How to Discover Your Team’s Unsung Heroes

“If that’s the last image of Michael Jordan, how magnificent is it?”

Do you recognise this picture? It’s one of the most iconic images in sports history, capturing the final game winning shot that Michael Jordan ever took for his legendary Chicago Bulls team. This shot sealed the victory on their 6th championship, cementing their place as the greatest basketball team to ever play in the NBA. But what this image doesn’t show is that this iconic moment in MJ’s history never could have happened without the actions of one of his teammates that has mostly been overlooked. So let’s take some lessons from the backboards to the boardroom and answer the question:

How can you bring the best out of the unsung heroes on your team?

A brief basketball story

Everyone knows the broad strokes of Michael Jordan’s rise to fame. After winning 5 championships with the Chicago Bulls over the course of a stellar career, the 1998 season was dubbed “The Last Dance” as it was widely acknowledged to be Jordan’s final season and the Bulls last chance to win their 6th championship and cement their place in history. The 98 season was fraught with drama, but the Bulls made it to the finals and faced off against their rivals the Utah Jazz one last time. After a hard fought back and forth series, they came into game 6 of the finals needing to win in order to put the series away. And that brings us to the moment in question. Game 6 was a tough affair, with wounded Bull Scottie Pippen all but rendered useless with a back injury that left him only able to hobble up and down the court. The Bulls were battered and exhausted, and it was going to take a miracle to win this one.

As if scripted, it all came down to the last 40 seconds of the game. John Stockton hits a three pointer to put the Jazz in the lead by 3 and the Bulls call a timeout to regroup. What came next was, as commentator Bob Costas put it “one of the greatest sequences you’ll ever see in any sport”

• The Bulls inbound and Jordan quickly drives to the basket, beating his defender to get an easy layup and two points. This puts Chicago just 1 point behind.

• Utah bring the ball back up the court, and get the ball in the hands of hall of famer Karl Malone. This is his chance to put the game out of reach

• Instead, Jordan miraculously swats the ball away and Chicago now have possession. They have 17 seconds to do the impossible and come back to win.

• Jordan has the ball and all 20,000 people in the Delta Center know exactly what’s going to happen next - there is no way MJ is going to pass this ball. Everyone knows that Michael Jordan is going to take this final shot.

• And of course, as we all know the storybook ending occurs when Jordan drives to his right, pulls up in the middle of the lane and sinks the jumpshot that sealed his place in history as the greatest of all time

But wait… let’s run that back for a second… how exactly did Jordan manage to pull this play off when every person in the building knew exactly what he was about to do?

You see, while those last 17 seconds are attributed to the greatness of his Airness, the real hero here was Dennis Rodman. Let me explain:

• Jordan has the ball and is pinned at the left elbow - Bryon Rusell is defending him, he doesn’t have enough space to drive to his left, and the middle of the lane is blocked by not one but two defenders. He simply has nowhere to go.

• As he stands there dribbling the ball, the seconds are ticking by. That’s when Rodman springs into action.

• He runs from his position at mid-court across to the opposite end of the floor, drawing the defenders away from the middle

• This opens up the lane for Jordan to drive to his right and sink the game winner

It’s a blink and you’ll miss it kind of moment, but without the quick thinking of Dennis Rodman, there is simply no way that Michael Jordan could have made the space to take that shot. He needed a little help from his friends to let his greatness shine through. Yes - as it turns out Rodman went on to enjoy his own brand of glory and was later inducted into the hall of fame, but I’ve always felt he didn’t get enough credit for architecting that great moment in sports history. Dennis Rodman was Game 6’s unsung hero.

How does this apply in the workplace?

Steve Jobs and Michael Jordan had more in common than you might think

So what does this great moment in sports history have to do with being a better leader in the workplace?  Well, if the image of Michael Jordan’s last shot is one of the most iconic images in sports history, then surely the image of Steve Jobs holding up the first iPhone is one of the most iconic images in the business world.

There are a lot of similarities between the careers of Steve Jobs and Michael Jordan. Both are heralded as MVP in their field. They are both widely acknowledged to have fundamentally changed the way the game is played. Both left their respective teams, only to come back a few years later to make a championship run. And, much like MJ, Steve Jobs couldn’t have done any of this without a cast of supporting players to clear the lane for him to take his game winning shots.

One story in particular stands out as similar to the Rodman incident. Way back in 1998, as the Bulls were battling with the Jazz, Steve Jobs had just returned to a struggling Apple and taken over as CEO. His first success was the introduction of the iMac. He had also just hired a young man named Tim Cook to help improve Apple’s operational excellence and get products in the hands of customers faster than ever before. 6 months after joining, Cook had gotten Apple’s stock inventory from 30 days down to just 6, an absolutely miraculous task that had a lot to do with the success of the iMac and paved the way for Apple’s resurgence with the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

How did he do it? Well, he bought up $100 million worth of freight space on transport aircraft. Sounds crazy right? It’s even crazier when you think that he made this investment months ahead of the product launch, before it had even been announced. This single move meant that not only were iMacs able to get to customers who wanted it as demand surged post- product launch - but it also meant that there was precious little freight capacity leftover in the market, meaning Apple’s competitors were unable to deliver on their products. It’s a bold move from someone so early in their career at a new company, but it epitomises the spirit of the unsung hero who clears the lane so that the team’s superstar can take the winning shot.

How can you put these lessons into action?

Whenever we witness greatness in the workplace, it’s usually the result of not just the brilliance of one individual, but also the unseen work of those around them who created the openings and opportunities for them to shine.

In the field of leadership development we’ve been hearing a lot about the concept of servant leadership, which flips the boss role from “you all work for me” to “how can I serve you to do your best work?” This aligns with one of my favourite pieces of advice which is to hire the best people and then get out of their way. So here’s the thing - it’s easy to spot the Michael Jordans on your team. They are the ones who are always doing high profile work, always getting the highest performance ratings, and deservedly always gaining recognition for the great work they do. Identifying the MJ’s doesn’t make you a great leader, this part should be obvious. The harder part is identifying your Dennis Rodmans and Tim Cooks. Who are the people in your team or organisation who clear the lane for the Jordans and pave the way for miracles to happen? If you’re able to identify these unsung heroes and give them a bigger platform to do their thing, that’s when the results begin to multiply. 

Good leaders find stars. Great leaders find the unsung heroes.

That all sounds great in theory, but how do you make it happen? Here are three lessons you’ll never see in a leadership development course, but they demonstrate how great leaders identify and unlock the potential of their unsung heroes:

1. Look for your Rodmans when they’re not there
   Sometimes you’re only able to notice the unsung heroes when they’re not there.
   
   My wife works in sales at a tech company, and she told me the story of one teammate who was her pricing expert. He was regularly added to client meeting invitations as an optional attendee, and most of the time he would show up. The one time he didn’t attend the meeting, suddenly things got very difficult for the sales team - they weren’t able to answer a bunch of questions as smoothly as usual and had to take a lot of homework away from the meeting. It was only then that the sales team realised how much more difficult these interactions were when the pricing person wasn’t in the room. These people are the ones who don’t get credit when the team closes a sale, but that doesn’t mean they’re not instrumental in setting the sales person up to take the match winning shot.
   
   As a leader, it might be worth doing a retrospective on the last 3 months of deals that didn’t go right. If there is a consistent absence of a particular person at times when things got tough, they just might be your Dennis Rodman hiding in plain sight.
   
   

2. Look for the ones who have always been there
   In every company, there are those few people who are part of the furniture - they’ve been at the company for so long, no one even really remembers when they joined. Now the truth with these people is they usually fall into one of two categories - either they’ve just never been noticed enough to be recognised and moved up the ranks, or they are terrible at their job and don't have anywhere else to go.
   
   When I worked at Deloitte there was one Director who had been with the firm for a long time. In fact he’d been there so long, he eventually found himself working for someone who had once reported to him. He took it all in his stride, and was one of the most consistent performers - he just never put his hand up for more recognition. A few of the leaders finally took notice of the work he was doing, and when they gave him the opportunity to step up and build his own practice, it turned out to be not only one of the most profitable areas of the business, but also received stellar satisfaction rankings from the junior staff members who worked on his projects. All he needed was to be recognised and given a bigger platform to unlock the potential of the young stars within the firm.
   
   An interesting exercise can be to make a list of everyone who’s been in the organisation for 5 or more years. Then divide them into two lists: the dead-end list and the unsung heroes. This second column could be a potential list of diamonds in the rough, they’re worth a second look.
   
   

3. Look for those who don’t live down to expectations
   If you work in legal or compliance, chances are most people in your business see your team as the buzzkills, always ready to say no. Uber got ahead by hiring compliance people who allowed the business to ask forgiveness, not permission. They understood that regulators in each country would always be playing catch up, so they were ok with pre-emptively entering new markets, capturing market share, and then dealing with the ramifications of rectifying and coming into line with compliance requirements as and when needed. They were ok with breaking some eggs to make the omelette, rather than being too obsessed with maintaining a clean sheet.
   
   The work that these people do might sometimes seem counterintuitive to their role. But what we can learn from Tim Cook is that although his job in operations was to reduce costs, he knew when the time was right to spend $100m in order to save the company. He knew if he could help sales and marketing achieve their growth targets, it would make it a lot easier to save money and streamline later - for now just focus on growth, rather than being the guy who reduced costs on a sinking ship.

Final Thoughts

In our modern work culture where everyone is trying to stand out and get ahead, it can be really easy to get caught up in the hype and focus only on the achievements of the superstars in your organisation. I hope this story can serve to help us all take a moment to recognise the contributions of those unsung heroes out there in offices all over the world, clearing the lane so their Jordanesque colleagues can take the game winning shot.

And for all you basketball fans out there, I have one last question: did Michael Jordan illegally push Bryon Russell out of the way with his left hand before sinking that final shot? Or was it just momentum? Leave your answer in the comments below.