That’s the question Maryland Terrapins head coach Kevin Willard asked his team in the huddle. The Terrapins had gone back and forth with their latest “March Madness” opponent, the Colorado State Rams, who had just hit a three pointer to take the lead. Now, down by one with only 3.6 seconds to go, the Terrapins had one last chance at a ticket to the “Sweet 16,” the next round of the NCAA tournament.
With Willard’s question hanging in the air, Maryland freshman Derik Queen heeded the call.
“Give me the ball,” Queen said.
Queen delivered on his demand. Getting the ball just outside of the three-point line, the freshman drove strong to his left and put up a short jump shot off the glass as the buzzer sounded.
Final result: Terrapins 72, Rams 71.
This was more than a great Sunday evening basketball game. It was also a real-time case study in emotional intelligence, the ability to understand and manage emotions to achieve a goal.
The lesson centers on both Willard’s question and Queen’s reply, and it’s all about the balance between two qualities:
Humility and confidence.
Let’s take a closer look at what made this exchange so valuable, and why both of these qualities are essential for business leaders everywhere. (Want more emotional intelligence lessons from the real world? Sign up here for my free email emotional intelligence course.)
Let’s start with Willard’s question: Why was asking the team who wanted the ball so emotionally intelligent? Primarily, for three reasons.
First, it gave control to the players. This wouldn’t be decision made solely by the coach; Willard wanted the players to take ownership of this decision, too. A decision made together, by a team, will always be supported better than one handed from the top down without any consultation.
Second, it gave opportunity to the most confident player(s) to step up. At this level of basketball, with so much skill and talent, so much is about confidence. If a player is confident enough to take responsibility with the game on the line, he or she has higher chances of success.
Third, a confident player can then increase the confidence of his teammates, too. And that’s exactly what Willard saw play out in real time.
“Sometimes, you can draw something up for a guy that maybe doesn’t want the basketball,” Willard went on to say in the postgame interview. “So, once he said that, it was a pretty simple decision. And I could see everyone’s body language kind of perk up a little bit, because he was so confident that he wanted the basketball.”
Now, what about Queen? How did the 20-year-old show evidence of emotional intelligence in his reply and subsequent actions?
A last second shot in a tournament game is not for the faint of heart. Yet, despite being one of the youngest members of the team, Queen stepped up and showed he was ready for the big stage. Ready to take on major challenges. Ready to deal with the result, come what may—which could have included taking responsibility for the team’s loss.
Stepping up in this way takes huge confidence. It takes the ability to push aside feelings of doubt and anxiety. (Queen later admitted in the postgame interview that he was a bit nervous, as he had never hit a game winner before.)
But confidence can also work against you, if it’s not kept in balance. That’s why it’s so important to see what Queen did after hitting his game winner: He deflected credit for the win away from himself, and instead spoke of the “fight” put up by all his teammates.
“I couldn’t do it without my team,” Queen said.
That type of humble confidence will go a long way in winning Queen the continued support of his teammates.
So, if you’re in a position of leadership, or you’re someone who is aspiring to such a position, remember the value of “humble confidence.”
Namely:
- Be humble enough to ask the team for their thoughts.
- Be confident enough to take on the big challenges.
- Balance your confidence with humility, too—by deflecting praise away from yourself and sharing it with your team.
If you do these things, you’ll take a lesson from one of the best games this year’s March Madness has had to offer—and from a stellar coach and a gifted freshman who will be worth watching in the next round.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
