creating.

One final thought. Because I have gotten so much joy from the things I have done in my life, it has sometimes been hard to think that joy itself is a leadership quality. But it is. When a leader is obviously passionate and joyful in what he or she does, that is inevitably communicated. It sets a tone, a standard in which winning is not the only thi

Integrity always comes from within and, unlike dogma, always proceeds across a no-man’s-land of doubt, fear, and contradiction where the only reliable guide is fidelity to oneself.

Integrity is assuredly not an easy thing to define because it is so individual at its core, yet it is perhaps the single most essential quality needed by a leader. Integrity is about the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that go into how we make decisions, how we conduct ourselves in our day-to-day lives, who we are in the workplace and at home.

I did something else, too. Sitting there on the bus, I’d close my eyes and try to see each move these players made the same way I had “memorized” Michelangelo and Leonardo. As I saw them move in my mind’s eye, I imagined myself as their shadow or mirror image. Every movement, every subtle gesture they made, I made in reverse, till I knew that I cou

To get the most out of being a member of a team it is absolutely essential to establish yourself as an integral part of the unit. That is your responsibility, not anyone else’s.