Steph Curry’s Leadership Style: 5 Game-Changing Lessons for Success

Jo Ilfeld, PhD, CEO of Incite To Leadership, helps CEOs of high-growth, high-impact companies build unstoppable leadership teams.

I’m a huge Warriors fan. During the 20-ish years I’ve lived in Oakland, they have risen from a forgotten team to four-time NBA champions, playing with two-time MVP Steph Curry. Having watched Curry play over the last decade, it’s been amazing to witness his journey as a player and as a leader.

When watching a Warriors-Lakers game (sadly a close loss for us), I started thinking about what business leaders can learn from the way Steph Curry leads the Warriors. What I admire most is his versatile leadership style. He understands that, while leadership often means stepping to the forefront, you don’t always have to be the focus.

Here are five lessons that I think professionals can take from Curry’s playbook.

1. Give back to your community in a meaningful way. As leaders, it’s wise to understand that your voice and visibility can lift up others at your company and in your community. For example, Steph and his wife Ayesha used their high-profile platform to establish the Oakland-based Eat.Learn.Play. Foundation. This organization helps ensure local children have the building blocks of healthy food, access to learning and opportunities to play and grow. Having worked in association with Eat.Learn.Play., I can attest to the fact that it truly invests in partner organizations to more successfully serve the children of Oakland.

What causes or values matter to you, and how can you use your leadership to give them a bigger voice? One approach I’ve seen many clients use is leading employee resource groups that support the communities they care about most.

2. Don’t hide your emotions. Whether the refs make a good or bad call, you can look at Steph’s face and see exactly what he thinks about it. He’s passionate and real, though he rarely lets it get to the level of unsportsmanlike conduct. He’s mastered the skill of displaying his emotions without losing his cool or going overboard.

Many professionals still believe leadership means being stoic and not letting your personal feelings show. I don’t agree. Employees are looking for leaders who have authentic feelings, feel excited about their work and inspire a similar authenticity and passion in others. What matters is knowing how to express yourself properly and use it to your team’s advantage.

3. Delegate for team success. Although Steph is arguably one of the best shooters ever in the NBA, he knows how to pass the ball advantageously. When the pressure intensifies in key games, Steph finds unbelievable ways to lean on his teammates so they can succeed together. Leaders must follow this example because, truthfully, it’s impossible to do it all alone. In fact, the longer you try to take on the most responsibility, the more you limit what’s possible for your team.

4. Celebrate the little victories. I love watching Steph pound his chest, raise his hands in victory and nod to the crowds in the stands. Even when the Warriors are down and out, he finds a way to celebrate his shots. Sometimes, the road to success can be seemingly endless. If you can’t find ways to celebrate your wins and your team’s smaller wins along the way, you’re missing an opportunity to fully appreciate those moments. This matters even more now because employees are overwhelmingly burned out these days. Helping your team find what’s going well and acknowledging any kind of progress makes the journey itself much more rewarding.

5. Know what’s going on around you. It’s vital that leaders know what’s happening both in their teams and the organization as a whole. In basketball, this awareness is called good court sense—and Steph has it in spades. I’m often amazed at how he can be running, looking fully ahead, and then out of nowhere pass the ball to a player I think is in his blind spot.

As a leader, you shouldn’t just understand your function or your team. You need to widen your perspective so you’re also aware of other departments in your organization, especially the pressures those teams might experience. For example, it’s hard to collaborate on cross-functional initiatives if you don’t know where the other parties are coming from. So it’s not enough to just monitor your responsibilities. You need to have the “org sense” to know what’s happening all around you in your organization and in your industry.

No matter if it’s on the court or in the office, there’s always room for leaders to improve. I think Steph Curry embodies the value of growth and development, which is something we should all aspire to emulate in our own leadership journey.

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