Superstar Team Quotes

It must be awful to be on a team with a superstar, someone much better than everyone else. At least that’s how my teammates must feel about me. But who cares? They’re just my clones.

If your team members can run a home, raise a family, and organize their lives, they are fully equipped to run a multimillion-dollar business.

NBA superstar David Robinson remarked, “I think any player will tell you that individual accomplishments help your ego, but if you don’t win, it makes for a very, very long season. It counts more that the team has played well.

He had spoken to me before he went onstage. “There’s a myth we all carry inside our head,” Bock said. “We think we need superstars. But that’s not what our research found. You can take a team of average performers, and if you teach them to interact the right way, they’ll do things no superstar could ever accomplish.

Bloom found exactly the opposite to be the case. The teams with the greatest levels of pay inequality performed worse than those with less inequality. Similar effects were found in an NFL study: Football teams with greater inequality won fewer games. This research also revealed an interesting wrinkle: Higher pay inequality was associated with higher team revenues. The most likely explanation for this finding is that spending huge amounts of money to attract superstars increases fans’ willingness to pay for tickets and media to watch these celebrity players, even if their expensive contracts undermined the team’s overall performance.

One remarkable part of the SnapTax story is what the team leaders said when I asked them to account for their unlikely success. Did they hire superstar entrepreneurs from outside the company? No, they assembled a team from within Intuit. Did they face constant meddling from senior management, which is the bane of innovation teams in many companies? No, their executive sponsors created an “island of freedom” where they could experiment as necessary. Did they have a huge team, a large budget, and lots of marketing dollars? Nope, they started with a team of five. What allowed the SnapTax team to innovate was not their genes, destiny, or astrological signs but a process deliberately facilitated by Intuit’s senior management.

made some teams much better than others. What they found was that individual intelligence (as measured by IQ) didn’t make the big difference. Having a high aggregate intelligence or just one or two superstars wasn’t critical. The groups that surfaced more and better solutions shared three key qualities. First, they gave one another roughly equal time to talk. This wasn’t monitored or regulated, but no one in these high-achieving groups dominated or was a passenger. Everyone contributed and nothing any one person said was wasted. The second quality of the successful groups was social sensitivity: these individuals were more tuned in to one another, to subtle shifts in mood and demeanor. They scored more highly on a test called Reading the Mind in the Eyes, which is broadly considered a test for empathy. These groups were socially alert to one another’s needs. And the third distinguishing feature was that the best groups included more women, perhaps because that made them more diverse, or because women tend to score more highly on tests for empathy. What this (and much more) research highlights is just how critical the role of social connectedness can be. Reading the research, I

Michael Lewis, the author of The Blind Side, wrote about professional basketball player Shane Battier, who plays for the Houston Rockets, in an article titled “The No-Stats All-Star.” He describes Battier as follows: “Shane Battier is widely regarded inside the NBA as, at best, a replaceable cog in a machine driven by superstars. And yet every team he has ever played on has acquired some magical ability to win. [Because] Battier . . . seems to help the team in all sorts of subtle, hard-to-measure ways that appear to violate his personal interests.” Subtle, hard-to-measure ways. Lewis continues: Battier’s game is a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths. When he is on the court, his teammates get better, often a lot better, and his opponents get worse—often a lot worse. He may not grab huge numbers of rebounds, but he has an uncanny ability to improve his teammates’ rebounding. He doesn’t shoot much, but when he does, he takes only the most efficient shots . . . On defense, although he routinely guards the NBA’s most prolific scorers, he significantly reduces shooting percentages. [We] call him Lego. When he’s on the court, all the pieces start to fit together. Husbands, children, and coworkers may not understand what it is exactly that we do. Yet because of who we are and what we do, whether in our home, community, or workplace, things magically work. Like Shane Battier, our very presence seems to just make everything and everyone work better together. It’s hard to put your finger on it, but in my experience this “magic” of bringing people together and enhancing their strengths is a talent that many women seem to have. It’s one reason we are so good at being a safe haven and playing a supporting role, but it’s a talent that we can use for great good when we dust off our dreams and put on our Batman suit.

What this game is all about. Teams. The balance and the combination. Not the individual, not the superstar. Because this is a team game, a team sport, is it not, Don? Is it not? It's about how you play as a team. Not as an individual. With a good game here and a good game there. It's about the team. Week in, week out. Game after game, match after match. How the team plays.

To keep a team cohesive, you need both rock stars and superstars,

A player who is working hard and productively for the group shouldn’t receive the same treatment as someone who is offering less. And while each and every person on your team fills a role and performs a function, some of those roles and functions are filled by people much harder to replace than others. It would be naïve to suggest that a superstar in your organization—a top producer—won’t receive some accommodations not afforded others. This is not a double standard but rather a fact of life. Those small accommodations, however, must not apply in areas of your basic principles and values or they will soon be replaced by the perception that favoritism and special treatment are the norm.

his leadership skills must not be forgotten either; as it soon became evident in his playing career; he didn’t just pass the ball to his team-mates, he talked to them constantly. ‘Keep it simple, Michael!’ shouted a twenty-year-old Guardiola on one occasion to Laudrup, the international superstar. The Danish player had tried to dribble past three players too close to the half-way line, where losing the ball would have been dangerous. ‘That was simple,’ Michael replied with a wink. But he knew the kid was right.

he wanted to confirm a personal theory: that a reserve team, like any other, could serve as a university of football; because all teams behave, react and respond the same way. Whether superstars or Sunday league, there’s always a player who is jealous of a team-mate, another who is always late, a joker, an obedient one fearful of punishment and eager to please, a quiet one, a rebel . . . It was also educational because it helped prepare for the fact that every opponent is different: some are offensive, others timid, some defend in their own box, others counter-attack. Working with the B team gave Guardiola the perfect opportunity to try and find solutions to the kinds of problems he would encounter working with a higher profile team; yet enabled him to do so away from the spotlight and glare of the media.

One of Satya’s first moves was to abolish stack ranking. He worked to reverse the traditional emphasis on rewarding the smartest person in the room, who dominates and pushes around others. He encouraged people to ask questions and listen—to be “learn-it-alls” not know-it-alls. He pressed people to live the One Microsoft philosophy, that the company is not to be “a confederation of fiefdoms” because “innovation and competition don’t respect our silos, so we need to transcend those barriers.” To support this new culture, Satya changed the reward system so that the superstars were people who worked across silos and teams to build products and services with pieces that meshed together well. And so that people deemed as superstars were those who helped others succeed in their careers. The backstabbers who’d flourished under Ballmer changed their ways, left the company voluntarily, or were shown the door.

Take a deep breath.” I couldn’t help but obey. “Good. Now, step in front of the mirror.” What was happening? Was this a scene from one of my books where a character was forced to watch their reflection as a partner got them off? Certainly not. Hannah was attached. At least, that’s what Braxton had said. Right? Blue eyes sparkling with mischief, she seemingly read my mind. “Relax. I’m batting for Team Loves a Giant Cock.” Good to know. “Look at yourself and tell me what you like about your body.” Oh, boy. Here goes nothing. “Um. I guess I have nice skin?” “Was that a question or a statement?” Hannah called over. “A statement. I have nice skin.” “Good. Continue.” “My breasts are a decent size. Not too big, not too small.” Hannah laughed. “You have great tits. Trust me. What else?” “I like my hourglass figure. Hips aren’t always a bad thing.” I was gaining confidence with each declaration. “You’ve got that right. Men go fucking nuts for hips to grab on to.

You don’t have to say that. Jaxon made me look good.” Hands gripping my face, she forced my head back. “Honesty, right?” Releasing a heavy breath, I confirmed, “Yeah.” “Then believe me when I say it was you I was watching all night. Not your brother. It was your name I was screaming in the stands. And it’s your name and number I’m wearing on my back. How many times have you told me it’s a team game? Would you be downplaying your role if you were the one giving the assists to Jaxon?” She arched an eyebrow. “No,” I grumbled.

Cal threw his arm around Hannah’s shoulder, kissing her temple. “We didn’t need teams for me to land you.” Hannah snorted. “No. What we needed was for you to get drunk enough to record a voicemail declaring your undying love for me.” She patted his cheek as if he were a child. Raising an eyebrow, Cal countered, “That’s not exactly how I remember it.” She smirked up at him. “Well, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it as the sole owner of that voicemail.

On the Tier One Teams I studied, the typical pecking order put the coach at the top, the talent on the bottom, and a water-carrying captain in the middle who served as an independent mediator between them. In this new order, where power and popularity went hand in hand, the middle manager’s role had been squeezed out. Unless the captain was the superstar, the captain was a bystander.

SKILLS: A superstar culture is built on once-a-year training, delivered by those who have not used the taught skills in over a decade, let alone updated them. Instead, a science culture relies on continuous improvement, where best practices are instantly shared, enriched with peer feedback and coached to new team members. In a science culture, seventy percent of learning comes from doing and coaching, twenty percent from peer feedback and only ten percent from formal classroom learning.

Keep them challenged (and figure out who’ll replace them when they move on) The best way to keep superstars happy is to challenge them and make sure they are constantly learning. Give them new opportunities, even when it is sometimes more work than seems feasible for one person to do. Figure out what the next job for them will be. Build an intellectual partnership with them. Find them mentors from outside your team or organization—people who have even more to offer than you do. But make sure you don’t get too dependent on them; ask them to teach others on the team to do their job, because they won’t stay in their existing role for long. I often thought of these people as shooting stars—my team and I were lucky to have them in our orbit for a little while, but trying to hold them there was futile.

Not only are they long-lasting injuries, but there are long-term effects of playing on turf,” Alex Morgan once explained. “The achiness, taking longer to recover than on natural grass, the tendons and ligaments are, for me at least, I feel more sore after turf. It takes longer to recover from a turf field than natural grass.” For this reason, some players with leverage have refused to play on artificial turf. When superstars Thierry Henry and Didier Drogba joined MLS clubs after careers in Europe, where artificial turf is rare, they refused to play at venues without natural grass. Grass also offers a better quality of ball movement and natural bounces, while artificial turf can negatively affect the flow of the game. In other words, soccer is meant to be played on grass, and that’s especially true during a World Cup, the most important tournament in the sport. When Canada’s bid, which included artificial turf fields, was selected by FIFA for the 2015 World Cup, the decision flew under the radar at first.

Imagine that I am trying to assemble a superstar coin-flipping team (under the erroneous impression that talent matters when it comes to coin flipping). After I observe a student flipping six tails in a row, I offer him a ten-year, $50 million contract. Needless to say, I’m going to be disappointed when this student flips only 50 percent tails over those ten years.

To keep a team cohesive, you need both rock stars and superstars, she explained. Rock stars are solid as a rock. Think the Rock of Gibraltar, not Bruce Springsteen. The rock stars love their work. They have found their groove. They don’t want the next job if it will take them away from their craft. Not all artists want to own a gallery; in fact, most don’t. If you honor and reward the rock stars, they’ll become the people you most rely on. If you promote them into roles they don’t want or aren’t suited for, however, you’ll lose them—or, even worse, wind up firing them. Superstars, on the other hand, need to be challenged and given new opportunities to grow constantly.

why ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A million thank-yous going out to: Dave, Aleah, Hazel, all the Greenwalds, all the Rosenbergs, the BWL Library & Tech team, my fabulous editor, Maria, Rebecca, Katherine, Aurora, Amy, Erica, Bethany, Ann, Stephanie, and all the wonderful people at Katherine Tegen Books, superstar agent Alyssa, every single person who has ever read one of my books, and last but not least, all of my fabulous texting buddies.

Those who do make it to Europe often find themselves abandoned when the tryouts fail to materialize or they don’t make the team. Some end up living on the streets, either because they don’t have the money to go home or can’t face the prospect of returning a failure.

Did they hire superstar entrepreneurs from outside the company? No, they assembled a team from within Intuit. Did they face constant meddling from senior management, which is the bane of innovation teams in many companies? No, their executive sponsors created an “island of freedom” where they could experiment as necessary. Did they have a huge team, a large budget, and lots of marketing dollars? Nope, they started with a team of five.

The best way to keep superstars happy is to challenge them and make sure they are constantly learning. Give them new opportunities, even when it is sometimes more work than seems feasible for one person to do. Figure out what the next job for them will be. Build an intellectual partnership with them. Find them mentors from outside your team or organization—people who have even more to offer than you do. But make sure you don’t get too dependent on them; ask them to teach others on the team to do their job, because they won’t stay in their existing role for long. I often thought of these people as shooting stars—my team and I were lucky to have them in our orbit for a little while, but trying to hold them there was futile.

I’d always focused on the people most likely to be promoted. I assumed that was how it had to be at a growth company. Then a leader at Apple pointed out to me that all teams need stability as well as growth to function properly; nothing works well if everyone is gunning for the next promotion. She called the people on her team who got exceptional results but who were on a more gradual growth trajectory “rock stars” because they were like the Rock of Gibraltar on her team. These people loved their work and were world-class at it, but they didn’t want her job or to be Steve Jobs. They were happy where they were. The people who were on a steeper growth trajectory—the ones who’d go crazy if they were still doing the same job in a year—she called “superstars.” They were the source of growth on any team. She was explicit about needing a balance of both.

Phil Jackson, the coach who has won the most NBA championships, was once asked about his famously flaky superstar Dennis Rodman, “Since Dennis Rodman is allowed to miss practice, does this mean other star players like Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen can miss practice, too?” Jackson replied, “Of course not. There is only room for one Dennis Rodman on this team. In fact, you really can only have a very few Dennis Rodmans in society as a whole; otherwise, we would degenerate into anarchy.

In the aftermath of his sizzling four-game summer league run, Bryant expected to join the team and immediately emerge as a superstar. Only, well, he did something extraordinarily stupid. Because Bryant was young and dumb and a 24/7 hoops junkie, on the afternoon of September 2 he visited the famed pickup courts of Venice Beach to get in a few runs. After leaping at the hoop to tip-dunk the ball, he fell toward the pavement and tried to catch himself with his left wrist. His 200-pound body landed atop his arms, and moments later he saw three knots bulging below his hand. The wrist was broken—and Jerry West was dumbfounded. He greeted the news of the malady with stunned silence, responding to Gary Vitti, the team’s trainer, with a blank stare. “He was doing what?” West asked. “Playing basketball at Venice,” Vitti explained. “Wait,” West said. “Wait, wait. Wait. What?” It would be one of the last times the Lakers didn’t include a NO PICKUP BASKETBALL clause in the contract of a rookie signee.

The most noteworthy knock-Shaq-on-his-rear addition took place on June 26, 2002, when the Houston Rockets used the first pick in the NBA draft to select Yao Ming, the 7-foot-6, 310-pound center who had recently averaged 38.9 points and 20.2 rebounds per game in the playoffs with the Shanghai Sharks of the Chinese Basketball Association. Though he was just 21 and unfamiliar with high-caliber competition, Yao’s arrival was considered a direct challenge to O’Neal’s reign as the NBA’s mightiest big man. Sure, Shaq was tall. But he wasn’t this tall. Within weeks, a song titled simply “Yao Ming” was being played on Houston radio stations, and Steve Francis, the Rockets’ superstar guard, was being introduced to audiences as “Yao Ming’s teammate.” There was talk—only half in jest—of a Ming dynasty. Put simply, the NBA’s 28 other franchises were doing their all to shove the Lakers off their perch. If that meant copying elements of the triangle offense (as many teams attempted to do), so be it. If that meant adding Mutombo or Clark, so be it. If that meant importing China’s greatest center, so be it. And if that meant throwing punches—well, let’s go.

You can take a team of average performers, and if you teach them to interact in the right way, they’ll do things no superstar could ever accomplish.

invitation of the New York Athletic Club to use its training facilities, in a nearby suburb on Long Island Sound, and quickly slipped out of Princeton. As the boys—now officially the U.S. eight-oared Olympic rowing team—settled in at Travers Island they were, largely unbeknownst to them, beginning to become national celebrities. Back home in Seattle, they were already full-blown superstars. Eastern coaches and sportswriters had been following them with increasing interest ever since their freshman victory at

A person who refuses to give up will always succeed, eventually. Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he succeeded. NBA superstar Michael Jordan was once cut from his high school basketball team. After his first audition, screen legend Fred Astaire received the following assessment from an MGM executive: “Can’t act. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.