The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential (34 page)

I looked around the arena as thousands of hands were lifted. I would estimate that 80 percent of the people in attendance raised their hands. It was a reflection of Coach’s kindness and his willingness to make others feel special.

Coach sure made me feel special. I was especially honored when he asked me to write a foreword for his book
A Game Plan for Life
. What a privilege! It was my chance to do something for someone who had done so much for me. Likewise, I was delighted when Coach offered to write a foreword for my next book,
Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn
. With the assistance of Don Yeager, his co-writer, it was one of the last things Coach wrote before his death.

Coach Wooden had such a great personal touch. Each time I visited him, after we said our good-byes, I would take the elevator down from his condo and walk outside to the visitor’s parking area. As I reached my car I would turn around and look up toward the balcony of his unit. And there would be Coach, watching me leave and waving good-bye to me. That will always be my fondest memory of him—warmly connecting as any good Level 2 leader would.

Leaders on Level 3 produce, and that can certainly be said of John Wooden. As both a player and a coach, he was a winner. He learned to shoot baskets on a hoop his father had forged himself. He took his high school basketball team to the Indiana state championship three years, winning it once. He was a three-time All-American at Purdue, leading his team to two Big Ten titles and a national championship. And he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame as a player long before his induction as a coach.

Coach was a great athlete who could play many sports. He won basketball championships as a player, but his single greatest athletic
feat might have occurred on a golf course.
Golf Digest
lists John Wooden as one of only four people to hit both a double eagle and a hole in one in the same round of golf. That feat was accomplished in 1947 at the South Bend Country Club in South Bend, Indiana.

Wooden started his career as a high school coach and an English teacher. His first year coaching basketball, his team had a losing record. That’s significant because it was the only time
in his entire coaching career
that he had a losing record! In his eleven years coaching high school players, his record was 218-42.
⁴

After coaching the 1947–48 high school season, Wooden became the head coach at UCLA. He had originally pursued the head coaching position at the University of Minnesota, since he and his wife, Nell, wanted to remain in the Midwest. And the Golden Gophers actually offered him the position, but he didn’t hear about it until he had accepted the job at UCLA. And since he had given the California university his word, he declined Minnesota’s offer.

Coach Wooden turned around UCLA’s basketball program in one season. Prior to his arrival, they had experienced a losing season. His first year as UCLA’s coach, the team won the Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) Southern Division Championship with a 22-7 record. It was the most wins in a season for UCLA since their basketball program had begun in 1919.
⁵
The rest of Wooden’s professional career has become legendary. A career record of 885-203 (.813 winning percentage). Ten national championships. Four undefeated seasons. Named NCAA Coach of the Year seven times.
⁶
And in 2009, he was named by the
Sporting News
as the greatest coach of all time in any sport.
⁷

Since he had experienced such a productive career as a leader, I wondered what he missed most about coaching. So I asked him. His answer surprised me: “What I miss the most are the practices, not the games.” He explained, “I wanted to win every single game I ever played in or coached. But, I understood that ultimately the winning or losing may not be under my control. What was under my control
was how I prepared myself and our team. I judged my success, my ‘winning,’ on that. It just made more sense.” Coach summed up: “Winning games, titles, and championships isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but getting there, the journey, is a lot more than it’s cracked up to be.” That’s great perspective from a great leader who always produced on Level 3.

Coach Wooden said, “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.” That’s what Level 4 leaders want for themselves and those they lead: to reach their potential.

As well as any leader I’ve ever studied, Coach selected the most talented people he could find and then developed them to become the best they could be. The list of players on his UCLA teams is a Who’s Who of great players: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton, Sidney Wicks, Walt Hazzard, Gail Goodrich, Keith Wilkes, Curtis Rowe, Marques Johnson, Dave Meyers, and Lucius Allen. Yet Coach was more proud of his players’ accomplishments in life than their achievements on a basketball court. His face would light up as he talked about the men who fulfilled leadership responsibilities in education, government, religion, and business. These were the people he developed. Time and again, his players said that Coach’s desire was to use basketball to teach them how to live and lead, not to win championships.

How did Coach Wooden succeed so effectively on Level 4? Here is my take on it.

Coach always picked players who would not only play basketball well but also be good team members, good students, and good citizens. He did that by analyzing four areas:

• Transcripts:
  Coach wanted good students on his team. He believed their primary goal in entering college was to receive a good education, not to play basketball. He searched for and found true student-athletes.
  
• Family Life:
  Coach often said that a person’s priorities should be family, faith, and friends. And regarding putting family ahead of faith, he would say with a twinkle in his eye, “God understands.” By that I think he meant that you learn a lot about people’s characters from how they treat their families. For example, he told me about a recruiting trip where he and an assistant visited the top high school prospect in the country. Coach had the scholarship papers with him to give to the young man if the visit went well. It didn’t. During their time together, the boy spoke disrespectfully several times to his mom. Coach left without offering the scholarship. Afterward, the assistant expressed his surprise. Coach replied, “Any player that doesn’t respect his mother won’t respect his coach.”
  
• Composite Evaluation from Coaches:
  Coach used to say, “If you can see a player only once, it’s better to have never seen him.” To get a clear perspective of players he was interested in, he would ask five coaches who opposed that player’s team, “Who was the best player you coached against this year?” And then he would also talk to the head coach of that player. Only after all that would he consider evaluating him for a scholarship offer.
  
• Quickness:
  Leaders always need to consider what single characteristic is most important (after character) for the people on their team. Basketball is a game of quickness, so Coach chose that athletic skill over any other. That is how he was able to win his first national championship with a team where every starter was six foot five or shorter. His goal was to have the quickest players on the court so that they would have the turnover advantage. He reasoned that if his team could cause five or more turnovers than their opponent during a game, it would give them five additional attempts to score, leading to a five-or six-point advantage. That would often mean the difference between winning and losing a game.
  

Like all good leaders, Coach Wooden had a clear picture of who he wanted on his team. As a result, he recruited the best players—people who would have potential to be developed and win championships.

As I’ve already stated, you can’t win without good players. But if you have good players, you still may not win. To have a chance, you must develop them. At that, John Wooden was world-class. And his method was so simple, anyone can follow it:

1. Explanation
   —
   Tell them
   what you want them to know and do.
   
2. Demonstration
   —
   Show them
   what you want them to know and do.
   
3. Initiation
   —Let them
   show you
   that they know what to do.
   
4. Correction
   —Ask them to
   change
   what they are doing incorrectly.
   
5. Repetition
   —Ask them to do it right
   over and over
   again.
   

After that, Coach would let the results speak for themselves. He used to say, “If you prepare properly, you may be outscored, but you will never lose. You always win when you make the full effort to do the best of which you’re capable.”

I first became aware of Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success in the 1970s when I was a young aspiring leader. He began developing it in the mid-1930s and finalized it in 1948.
⁸
That was when he began teaching it to his players. It gave him a concrete way of teaching them what he considered important. He taught it to others until he died.

When I discovered the pyramid in a magazine, I cut it out and taped it onto my filing cabinet so that I could review it every day. I realized that within the pyramid were qualities and values that I needed to embrace and possess. I pass it on to you. (See pyramid on the next page.)

Coach Wooden considered the values he taught to be much more important than basketball.

The Pyramid of Success is protected by John Wooden Legacy, LLC. All rights reserved.

I have no doubt that Coach Wooden reached the Pinnacle level of leadership. There is evidence of it everywhere. Since 1977, the most coveted player of the year award in basketball has been the John R. Wooden Award. It is basketball’s equivalent of football’s Heisman Trophy, with the winner announced during a ceremony held at the Los Angeles Athletic Club. Two annual men’s basketball events called the John R. Wooden Classic and the John R. Wooden Tradition are held in Wooden’s honor. And on July 23, 2003, John Wooden went to the White House where the president of the United States presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

Further evidence of the respect Coach Wooden has received from others could be seen at his memorial service at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion. Thousands of people attended, including many of his former players. Wooden was most proud of their accomplishments after they left basketball, and their individual successes are a testament to his ability to develop leaders.

During the ceremony, spotlights emphasized Coach’s life and accomplishments. A light shone on his seat in the arena where he had watched the Bruins play after he had retired. That seat has now been retired, and no one else will ever sit there again. A light shone on the basketball court so that everyone would notice the names of Nell and John Wooden, for whom the court was named. Lights were shone on the ten National Championship banners to remind everyone of his coaching accomplishments, which will never be repeated in men’s college basketball.

Yet, in spite of all the accomplishments and awards, the depth of Wooden’s leadership can be best measured by his character. Pastor Dudley Rutherford echoed this at Coach’s memorial service when he said,