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It doesn’t take a superstar to field a winning team

Ego is a core concept for Russell. Though he said he never used the word during his Celtics career, it’s clear that suppressing his ego was a part of his history.

There are career coaches who will tell you how to swim with the sharks. There are incentive consultants who will urge you to shower employees with money and perks. There are headhunters who will advise you to groom superstars and pit them against one another to fuel their competitive drive.

By Robert Weisman

http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2004/04/04/it_doesnt_take_a_superstar_to_field_a_winning_team/

Then there is Bill Russell. Russell talks about the importance of merging individual egos into a team ego.

The retired captain of the Boston Celtics, now 70, holds no business degree and has never run a management consulting firm. But he does know quite a bit about winning. And he remembers what he told himself when he was suiting up for a game against Wilt Chamberlain in a year when Chamberlain was averaging 50 points a game.

”I said I will not get into an individual competition with him," Russell recalled. ”I will do whatever it takes for the Celtics to win."

And win they did. In his 13 years as the team’s center, the Celtics won 11 championships in the National Basketball Association. And Russell, who epitomized selfless play, won five Most Valuable Player awards, including in Chamberlain’s high-scoring season of 1962. Russell, who now lives on Mercer Island, Wash., but is still instantly recognized on his return trips to Boston, often has been described as the greatest winner in 20th-century American sports.

So when he talks about egoless business, as he does these days in a part-time role as a business motivator, people pay attention.

For Russell, the notion of a team ego is at the heart of winning. ”I learned to play without the ball," he said in an interview at the Seaport Hotel last week. ”As I became part of the team system, we all realized how important it was not to have the ball. The important thing was for the Celtics to have the ball. It didn’t make any difference who did what. By the end of my first year, we had evolved to that."

Russell was in Boston for an event sponsored by the Porter Novelli public relations firm. He spoke about team ego and told some basketball stories before an audience of about 80 in the atrium of Porter Novelli’s building.

Business leaders often draw on sports as a metaphor, said Roger Berkowitz, president and chief executive of Boston’s Legal Sea Foods Inc., who sat on a panel with Russell at the event. For Berkowitz, Russell’s talk about team ego and knowing one’s role translated into a lesson about building a corporate culture. ”Some leaders treat everyone the same," Berkowitz said. ”They don’t see the importance of role players."

People in corporate offices listen to Russell’s message, said Mark Fredrickson, vice president at EMC Corp. ”When he says the Boston Celtics, the most successful team ever, never had a [league] scoring leader, it makes you understand a lot about the team concept."

Fredrickson agrees Russell’s message is applicable to the business world. ”The point is, you can have the best individual in his position sitting in your midst, and that doesn’t mean you’re going to be the number one company," he said. ”Businesses can’t accomplish anything as a collection of individuals. You have to work together as a team."

On a previous trip to Boston, in January, Russell came out to EMC headquarters in Hopkinton and met with a small audience of about a dozen executives and rank-and-file employees. ”We talked about the concept of Celtic pride and how it related to EMC pride," Fredrickson said. ”It’s easy to think of these things as cliches, but when it comes from someone like Bill Russell, the message really hits home."

Ego is a core concept for Russell. Though he said he never used the word during his Celtics career, it’s clear that suppressing his ego was a part of his personal history. Russell recalled that he became comfortable playing without the ball because his college coach never ran a play that required him to shoot. On the Celtics, he learned to contribute to a paramount team ego by rebounding, passing, and playing to the strengths of his teammates. Russell had a good relationship with his Celtics coach, Red Auerbach, and still talks with him regularly.

Elements of Auerbach’s philosophy were embraced by Russell during his days as a Celtics player coach and, later, coach of the Seattle Supersonics. ”The best use of power is not to have to use it," Russell said. ”Red was a coach, but he rarely told us what to do. He told us what we had to accomplish."

Robert Weisman can be reached at [email protected].
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.

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