The Fall of a Legend

(Photo by Bill Smith/Getty Images)

Six time NBA Champion, six time NBA Finals MVP, five time Most Valuable Player, Fourteen time NBA All Star. Ten time NBA scoring champion. Three time NBA steals champion. Orchestrator of the best record in NBA history. Olympic gold medalist. Michael Jordan had single-handedly built the NBA into a global sport and had transformed the sport into a massive multi-billion dollar enterprise. He had built his legend into something unimaginable But what made him the biggest winner within the court has made him the worst loser on the sidelines.

Recently, ESPN magazine had ran an article criticizing Michael Jordan's performance as teamk owner and president of basketball operations of the Charlotte Bobcats. A few months ago his team had acquired the reputation as being the worst team in NBA history with a winning percentage of just 0.106 percent. As the last minutes of last year's season ticked away for the Bobcats, an unthinkable thing happened. Michael Jordan was booed by fans in his home court.

(Photo by Brian A. Westerholt/Getty Images)

This scene was a far cry from Jordan's days dominating the league as its ultimate superstar. As the NBA's best ever competitor, Jordan strongly believed that he has no equal and that he could beat anybody through the sheer force of his will and talent. His leadership in the court was defined by his ferocity and hunger for winning, which he also demanded from his own teammates. In the beginning of his career, he firmly believed that he could beat any team single-handedly despite the fact that basketball in its core has always been about cooperation and teamwork. Although he eventually realized that if he ever has a chance of winning a championship, he had to give his teammates a bigger role in achieving that goal. Nevertheless, his confidence for his abilities and his undying desire to be recognized as the best had always been his main driving force.

Unfortunately, his narcissism and his insistence on infallibility proved to be the worst qualities of a team owner. Michael Jordan's best friend, Charles Barkely, described Jordan as someone who surround's himself with "yes men", who doesn't challenge his philosophies and the way he runs the team. This is specially disastrous in the way the team had performed in the NBA draft in the last few years, with Jordan arbitrarily choosing his rookies based on a few NCAA games he had gone to rather than investing in a detailed and more precise scouting system. Larry Brown, the Bobcat's former head coach, had also criticized Jordan for firing him for challenging his management decisions. Because of draft busts, bad trade decisions, and an overall failure in management, Michael Jordan had driven his team to the ground.

It is quite understandable and perhaps  expected for Jordan to develop a narcissism and a sense of infallibility after being showered with praise and glory throughout the course of his career as a dominant basketball player. Unfortunately, when he retired his jersey and became team owner of the Bobcats, he wasn't able to realize that his role and his style of leadership has to change. The qualities that made him such a winner inside the court, that is his competitive nature, his ability to keep his teammates in line and his complete self-confidence, had proved to be qualities that didn't fit in his new role as as manager.

Despite his failures as a team owner, there is in fact a silver lining. After acquiring the worst record in NBA history, Jordan had hinted on admitting his failures as team owner and president. It is rumored that Jordan is stepping down as president of basketball operations and handing the reins to a new breed managers who rely on detailed analysis and metrics to improve a team's efficiency.

In the end, Michael Jordan's legend will never fade away. His personality, his accomplishments, and his legend has always been bigger than man himself that despite whatever happens to his new strategy, his countless fans will always regard him as the best in basketball. But his admission of defeat as a manager and his new awareness of his proper role in the organization makes him an even better leader. In many ways, this is an achievement that is more valuable than six champion rings.

Leadership in Constant Motion

The traditional notion of an effective leader is someone who is visible, outspoken, and assertive and who motivates people with the power of his personality. New research from have tried to disprove this notion and have offered evidence that when the subordinates are proactive, an extroverted leader might not always be the best person to lead the group. However, I believe that leadership is more nuanced and more dynamic than just pairing extroverted leaders with introverted subordinates and vice-versa.

Working in the government and in development projects for almost four years, I have held several leadership positions in the past and throughout these experiences, I have learned an important lesson - leadership is more than just figuring out whether your subordinates are introverts or extroverts and how they would fit in your style. To me, it has always been a "high-wire balancing act", where things go awry when one leans too much to one side or the other. I have come to understand that effective leadership is the ability to understand and adapt to different roles depending upon the prevailing circumstances.

When people have known each other for a considerable amount of time (as in the case with me and my previous co-workers and subordinates), there would be times when I have to assume the characteristics of an extroverted leader, which I am not usually comfortable in. At other times, I become more effective being my usual self. Most of the time, I figure that in order to progress more efficiently with a project, I would have to allow my extroverted subordinates to dominate the direction and the pace of the discussions, but also many times I would have to shut them off. In a similar manner, I encourage my introverted subordinates to be more outspoken and generous with their ideas and in other cases I just allow them to assume tasks that were more akin to their personalities.

In any case, I figured that in order to pursue a higher goal like fulfilling the requirements of a project, or to affect the overall development of your employees (who would someday be leaders themselves), it is necessary to override these extrovert-introvert divides when it comes to assigning roles for your subordinates. Sometimes, I need to give them tasks they were not comfortable in. Assigning an introvert to network with people or an extrovert to become data crunchers, may not seem to be the best decision, especially in a project with limited time and resources, but I have realized these risks to be necessary.

For me, these choices were necessary because of several factors. One is expertise or familiarity with the problem area. However, eloquent or convincing an extrovert may be when speaking to people, his lack of expertise and knowledge in a problem area, would urge me to prevent him from doing so. Another is familiarity with the clients and partners. Although government may be a big institution, the public policy circle is a small, exclusive group. Thus, in most cases, the people my teams were assigned to work with were people we were already familiar with. In these cases, it is more effective to assign the task of networking with these people to my team members who know them more rather than to subordinates who are more eloquent. Finally, it is necessary for me to assign my team members to tasks they are unfamiliar or uncomfortable because I feel it is necessary for their overall growth and training to become effective leaders and managers themselves.

For all the work I have done with my team members, my experience in working with them were more for a nuanced day-to-day, case-by-case decision making process rather than constantly relying on extrovert-introvert stereotypes. This dynamism required that my leadership style constantly change and adapt to whatever situation is presented.

For me, an effective leader is not just someone who can take advantage of his personality and that of his subordinates. An effective leader is someone who can adapt and constantly tweak his style depending upon the circumstances.