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12 Lessons in Leadership From The Wizard...

Guest post by: john brubaker

Article Overview: 12 Lessons for enhancing leadership and personal performance from the Wizard of Westwood and Coach Bru's accompanying questions and insights.

12 Lessons in Leadership From The Wizard...

March Madness is almost upon us and with that in mind; I thought it would only be fitting to devote this week's blog to the living legend John Wooden (aka the Wizard of Westwood). Coach Wooden has won more NCAA basketball championships than any other coach and is also an accomplished author. Among his most valuable contributions are his 12 Lessons in Leadership which transcend sports to life and business.

Take his lessons, engage in some introspection then apply them in leading your organization or your department. If you focus on one lesson each week imagine the impact "The Coach" will have on your team over the next quarter of the fiscal year. Along with Wooden's lessons I share with you my own questions and thoughts on how to apply lessons from the locker room to the board room. This post contains Lessons 1-6 and I will post Lessons 7-12 after the first round of the NCAA Tournament on March 20th.



1. Good values attract good people. How are you recruiting? Are your organizational values aligned with your recruitment strategy? What is the ultimate decision maker when selecting which one of equal candidates to offer a position? Is it an assessment tool you utilize such as Profiles, Caliper or DISC to determine fit? Gut instinct? Employee feedback?

2. Love is the most powerful four letter word. How do you show your customers you love them? Don't tell them you love them by advertising a "customer appreciation day". Show them you love them "L.L. Bean Style" by taking that day and adding 364 additional customer appreciation days annually.

3. Call yourself a teacher. Webster's dictionary defines coaching as teaching and teaching as coaching. What are you doing to create teachable moments in the adversity that often accompanies work life? Sales managers-- are you just looking at numbers and projections or are you actively out in the field with your reps? You will learn more by spending a day out in the field than a month of reading spreadsheets.

4. Emotion is your enemy. Wooden actually expands on this in his book to define it as "extreme emotion is your enemy". He didn't want his team to get too satisfied with a victory or too down after a defeat. In this economy, Lesson #4 might be the most important one. Flat is the new up in today's economy, how are you handling it? Ask any financial advisor worth his/her salt and they will tell you don't get emotional about stock. I would add the same thing to fluctuations. Don't get overly emotional about fluctuations in the market or in your industry. Extreme emotion clouds judgment.

5. It takes 10 hands to make a basket. How many hands does it take to build your product, to make your service successful, to make a sale? Look at your org chart and after you answer that question, answer this....How do you communicate each team member's value to them and to the rest of the team? Wooden is often quoted as saying "the only star on the team is the team". Let that be your guide.

6. Little things make big things happen. Discipline for the sake of discipline leads to employee disengagement. Discipline with a purpose generates buy-in. Bill Walton thought Wooden was being unreasonable with his rule forbidding long hair and beards until Wooden explained to him why. When a player touches his hair or his beard during a game, oil gets on his hands and this creates slippery hands and fingers which leads to poor ball handling which leads to turnovers. What little things should you be paying closer attention to in your operation? If you focus on the details of your team's execution you will enhance the likelihood of success. Do you think Toyota wishes they would have paid closer attention to customer feedback about sudden unintended acceleration?

(If you are skeptical about little things making a big difference, I suggest you pick up a copy of Gladwell's book Tipping Point.)



Best of luck filling out your brackets, Lessons #7-12 will post on the 20th. I will give you the field, I'm taking Kansas and Kentucky in the big dance!

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Article Tags: advice, coaching, human resources, lessons in leadership, management, marketing, personal performance, sales
Referred by: http://www.jimbouchard.org



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