Leadership - Bill Russell Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Leadership - Bill Russell - Essay Example However, the mentioned accolades do not exonerate the fact that just likes any other leader and human, he had his failures too. The only difference is that he did not turn his neck off his goals. In this regard, several leadership attributes can be identified from the splendid career of Russell as derived from his book the second wind. From his strengths and weaknesses, four outstanding leadership attributes can be emulated from Brussels lessons and experiences (Russell 67). These include team work and collaboration, managing change, communication, readiness to learn or agility and growth mindset and finally judgment. In addition, personal integrity, commitment and success are also captured in Brussels splendid career span. Russell’s accomplishments and failures are captured in his rules of success. His first rule is on life mission and daily learning experiences. For example he says that â€Å"we work to become, not acquire†Leardership entails learning and he recommend s that the more a person learns the more, the more he realizes that he still has a lot to learn. This rule is evident in his basketball career after he made several attempts to be included in the junior team with no success. He gives the example that he improved on his skills by regularly watching the past matches that he played. Watching the films made him identify his weakness and improve on them on subsequent matches. Some of his failures he attributed to lack of practice which sometimes fails miserably in some matches. The concept of team work is also one of his major accomplishments (Falkner and Russell 51-55). In a broader sense, he says that whenever he played well, it helped his team mates to even get better results. His key interest was not on personal achievements but using individual skills to uplift team performance. The driving factor behind his commitment he says was not to emerge the best in the entire country but to become astute to their best. Symbolically and to dr ive his message home, he explains that the basketball was his laboratory, workroom and classroom. Among the activities he cites and which formed the major aspects of his accomplishments included shooting at a rebound angle. Russell (78) notes that learning on the probability of player behavior in certain situations on how they are likely to respond are some of the things they greatly learnt. Commenting on his various awards, he says that quality and craftsmanship never happen by accident. He attributes his success in his entire basketball stint to principled intentions, intelligent directions, skillfull execution and sincere effort. He summarizes that craftsmanship in itself represents the best choice out of several alternatives. On the other hand, he cites his failures to several misjudgments and assumptions that he made during his career as a player and a coach. For example he registered several failures during his academic stint which he attributes to lack of commitment. Most of leadership strengths and weaknesses of Russell are intertwined and inclined to his accomplishment and failures. For example one his lessons outlines that craftsmanship is contagious and those players of any great team should always learn from one another. This was contrary to his personality which seemed to be so much introverted. He rarely took time to talk to his teammates and was always withdrawn (Russell 91). Despite being a great asset to