On January 2002, Jonathan drove to the Google office in Mountain View. He thought he would pick up a formal job offer to become head of the growing Google product team. He thought the job was locked, but once he arrived, he was escorted to a plain conference room where a gruff, older guy greeted him. It was the first time Jonathan met Bill. He couldn’t quite remember who Bill was and did not realize, at least at first, that this guy was the final gateway to employment at the company. No problem, though, Jonathan. I’m a big deal SVP from a successful tech company, @Home. I got this!

Bill looked at Jonathan for what seemed like minutes, then told him that he had spoken with a few of the principals from @Home: its cofounder Tom Jermoluk; its first CEO, William Randolph Hearst III; and one of its investors, John Doerr, who was also on Google’s board. The consensus, Bill reported, was that Jonathan was brilliant and worked hard. Jonathan’s chest puffed a bit.

“But I don’t care about any of that,” Bill said.

“I only have one question: Are you coachable?”

Jonathan instantly and regrettably replied: “It depends on the coach.”

Wrong answer.

“Smart alecks are not coachable,” Bill snapped. He stood up to leave, interview over, as it dawned on Jonathan that he had heard Eric Schmidt was getting coaching from someone, and, oh my God, this must be the guy. Jonathan switched from smart-aleck mode to groveling mode, backing away from his quip (which wasn’t ex-exactly a quip), and asked Bill to continue the conversation. After another moment that felt like minutes, Bill sat back down and talked about how he chose the people he would work with based on humility. Leadership is not about you; it’s about service to something more significant: the company, the team. Bill believed that good leaders grow over time and that leadership accrues to them from their teams. He thought curious people who wanted to learn new things were best suited for this. There was no room in this formula for smart alecks and their hubris. Bill then asked, “What do you want to get out of a coach?”

This felt like and indeed was, a change-your-life-forever moment. And Jonathan couldn’t think of anything to say. Fortunately, he remembered a quote from Tom Landry. Tom Landry coached the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys for twenty-nine years, including two Super Bowl championships and twenty straight winning seasons. “A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be.” That’s what I want, Jonathan told Bill. It worked. Jonathan not only got the job, he got the coach he didn’t think he needed but sorely did.