If you are going to call out your teammates, you have to call out yourself, too. You can't just separate yourself from the rest, because if you are going to get 90 percent of the credit when you win, you have to be willing to take 90 percent of the blame when you lose.
Interpretation
Leadership requires accountability, both for successes and failures.
Jeff Van Gundy emphasizes the importance of accountability in leadership and teamwork. He suggests that true leaders not only take credit for successes but also accept responsibility for failures, fostering a culture of mutual support and unity among team members. This quote highlights the necessity of self-reflection and fairness in assessing both individual and collective contributions within a team dynamic.
In practice
In a motivational speech to a sports team emphasizing teamwork and accountability.
I've got the greatest job in the world. There's no other job in government where cause and effect is so tightly coupled where you can make a difference every day in so many different ways and in so many different people's lives. It's a great challenge.
If you want to coach you have three rules to follow to win. One, surround yourself with people who can't live without football. I've had a lot of them. Two, be able to recognize winners. They come in all forms. And, three, have a plan for everything. A plan for practice, a plan for the game. A plan for being ahead, and a plan for being behind 20-0 at half, with your quarterback hurt and the phones dead, with it raining cats and dogs and no rain gear because the equipment man left it at home.
To elevate the goals of humankind, to achieve high moral purpose, to realize major intended change, leaders must thrust themselves into the most intractable processes and structures of history and ultimately master them.
The King is only fond of words, and cannot translate them into deeds.
So I had to be careful. I recognized the responsibility that, whether I liked it or not, I had to accept whatever the obligation was. That was to behave in a manner, to carry myself in such a professional way, as if there ever is a reflection, it's a positive one.
There are a lot of self-imposed restrictions by people who somehow believe they have to fall in with a certain military cant. There was always a sense that we had to put things into words that would touch our troops' hearts, not just their heads.
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