Jen Rizzotti on Building Winning Teams
Jennifer Rizzotti has been a household name in Connecticut for three decades.
In 1995, the Basketball Hall of Famer helped lead the University of Connecticut’s women’s basketball team to it first national championship.
After a successful WNBA career, she returned to Connecticut to coach the University of Hartford and is currently the president of the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun.
Throughout her career, building a positive culture has been at the heart of Rizzotti’s success.
“It’s the number one factor in having success or not having success,” Rizzotti told KeyBank’s Allison Standish-Plimpton and more than 660 attendees at CBIA’s March 18 When Women Lead: Empowering Opportunity.
Values
She described culture as “how you do things and the values that you live by.”
“As a leader, you have to be really good at identifying what those are for you as an individual and then communicating that across your team,” she said.
“Culture is about how you do things and the values that you live by.”
Connecticut Sun’s Jennifer Rizzotti
Rizzotti said leading a team and building that culture translates from the basketball court to the business community.
“Leadership transfers,” she said.
“If you’re honest and you’re open and you have a growth mindset, and you have the ability to set a vision and a culture and you hold people accountable to it, what does it matter if it’s a basketball team in a locker room or a business team in a front office?”
‘Positive Impact’
Rizzotti said her path to leadership wasn’t always a straight line.
In fact, she said she initially turned down her first offer to coach the University of Hartford.
After being convinced to take the job, she realized almost immediately that she was meant to be a basketball coach.
“Coaching gave me an opportunity to impact lives in every single year in ways that I couldn’t imagine,” she said.
“I quickly learned that the definition of success for me shifted from winning, winning, winning to positive impact, positive impact, positive impact.”
Leap of Faith
Several years later, when The Connecticut Sun first approached Rizzotti to be team president—a role for which she had no previous experience—she again said no.
Part of the reason? Rizzotti said she had felt unsupported as a professional basketball player.
“I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t rushing into something without knowing that the atmosphere that I had experienced at Hartford was something that I could find again in my next job,” she said.
“I’ve been really lucky, but I’ve also worked really hard.”
Rizzotti
But, she said she eventually decided to take a leap of faith and has loved every minute of it.
“One of my favorite quotes is ‘the harder you work, the luckier you get,’” Rizzotti said.
“I’ve been really lucky, but I’ve also worked really hard, treated people right. And that has come back around to treat me right when I’ve needed it the most.”
Core Values
Rizzotti said she has experienced the double standards that women face.
And as a leader, she works hard to make sure the women that work for her know there’s an intention to how she operates.
“You’re showing that you’re intentional about who you’re hiring and the culture that you’re building,” she said.
“We were very intentional about how to build a team with the right culture, with the right people.”
Rizzotti
Rizzotti also said that she’s fortunate to work for an organization that has an atmosphere and culture like Mohegan.
“It was their core values that drew me,” she said. “I knew that they would put people first,” she said.
“We were very intentional about how to build a team with the right culture, with the right people, give opportunities to young people across the board, even if they didn’t have a ton of experience like myself, but had all of the intangible qualities that help you be successful in a working environment.”
‘Truthful and Authentic’
She said the leadership at Mohegan is open to her feedback—including some difficult conversations.
“I just feel like it’s my responsibility, even when it’s not popular, to be the woman in the room that’s like, ‘that’s not okay,’” she said.
“I’ve had a lot of conversations around the fact that ‘you run and own a team that’s primarily Black, lesbian women.
“There needs to be some intention around how we’re promoted and how they’re treated.”
Rizzotti said that culture and atmosphere made it easier “to feel like I could be in a room where I could be honest and I could be truthful and authentic.”
Rizzotti said that building a culture isn’t always easy, and it doesn’t happen overnight.
“When you create a diverse workforce, you have a lot of people that are very different,” she said.
“I think part of being a good leader is knowing how to lead every individual person.”
Setting the Bar
Rizzotti said she knows she’s not always the easiest person to work for.
“I expect excellence, I expect the best, and they know that,” she said. “I feel like too many times, leaders set the bar too low.
“You need to teach people that they can do more and expect more out of themselves, and then hold them accountable to it.”
“If you want them to listen to you when you’re yelling at them, then you better celebrate the hell out of them when they succeed.”
Rizzotti
Rizzotti said that an important part of setting a high bar and expecting excellence is celebrating your team’s success.
She said it’s one of the lessons Geno Auriemma taught her at UConn.
“He taught me about leadership. He taught me about accountability. He taught me how to celebrate my teammates,” she said.
“If you want them to listen to you when you’re yelling at them, then you better celebrate the hell out of them when they succeed.”
Providing Opportunities
As a leader, Rizzotti said she works hard to set an example and provide opportunities for other women.
She said it’s important for her to help give women “the confidence that they can accomplish anything.”
Rizzotti said that too often, women don’t ask for what they deserve.
“I want to make sure I’m providing opportunity for women to take a leap of faith and grow.”
Rizzotti
“We’re not valuing ourselves at a level where we need to be valued,” she said. “So how do we expect other people to value us at that level?”
She said that she had mentors who gave her the confidence and belief to become a leader.
“I want to make sure I’m providing opportunity for women to take a leap of faith and grow into who they believe they can be,” she said.
When Women Lead was produced by CBIA in collaboration with the Women’s Business Development Council and made possible through the generous support of KeyBank, with additional support from Littler Mendelson PC, Connecticut Education Association, The Lee Company, NDC Commercial Construction, Inc., Delta Dental, and CONNSTEP.
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