The best leadership lessons from The Last Dance are not about being tough. Copy Michael Jordan’s standard. Skip most of his methods.
That is my position after years of coaching owners on accountability. Many people watched the series and came away thinking they should yell more. That is the wrong takeaway. Jordan won inside a system, with elite players, for a short window. Your team is not built that way, and your business does not end after one season.
Here is what I think transfers to a roofing company, a medical practice, or a sales team, and what does not.
What The Last Dance actually shows about how Jordan led
The clearest look comes at the end of Episode 7. Jordan explains why he was so hard on teammates. As CBS Sports reported, he says, “Winning has a price. And leadership has a price.” He says he pushed people who did not want to be pushed. He says anyone who joined the team had to live at his standard. And he says he never asked a teammate to do something he did not do himself.
The series also shows the cost. Former teammates describe being afraid of him. In Episode 8, Jordan and Steve Kerr fight at practice during training camp before the 1995-96 season. Jordan says he felt small afterward. He says it showed him he needed to connect more with teammates he barely knew. The Bulls then won 72 games that year.
CBS Sports made a fair point. The documentary explains Jordan’s approach but does not test it. Kerr has said that with Jordan, players could feel like they played for him, not with him. He said Tim Duncan, Steve Nash, and Stephen Curry led in a very different way that worked just as well. Tex Winter, a longtime Bulls assistant coach, worried that many players felt alienated by how Jordan treated them.
So the honest question is not whether Jordan was a great leader. It is which parts of his leadership would help your business, and which parts would break it.
The leadership lessons from The Last Dance worth copying
I see three things in Jordan’s approach that work in almost any business. None of them require yelling.
Make the standard visible and specific
Jordan’s teammates knew what he expected. In most small businesses, nobody does. “Be professional” is not a standard. “Return customer calls within two business hours” is. If you cannot see it or count it, you cannot hold anyone to it.
Earn the right by doing the work yourself
Jordan’s defense of his behavior rests on one claim: he did the work first. That part transfers. If you want your sales team to make calls, make some calls. If you want clean job notes, write clean job notes. This is why we use a player-coach model at Accountability Now. We help the team build and run the solution, not just talk about it.
Hold the standard when it is hard
This is the fourth of the 4Cs of Accountability, a framework I created: Crush Mediocrity. Refuse average. Raise the standard and hold it under pressure. Jordan did this better than almost anyone. Most owners do the opposite. They set a standard, let it slide when things get busy, and then wonder why nobody takes it seriously.
What not to copy: fear is not a management system
Jordan ran Crush Mediocrity at full volume. He used much less of the other three Cs. Critique Success means studying what worked so you can repeat it. Correct Failure means naming the miss fast and fixing the cause, with no blame. Celebrate Growth means recognizing progress out loud.
When a leader only uses the fourth C, people stop telling the truth. They hide problems so they do not get hit. In my experience, that is the real cost of fear in a small business. You lose the bad news, and bad news is what you need most.
Jordan could get away with this for a few reasons that do not apply to you. His teammates were some of the best players in the world. The title window was short. And the pay, the fame, and the stakes were huge. Your front desk coordinator or newest technician has other options and a long career ahead. Push them the way Jordan pushed Scott Burrell and many of them will just leave.
| Jordan habit | Copy or skip | What to do in your business |
|---|---|---|
| Clear, high standard for everyone | Copy | Write five specific standards your team can see and measure. |
| Doing the hard work himself first | Copy | Do the job you are asking for, at least sometimes, so you know it is possible. |
| Refusing to let the standard slide | Copy | Follow through every time, even when you are busy. |
| Public put-downs and fear | Skip | Correct the miss in private, at the cause, without blame. |
| Leading by personality alone | Skip | Build a weekly process that holds the standard when you are not there. |
Jordan had a system around him. Most owners do not.
Jordan did not win alone. Scottie Pippen played beside him for all six titles. Phil Jackson and his staff ran a set system on offense. Jordan’s intensity worked inside that structure. Take the structure away and intensity turns into noise.
This is the most common mistake I see. An owner watches a team miss a standard and decides the team is lazy. Often, the team is confused. Nobody wrote down how the work should be done. Roles overlap. Handoffs break.
Laridium, a manufacturing and fulfillment company, had a version of this problem. Our client record says they had no COO, unclear roles, and broken communication between sales, marketing, production, and shipping. Task lists had not fixed it. Michelle, acting as their fractional COO, built an operating system from lead to delivery with the team, not for them. The client wrote, “She didn’t just give us SOPs and flowcharts. She made sure they were ours.” The reported result was clear roles and communication. That is a structural result, not a revenue figure, and it is what makes a standard possible to meet.
Our method for this is S.C.O.R.E., which we install from left to right. Sales and Marketing comes first. Then Controlled Delivery, with written procedures, handoffs, and quality checks. Then Operational Data, a short scorecard that shows who hit the number. Really Massive Goals and Empower the Team come after that. The order matters. You cannot hold people to a standard the business has never defined.
Make the standard a weekly habit, not a speech
A speech fades by Thursday. A weekly habit does not. The simplest habit I know is a short scorecard meeting. Each number has one owner. If the number was hit, the team asks why and repeats it. If it was missed, the owner names the miss, finds the cause, and fixes it by next week. I wrote more about this in why meetings are not accountability on their own.
At Gardeners Center, a garden and landscape retailer, the owners were the bottleneck. Every decision ran through them, and meetings did not end in action. BenJoe on our team installed a weekly Scorecard Meeting, coached the owners to run it, then coached the team to run it alone. The client wrote that BenJoe “coached us through how to implement them and gave us the tools to continue facilitating them on our own.” Our engagement record reports that the owners stepped out of daily operations. No measured hours saved were recorded.
That is the opposite of the Jordan model. The standard did not depend on one person being intense. The meeting held it.
QOMO, an education technology company, shows the same idea from the leader’s side. The problem was no formal accountability process and an unclear org structure. Lucia Li, their VP of Sales, said Don and the team “helped us implement processes to hold our team accountable and build a strong foundation to scale.” She also said work now feels enjoyable. My view: accountability done right is not pressure. It is relief.
Tell people the price before they join
Jordan said that once you joined the Bulls, you lived at his standard. The fair part of that is the warning. Every player knew who Jordan was before they arrived.
Most owners skip the warning. They hire someone, hope the person “gets it,” and get angry when they do not. Before your next hire, say out loud what the job really asks for: the hours, the pace, the numbers, and the reward for doing it well. Some people will walk away. That is the point. In my years leading sales and customer operations teams, including as Chief Revenue Officer at MoneySolver, the people who lasted were the ones who heard the hard parts first. If turnover keeps hitting you, the cause may sit upstream. I unpack that in hiring problems or leadership problems.
Then protect people in public and push them in private. When a client complains, you own it. The client does not need to know which employee missed. Inside the business, you hold that person to the standard. Your team learns that you will not throw them under the bus, so they are more willing to hear the hard feedback.
If you demand a high standard, you owe your team what they need to meet it. That means working tools, training before people fail, and someone who covers when a person is out. Demanding excellence while making the work hard to do is not leadership. It is a setup.
Be the leader people would choose to play with
Kerr’s line about playing for Jordan instead of with him is the lesson the documentary leaves out. Jordan’s results were real. So was the cost. A business has no title window that ends in June. It has to keep good people for years.
So keep the parts that work. Set a clear standard. Meet it first. Hold it every week through a process, not a mood. Then add the moves Jordan skipped: study your wins, fix misses without blame, and say thank you out loud. If you want help building that habit at the leadership level, our executive coaching is built around it. The goal is not to be feared. The goal is a team that holds the standard when you are not in the room.
Frequently asked questions
What are the main leadership lessons from The Last Dance for business owners?
The main leadership lessons from The Last Dance are to set a clear standard, meet it yourself first, and hold it under pressure. The parts to skip are fear, public humiliation, and leading by personality alone. Most owners need the standard plus a system that makes it repeatable.
Should a small business owner lead like Michael Jordan?
A small business owner should copy Michael Jordan’s standard, not his methods. Jordan led elite, well-paid athletes for a short title window, and even his own teammates and coaches questioned the cost of his approach. Most owners get better results from clear standards, real support, and steady follow-through.
What did Michael Jordan say about leadership in The Last Dance?
In Episode 7 of The Last Dance, Michael Jordan said winning and leadership both have a price. He said he pushed and challenged teammates who did not want it, and that he never asked them to do something he did not do himself. CBS Sports later noted that the series explains his approach but does not challenge it.
What happened between Michael Jordan and Steve Kerr in The Last Dance?
Michael Jordan and Steve Kerr got into a fistfight at practice during training camp before the 1995-96 season, a story covered in Episode 8 of The Last Dance. Jordan said afterward that he felt small and realized he needed to connect more with his teammates. The Bulls won 72 games that season.
Why do high standards fail in many small businesses?
High standards fail in many small businesses because they are vague, unsupported, or not enforced. A standard like be more proactive cannot be measured, and a team without training, tools, or a process cannot meet even a clear one. Standards also die when the owner threatens consequences and never follows through.
How do the 4Cs of Accountability relate to Michael Jordan’s approach?
The 4Cs of Accountability are Critique Success, Correct Failure, Celebrate Growth, and Crush Mediocrity, a framework created by Don Markland. Michael Jordan’s approach in The Last Dance shows Crush Mediocrity at full volume with little Celebrate Growth. The 4Cs ask leaders to use all four so the standard rises without driving good people away.
How can an owner hold a team accountable without leading through fear?
An owner can hold a team accountable without fear by making the standard specific, reviewing it in a short weekly meeting, and following through every time. Problems should be named fast and fixed at the cause, and progress should be recognized out loud. When the process does the holding, the owner does not need to be the scariest person in the room.
This article was drafted with AI research and writing tools, then rewritten and fact-checked by the Accountability Now team against our own client records and Google’s published guidance. Client results are reported by clients or our team and are not independently audited unless stated.
