This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Follow Peak here.
Joe Boylan worked in the NBA for a decade with the Minnesota Timberwolves, New Orleans Pelicans, Memphis Grizzlies, Golden State Warriors and Boston Celtics. He is the co-founder of Cognition Coach.
The CEO had a wall full of birthday cards. Hundreds of them, stacked in frames like a timeline of gratitude.
Sheldon Yellen, head of billion-dollar BELFOR Holdings, writes a handwritten note to every employee on their birthday. Not an email or a printed message, but ink and paper.
He signs each one the same way: With respect, love and gratitude.
When I asked him why, he said, “You either lift people up, or you pull them down.”
After 15 years of coaching in the NBA, I’d heard that truth a hundred times, just never said so clearly. One summer, I went on a leadership tour, meeting a range of business leaders to learn what coaching could borrow. From billion-dollar CEOs to self-made founders, I kept hearing the same ideas I heard in NBA meeting rooms.
Different arenas, same game.
Here are the lessons I brought back to the gym.
You cannot teach people to care
As the CEO of BELFOR, Yellen is famous for flying to meet every potential manager face-to-face. He calls it “hiring for heart.” You can train skill, but you cannot teach people to care.
His approach reminded me of players who make teams better through connection — the ones who notice when a teammate is struggling or remember a trainer’s kid’s name. Sitting next to Jrue Holiday or Mike Conley eating breakfast, I’d listen to them relate to parenting challenges with the adults in the room and video games with their teenage teammates.
Coaches talk about leadership all the time, but sometimes it starts with something as simple as writing it down.
Dan Varner, president and CEO of Goodwill Industries of Greater Detroit, has built his life around opportunity. Before Goodwill, he co-founded Think Detroit, a youth recreation nonprofit that became the city’s second-largest in seven years.
“Know what feeds you,” Varner said. “Things you like to do, you do more. Things you do more, you get better at.”
He believes leaders must be experts in people. At Goodwill, he meets regularly with his team to ask two questions: How am I showing up to you? and Do you need anything different from me? That feedback loop, he said, prevents problems from growing and helps him see patterns early.
John Sznewajs, the former CFO of Masco Corporation, told me the shortest-tenured member of his team had been there 17 years.
He doesn’t rush to hire. “Sometimes I take too long,” he admitted. “But it’s worth it.”
Sznewajs believes that hiring the right person is the single most important decision a leader makes: “Someone with emotional intelligence. Integrity. Maybe not the smartest technically, but sharp.”
Once you hire, keep listening. Silence in a meeting might mean disagreement or confusion.
“Draw people in,” he said. “Make sure they are heard.”
Sznewajs also believes leaders should be the calmest person in the room. Decisions should live as close to the work as possible. Push authority down to the people who know the job best.
His final question stuck with me: “Are people following? And are they creating other leaders behind them?”
‘You cannot execute confusion’
Jerry Volas, the former CEO of TopBuild, texted me before our meeting: “I will be the bald guy reading the newspaper.”
I laughed. The humility matched his leadership ethos. He told me people used to call him “Jerry the Simplifier.”
“When I got pages and pages of initiatives,” he said, “I would ask, ‘What are the top three?’ You cannot execute confusion.”
Volas halved his product line three times until 70 percent of the business focused on insulation.
“Constant change equals no execution,” he said. “Execute the right two or three things, and you will win.”
He looks for the same simplicity in people. When hiring, he wants curiosity and the will to work.
“Does not have to be a rocket scientist,” he said. “Just someone who wants to understand things better.”
Volas also asks questions of everyone. “Even ask the arrogant ones. They will tell you things of great value.”
Volas asked one last question before we wrapped: “How do you treat people when nobody’s looking? And how do you treat people who can do nothing for you?”
It reminded me of an undrafted rookie with the Golden State Warriors named Kent Bazemore, who would go four hours early to pregame to get extra work.
One night in San Antonio, a team executive walked up and said, “How long has RC been watching you guys?” We looked to see Spurs president RC Buford watching quietly from a suite.
Adapt or die
Randy Fenton’s energy filled the room before he said a word. The former CEO of Inrecon started our conversation with his mantra: press, change and rearrange.
“Going forward is the only option,” he told me. “Be a warrior, not a worrier.”
He talked about balancing self-awareness with self-belief: “When I say, ‘I am not good at this,’ I stop myself. That is not true. I am not naturally good at this.”
That balance of patience with urgency made me think of Naz Reid.
In his first four seasons, Naz was a 35 percent shooter from three. He kept working anyway, holding an image of himself as one of the league’s best shooting forwards long before the numbers proved it. Then, in his fifth season, he shot 41 percent on over 400 attempts and won the NBA Sixth Man of the Year.
Reid began the season buried behind Rudy Gobert and Karl-Anthony Towns, but when injuries opened a path, he was ready. Not because his role changed, but because his mindset never did.
Fenton’s words could have also been Naz’s.
These lessons have evolved how I coach. The players don’t care what you know until they know how much you care. Film sessions are almost always too long and complex. The old way of practice isn’t the way of the future.
The great Jerry West once told me, “You do not need to do what everyone else is doing. Stick with a few simple things that work. Common sense goes a long way.”
So I try to simplify what I can and adapt to the rest. On the court or in the office, clarity, care and curiosity are things that endure.