Resources
No.48
September 2006
 
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Book Review:
Wooden on Leadership
Mike Spino

 

John Wooden and Steve Jamison
Wooden on Leadership
New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005
ISBN: 0071453393 (Cloth, $22.95)
John Wooden* is considered by many to be the finest college basketball coach in American sport history. The wonder of Wooden’s amazing success, 12 national championships, and a record 88 straight victories during his illustrious career at UCLA, is that the goal of his coaching was to develop excellent people, not just win basketball games.
The book by Mc Graw-Hill Publishing entitled Wooden on Leadership is about formulating a winning basketball team; however, it is also about how to construct and activate, and keep motivated a successful group in any endeavor or profession. The book is sprinkled with many detailed and hand written notes by Wooden to himself as well as many excerpts from the coach’s own personal diaries. These not only show the mind behind the man, but detail how any successful leader deciphers and acts upon the strengths and weaknesses of those under his direction and encourages them to achieve their maximum performance. Ethical decision-making is best when it is directed to a final goal. The message, do the right actions and deny yourself and you will go to heaven, is one way of instilling ethical morality. On a more earthly plane, these are the attitudes of self- development represented in Coach Wooden’s symbolic representation of the ladder of ‘right’ attitudes and actions represented in the book by his Pyramid of Success.
For instance, according to Wooden’s belief system, if one is industrious and perseveres without self-interest, eventually one can contribute to the common good. Having the right intent (the good of the team), if accomplished with sincerity, will almost always lead to positive actions in the direction of successful group achievement. As one moves up his Pyramid, the goals become more self than group directed. It seems that Wooden believes that the well acting (heroic) individual, at some point in their development, needs to express his/her leadership through personal initiatives. A group can have skills or poise, however, it will take the combined effort of all involved to express these sensibilities in action. His winning record has shown that one person of poise and confidence, who has been part of Wooden’s ethical system, will be synergistic with his teammates. It is fun to view Wooden’s Pyramid as a self contained philosophical system of sorts. We can look at his teaching (coaching) as a way to develop the ethical/moral person, one who is group directed and can take the burden of leadership and succeed for all. No wonder, when seen in this context, that winning isn’t a far reaching enough real goal, that the “flow and smoothness” of participating in a group of ethically trained teammates is the just reward within itself.
I have been a collegiate and international cross country and track coach for almost thirty years. When one has been coaching for a while, one knows that the temptations to win at any costs are at every junction of one’s career. A running coach doesn’t face the challenges to win as say a Division I football or basketball coach, however, coaches and administrators all face conflicting challenges. For the coach, it might be what do you do when your best athlete breaks a rule, or a teacher gives a grade that causes your star player to become ineligible? A manger might suspect his top salesman to be fudging on his expense reports. These are everyday dilemmas for coaches and business people at every level of leadership and can be assisted by reading and digesting this book.
The type of problems that face youth coaches came up during a recent workshop with community track coaches in Atlanta. When a youth coach told me of her dilemma of facing a parent not wanting her star sprint daughter to run on a relay team because it might affect the performance of her single event that followed, I felt her dismay. What does a Wooden inspired coach do under these circumstances? Do you tell the mother that her daughter can’t compete in her individual event unless she shows team spirit in the relay? One of Wooden’s boxes in the Pyramid of Success stresses team spirit, so, I guess the mother would have to place her daughter’s individual ambitions below those of her teammates. These are the questions of character and leadership that face community leaders and youth coaches every day, in every circumstance imaginable.
Many coaches and sport leaders have given in to circumstances because they didn’t want to disturb a seemingly successful status-quo. While we are not always proud of our decisions, with Wooden’s suggestions and descriptive positive modes of behavior, we have something to measure ourselves against. After reading this book, the question will hang in our mind, what would Coach Wooden have done in similar circumstances? This book provides some answers and encourages morally correct decisions while pointing out that correct decision in building character eventually results in championship success.
The book also relates some controversial actions taken by Coach Wooden during his career. For instance, it is assumed to be out of bounds for a college coach to pay for a player’s bail bond or take a player home for Christmas dinner. These are blatant violations of NCAA regulations, however, Wooden’s intense concern for the welfare of his players is of more significance and this is what eventually guides his decisions and principles beyond collegiate regulations. They won’t take his championships away at this point for the violation, however, by relating these personal decisions we see that Coach Wooden is a human being with sensibilities beyond following a rigid code of conduct, even if it is his own.
Wooden’s Pyramid of Success contains important tenets of his philosophy of sport and life. It depicts his approach and formula for self-development and human achievement. For Wooden, to have a player produce under pressure doesn’t require 100 shots from each spot on the floor. The moment of success results, rather, from a sequential building block of attitudes that starts with basic personality traits and is aimed at forming a basketball team or any unit into a ‘family’ of players.
What I like best about the Pyramid of Success is that the category of personality traits appears in the bottom first line of the pyramid design. In shows that to achieve competitive greatness, such as hitting a shot at the buzzer to win an important event, actually begins at an earlier phase of more primary personal values such as cooperation, loyalty and persistence. Therefore, the task of the youth coach is the most important of all—formulating a base of positive personality traits so that each young person can grow up to achieve their own styles of ‘competitive greatness.’
Two features of the book work especially well for the young coach hoping to delve into the mind of Wooden, known by his admirers as the ‘Wizard of Westwood’. Throughout the text are messages written to himself in his own distinctive and measured script: goals for the upcoming year, attitudes to get the most out of a player or team situation, ideas on the importance of education, and small disciplines such as using a double layer of socks to avoid bruises and rashes. Another interesting feature is the description of Coach Wooden from the perspective of his players. Through the years, it seems his orientation to self-development over win at any cost has never changed. Players have said that he has pushed them, disciplined them, forced them to endure and repeat a particular workout or play a hundred times, but he never suggested to his players that winning was of paramount importance. Wooden firmly believed in building up the layers of self-hood through self-control to team spirit, moving inexorably towards the pinnacle of the Pyramid. At the top of the Pyramid is the cherished goal of competitive greatness, however, the basis of this achievement is the more solid self-hoods of faith and patience.
After reading Wooden on Leadership, I know coaches at every level will be able to apply some of Coach Wooden’s perspective to their own coaching and teaching situations. Corporate leaders and those teaching leadership studies will also benefit from the wisdom of the book. By understanding what it takes to excel as human beings, Wooden has shown us what we need to do to become better business leaders, coaches and educators. Wooden’s applied perception to success can lead to a better society with leaders knowing the steps and underlying philosophical persuasion necessary to grow their companies,
teams and families.

* John Wooden is now 95 years old and still the Dean of Collegiate Basketball Coaches in the United States. In short, he is an icon. The University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) is one of the premier schools in Division I of the NCAA. His record of 88 straight wins and 12 national championships will never be approached.

He was called the 'Wizard of Westwood’ because Westwood is the area of Los Angeles in which UCLA is situated.


Mike Spino
E-Journal of Ethical Leadership
RTM Institute for Leadership, Ethics & Character
Kennesaw State University
Phone: + 1 678 797-2000
E-mail: ileceditor@kennesaw.edu



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