The best teams have this secret weapon Adam Grant
in 2010 the Miami Heat tried to build a
dream team around LeBron James and two
other stars and LeBron promised that
they would win some championship what’s
wrong tell us about that but they
struggled to even win close games in the
regular season so the next year instead
of picking up another star
they added Shane Battier and Shane told
me people were not impressed and people
looked him on limitations and say oh bad
he is not athletic and he doesn’t run
pick-and-roll and you can’t really
dribble but here’s the weird thing when
Shane was on the court every one of his
teams was statistically more likely to
win he ended up becoming a key
contributor to the heats back-to-back
championships so I asked Michael Lewis
the author of Moneyball to explain it
so he wasn’t athletic enough to to stop
Kobe Bryant but he was smart enough and
kind of canny enough to force Kobe
Bryant two places on the floor where he
was a less efficient shooter so he’s
doing all these things that are very
valuable that no star would bother to do
lots of stars means lots of egos and
lots of egos means infighting in a team
you could actually have too much talent
look at the evidence from soccer teams
with a mix of stars and role players
actually win more games in World Cup
qualifying matches we see the same
pattern in NBA basketball you are
actually better off with two stars on
the court than four and the same is true
in wall street teams the secret
ingredient that role players bring is
humility but we’ve all been in
situations where we might be worried
about being too humble like in a job
interview
we also council leaders not to be too
humble but what is it data actually show
let’s compare humble leaders with
narcissistic leaders we’ve done this in
American and Chinese companies and lo
and behold it turns out that humble
leaders are significantly more effective
their employees are more productive and
more innovative but there’s a third kind
of leader that gets even better results
and that would be called a humble
narcissist how can you be humble and
narcissistic they sound like opposites
but they’re not because narcissism is
about believing that you’re special and
humility is about recognizing that you
are fallible now for the narcissist in
the room and your spouse’s know who you
are this is not an excuse my point is
just that humility and confidence can
actually go hand-in-hand you can have
both because one of the Latin roots of
humility is actually about being
grounded it means from the earth and
that kind of sensibility is what shane
battier I brought to the Miami Heat
you’ve recognized his limitations he
looked for ways to improve his game like
studying stats and opposing players and
one day he turned to LeBron and he said
hey when you guard Kevin Durant make him
shoot over his left shoulder and after
that every now and then he’d say hey
Batman you know what what you got on
this guy there’s not much you can teach
LeBron James the best player in the
world today I like to think I I made him
a little bit better with some loose some
arcane math humility is underrated it
gets a bad rap it sounds like a sign of
weakness but in the best teams with the
best leaders is actually a source of
strength it keeps us from best-of from
resting on our laurels because we know
that excellence is not about believing
that you’re the best
it’s actually about always striving to
get better thank you
you