#434： Legendary Coach John Wooden’s Secrets of Leadership
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Summary
During his tenure as coach of the UCLA men s basketball team from 1948 to 1975, John Wooden led his team to four undefeated seasons and 10 National Championships, seven of which happened in consecutive years. But the funny thing is, winning wasn t his goal as a coach. That was simply a happy byproduct of the ultimate aim he had for his team: to perform their very best in whatever they did.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. John Wooden has
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been called the greatest coach of all time. During his tenure as coach of the UCLA men's
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basketball team from 1948 to 1975, he led his team to four undefeated seasons and 10 national
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championships, seven of which happened in consecutive years. But the funny thing is, winning wasn't John
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Wooden's goal as a coach. That was simply a happy byproduct of the ultimate aim he had for his team
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both on and off the court, to perform their very best in whatever they did. My guest today had the
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pleasure of working with Coach Wooden while he was still alive on several of Wooden's books about
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teaching and leadership. His name is Steve Jameson, and today on the show, Steve shares some of Wooden's
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best nuggets of wisdom on the pursuit of excellence. We begin our conversation discussing Coach
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Wooden's definition of success and why winning wasn't part of it. Steve then shares how Wooden was able to
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impart his vision to his team so effectively through his quiet but intense court presence.
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Steve then digs into Wooden's famous pyramid of success and why his folksy, almost quaint advice
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resonates so much with people. We end our conversation discussing how Wooden kept a check on big egos on
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his team and kept success from going to his own head as well. This episode is filled with actionable,
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timeless advice. After it's over, check out the show notes at aom.is slash Wooden.
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Well, yeah, you've spent your career writing and working with John Wooden about basically distilling
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his leadership philosophy, his coaching philosophy. I'm curious, for those who aren't familiar with him,
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because he was a phenomenal coach, but some people might not be familiar with him. Give us a
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thumbnail sketch of his life and career and what made him such an exceptional leader and coach.
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Perhaps what sets him apart from every other coach is that record of national championships that
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he accumulated, 10 national championships in 12 years, seven of them in consecutive years.
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This is, he's got five or six records that are preposterous. Seven national March Madness
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championships in a row is one of them starting in 1967, 1968, 1969, 70, 71, 1972, and 1973. Every year,
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a March Madness national championship, 88 straight games in a row, all-time winning streak, division
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one basketball, men's basketball. And the, again, some of these things are almost get silly. He has the
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longest winning streak. He also has the third longest winning streak, 47 games. And in between the
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University of San Francisco is in second place with 60 straight games. So it's just one thing after
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another, including four perfect seasons. So that kind of separates him from the pack, a resume that
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And I'm curious, how did you connect with him? I mean, how do, and how has your life changed because
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In retrospect, it's almost embarrassing because I was working on a magazine article that was
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kind of exploring what top coaches did in their management and their thinking that might apply
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in business. And John Wooden was nearby. I knew his record was pretty good, but I wasn't in awe of him.
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This is, I'm not bragging about it. It was my own stupidity, but he was nearby and I, you know,
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he had won some championships and I contacted his publisher, got his phone number, called him up and
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he said, sure, I'd like to talk to you. Come on over. What's your name again? So it was a very modest
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beginning. And from that, we did eight books and many of them were bestsellers. We did a book on
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leadership. There's a Wall Street Journal bestseller and a PBS show called Wooden, A Values Victory and
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Peace of Mind. But it started out just with his little interview. I spent three hours with him,
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went home, transcribed it, and read it. And everything that he said was just a gem of wisdom,
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of leadership, of practicality. And I went back and eventually talked him into doing a book
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and the book led to another book, et cetera. But it was from a very modest beginning.
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Right. So let's dig into that philosophy because what impresses me about John Wooden is that
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unlike a lot of coaches or what we think of as a good coach, he didn't yell, he wasn't rah-rah,
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yet he was an effective leader. How did he lead quietly? How was he able to convey to the people
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he was coaching what he wanted and get them to do that without getting in their face and without the
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typical, you know, rah-rah stuff? I think part of it was the fact that as a leader, he had a command
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presence. And we did, I mentioned, eight books together. And there's so much material in there.
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And people have asked me to sort of, well, distill it. And I would distill it for you in this way.
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He knew his stuff. As a leader, he was made of the right stuff. And his definition of success was
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radical. And all of those things go to his command presence. His ability to lead in a quiet is maybe
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not the right word, but he certainly was not a screamer and a tantrum guy. It was a very firm
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hand he had on the controls. He knew his stuff because he had been an All-American at Purdue.
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He had been an All-State basketball player at Indiana High School, where he went to high school,
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Martinsville. And at college at Purdue, he had a great coach there. So he understood the mechanics
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of basketball and how to teach those mechanics. But it's that second part where his, as a leader,
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he was made of the right stuff. He was a man of integrity. He was a man whose word meant something.
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He was a man who did what he said. So people, his players particularly, when he said something,
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he meant it and they knew it. So he didn't have to jump up and down to get their attention. And he
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didn't. But he had a very firm, maybe stern approach to practices and all the rest. It was a
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when he talked, people listened. And then the third part of it was his definition of success
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was radical because he didn't mention winning as one of the components of being a success at the
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highest level. For him, success was all about effort, not about winning. In his world, winning
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was a byproduct or an after effect, a consequence of true success, which was making the effort 100%
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to do the best you're capable of doing. Okay. Well, there's a lot to break down there. So let's
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go back to this, his idea of success. So it wasn't winning games, but he did that in spades, as you
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talked about in your, in our introduction there. So it was effort. How did he determine what, I mean,
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what was the metric he used, whether a player had given 100% of his effort? What did, what was he
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looking at? Well, first of all, I have to chuckle when you say metric, because in the 15 years I work
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with him on a variety of projects, metric was never used, but I understand what you're saying. And,
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and, and he would too. His metric, if you want to apply it to him, was the quality of effort you put
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forth to bring forth your best. And in the context of teams, it would be bringing out your best in
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ways that serve the team. So how, how do you know if somebody is doing their best?
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You don't. And this is the, the, the, the, the tough part of applying what he says, because
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you are the only one, he would say this, your boss doesn't know if you're doing the best you can do.
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Your, your wife, your girlfriend, your dog, maybe your dog does, but you are the only person
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that can look in the mirror and say that you truly gave all you had to give. Well, that kind
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of leaves the responsibility up to the individual. And if you're the kind of individual that's given
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to fooling yourself, then you're on a slippery slope. If you look in the mirror and you're honest
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with yourself and you can say, I've done everything I can do, whatever the context, basketball or
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business to bring out my best, you have succeeded. You are a success. His definition of success,
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which, uh, if you'll let me, I'll, I'll give you right now is peace of mind. Success is peace of
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mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort 100% to become the
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best you're capable of being. That's a long sentence. What he's saying is success is trying
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your best to be your best. And only, you know, if you've done that. So if you are fooling yourself,
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you're not going to achieve the results that you're after. He called those results, by the way,
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winning was, as I mentioned, it's a by-product. Success is, is in the effort. If that effort produces
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winning, so be it. Sometimes you'll do your best and you'll lose. Right. Well, and you, I mean,
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I'm sure as he worked with his players, he, he gained a grasp of what their best effort was.
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And you highlight instances where they would win games and he'd be disappointed in their,
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their effort. Right. But a good coach can understand what's going on in front of him
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and a lackadaisical effort during a game, for example, you can smell that. But when the dynasty
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was in the process of, of rolling, they would play teams that they would beat by 50 points,
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especially preseason. And he didn't look at that score necessarily as indicating they had won the
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effort that he smelled. If I can use that word on the court, what he was seeing, were they putting
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forth in his view, the best they had, even though they might've been ahead by 30 points, that was his
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gauge, not the final score. The same thing was done when the game was close. The score was a,
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was a possible indicator that his team had achieved success in putting forth their best
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effort, but it wasn't always the case. I asked him one time, coach, are you saying that you would
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rather have a team put forth their best effort and lose than give a second rate effort and win?
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And he, he kind of looked at me with disdain because we'd been working together for a while
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and he said, haven't you been listening? My standard was effort. My standard was how hard you work to be
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your best. And if you do that and lose, you have achieved success in my, in my opinion. Well, I had set
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a trap for him and I said, ah, can you give me an example where you lost a game of importance and
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you were happy that your team had achieved success as you defined it? And he pointed to a game, a
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semifinals, a national championship, 1962. Walt Hazard was on that team, one of the great players in
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college history and a great NBA player. And they were playing the defending champion. Cincinnati came
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down the court. They were behind by two points with 30 seconds left. And, uh, the team had just
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had a phenomenal season of cohesion and effort and preparation. They had achieved success and they
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had played their hearts out in this game. And Walt Hazard was called for a foul charging. The press
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later said it was a phantom foul that he hadn't charged. He hadn't, the referee saw something that
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wasn't there. They lost the game. Afterwards, John Wooden went into the locker room and, and told his team,
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how proud he was of them and how they had succeeded at the highest level and that they
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should walk out of that locker room with their heads held high. And he suggested to me, there's
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an example of a game that had a lot of consequences. We would play in the national championship for the
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first time. If we won, we lost, but that team. And then he had this wonderful way of showing his
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pleasure. He said that team, my, oh my, how proud I am of that team and what they did. That's the best
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example that I got from him of effort is more important than the final score. Effort is everything.
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So, so there, he had an immense control of his emotions. Like it wouldn't even said he, he didn't
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like emotionalism. Was this something that he naturally, he was just, he naturally had the ability
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to control his emotions or was this something he had developed throughout his life? Yeah, to develop, he had
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a temper and it was a hot temper. When he was a kid, he would occasionally end up in fist fights. He talks
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about one he had with his brother that he, his dad caught the two of them fighting and swearing and gave
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him a good whipping. In those days, he weren't sent to jail for that kind of behavior. The dad taught him a
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lesson though. Don't, don't let your temper get out of hand. Well, it took more than that. John
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Wooden as a coach occasionally early on would let that temper get out of hand. He was a coach at
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Dayton, Kentucky for two years when he was first coaching out of Purdue university and got in a
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physical altercation with a lineman on the football team, the Dayton, Kentucky green devils. The
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lineman decided he was going to take a break during calisthenics and gave coach one a little
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sass. They had a physical altercation. So he had a temper that could flare up, but he recognized
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early in his coaching that it was getting in the way of performance and progress and that it was a
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hindrance. And he eventually compensated to the level where you describe him as quiet. And I would
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describe him as very intensely controlled, but that temper did get under control. And I, at one point
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asked him how he did it. You know, maybe we've got some tips here for people who have anger management
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problems. And I said, how did you get the temper under control? And he said, I just did. I said, well,
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you know, you can't just say you just did. What did you have some like steps or some kind of
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guidelines or anything? No, I just did. I recognized that it was getting in my way and I
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just, just got it under control. That was, that was as much as I could get from him as to how he
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did get control of that emotionalism. He was all for emotion, but when emotion tipped over and got out
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of control, emotionalism, he called it, that was when you had a problem because you were no longer in
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control. Performance requires control. And, and when you're suddenly all wrought up and out of
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control, you're vulnerable. And he did not like being vulnerable as a coach or have his team in a
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similar situation where they're out of control with anger or jubilation, as he called it, the,
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the exuberance of being ahead or, or winning. He liked everything to be on a steady keel.
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Another defining feature of Wooden that I like about him is his collection of rules and
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maxims. And this, I guess, is this something that he he's developed all throughout his life? He was
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always collecting these things. Yes. He, he was a learner throughout his life, just, I guess, by,
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by inclination, collected ideas on coaching from his coaches. He was a voracious reader. He majored in
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English at Purdue university and was an honor student, studied Shakespeare for a couple of quarters
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and along the way began collecting these maxims or aphorisms that helped him in his own life or would help
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his team in his coaching. And can I give you a couple of them? Yeah, no. Yeah, please.
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One that goes really to the heart of his thinking and his, his own teaching and coaching as a
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basketball coach was don't mistake activity for achievement. And in basketball, it's a game of
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constant motion. You can fool yourself because there are, the whistles are blowing and the feet are
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running and the balls are being thrown back and forth during practice. And is anything being
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accomplished? Don't mistake activity for achievement. I asked him once, boy, a long time
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ago, 18 years ago, I know the year count because in 2000, he was selected as the greatest coach of the
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20th century by various publications, ESPN and sports illustrated said he's the greatest coach in
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American history. And so I saw him about two months after some of these awards were given. And I said,
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Hey, congratulations. You're the coach of the century. How does it feel? And he said, it's ridiculous.
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There is no such thing as coach of the century. Well, I said, let me ask you this. You, a lot of people
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think you are that. Let me ask you to tell me what you think you were good at. You may not think you're the
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coach of the century, but you had to be great at something. What in your mind were you great at?
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And he thought for a second and said, I was perhaps as good at organization as anyone coaching in my
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era. Now, organization means every minute of a practice, for example, is planned every minute.
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He kept each minute, each three minute, each five minute segment on three by five cards that he
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would keep year to year. So he would reference from this year to the next year to the back five
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years. What would, what did we do in practice? Who did we do it with? Did it help this organization
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made his practices like a Swiss watch? And it goes to his, his saying, don't mistake activity for
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achievement. His activity was meticulously planned. So there was one that really, I think goes to who
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he was and how he did things, but he had all kinds of them. He would tell his players the best way to
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improve your team is to improve yourself, discipline yourself. We're talking about control, self-control on
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temper, discipline yourself and others won't have to. Wonderful, wonderful ideas. Time spent getting even
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would be better spent getting ahead. All of them, by the way, are listed in the back of his best
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selling first book, Wooden, A Lifetime of Observations on the Court and Off. One that I like a lot, he got
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from his dad, make each day a masterpiece. And he, he was really good at that. He, he made sure that each
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day had elements of, of great performance and improvement. Each day he tried to make his own
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masterpiece. He was something. Yeah. What I, what I love about these maxims is they're so, I mean,
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some at first blush, they can be, they just appear very folksy and too simple. But the thing is like,
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if you actually put them into practice, they work, which is, I think the, why he's so enduring and
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timeless. I do too. I think that there was substance to what he was saying and, and how he was saying it
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and who he was. One writer many years ago said that the secret to John Wooden and his coaching and
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teaching was his simplicity. And that's sort of what you're getting at. He, he was able to teach
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in ways that were easily comprehensible and the mechanics of basketball. He would break down,
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for example, what you're supposed to do when you're under the basket, anticipating a rebound,
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where your hands are, eyes, balance, feet, the bend in your knees, all of this, he would break down,
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teach, put back together. And all of the elements, when you bring it down to the individual parts of
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it are rather easily understood. The same with the maxims that you're talking about. Don't mistake
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activity for achievement. Wonderful. One of the others that he had, he had a list of ideas from his dad
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called the seven point creed, but in there are exhortations to be better and, and how to make
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your life a positive, productive life. Be true to yourself, which is a variation of something in
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Hamlet that Polonia said to his son, Laertes, be true to yourself, help others make each day your
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masterpiece, make friendship a fine art. There are seven altogether, but when you follow those
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admonitions, the seven point creed that his dad offered him over the years, wow, you become an
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extraordinary person. And John Wooden was extraordinary. We're going to take a quick
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today. And now back to the show. Yeah, in our family, we actually, we have a family meeting
00:24:10.240
once a week. And so my seven-year-old and my four-year-old, every week, they recite the,
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I guess, John, he wouldn't call them the two-by-threes. So it was like, that his dad gave
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them. Two sets of threes. Two sets of three, yeah. Never lie, never steal, never cheat, never whine,
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never complain, don't make excuses. That's become a family tradition in our household.
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That's wonderful. That's wonderful. Well, what I've found in working, it was a privilege
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to work with John Wooden. But what I've found is so many people love what he said, love what he taught
00:24:47.200
above basketball. In all of the books that we did, there were no tips specifically on basketball,
00:24:56.660
no tips on how to shoot a free throw, no tips on basketball. It was how to bring out your best in
00:25:03.820
the context of basketball. And as he felt, those ideas that transcended basketball would help make
00:25:12.240
his players better people. And that was really, I know it sounds maybe old-fashioned or corny.
00:25:18.860
That really was his goal. He wanted his players. They could use, as you are with your children,
00:25:23.860
use in their own lives to be better people. He was a teacher. He never called himself a coach.
00:25:30.940
Others did, but he felt that he was a teacher. And his main objective as a teacher was to help others
00:25:37.220
achieve their personal best. And as he would tell anyone who asked, if you do that, if you achieve
00:25:43.700
your personal best, make the effort to do the best you're capable of doing, you're a success.
00:25:49.440
So one thing that he spent his, I think his life working on was the pyramid of success.
00:25:56.380
What was this? When did he start developing and what was his goal with this pyramid of success?
00:26:01.260
He started working on the pyramid of success in 1933. And I'll back up one step. When he began
00:26:07.380
teaching at Kentucky, in Dayton, Kentucky, he was upset that a youngster who worked hard in his English
00:26:13.900
class and got a B would have the parents come into the class after school and complain that their son
00:26:21.660
had failed or their daughter had failed to got a B and had done the best they could do. John Wooden was
00:26:25.840
very, very unhappy with that. And he saw it most visibly in basketball where a son, someone's son
00:26:32.120
wouldn't make the team or would be a sixth player, wouldn't score a lot of points and come and say,
00:26:36.280
what's wrong with my kid, coach? What's wrong? He's, he's not measuring up. And John Wooden knew that in
00:26:42.520
many instances, that youngster had done the best they could do and they were being judged of failure.
00:26:49.400
So that's, that really, that was repugnant to him. And so he came up with his definition of success
00:26:56.340
for them, a way of measuring themselves that went to absolute criteria of effort, how hard they worked
00:27:03.200
to bring forth their best. And once he had done that, he realized that as a teacher and coach, you needed to
00:27:09.220
show people how to do something. You couldn't just say, Hey, shoot a free throw. You needed to show
00:27:14.280
them how to do it, where the chances of success were the highest. This success, as he defined it,
00:27:19.560
making the effort 100%. And he came up over a period of years with 15 qualities, personal characteristics
00:27:29.240
that he viewed as fundamental to being the best you can be. He also, and this was very creative,
00:27:36.080
used a pyramid and each block personified one of those qualities that he felt so important. Hard work,
00:27:45.220
enthusiasm, friendship, cooperation, loyalty, self-control, alertness, on and on, skill, team,
00:27:55.920
spirit, poise. There are 15 wonderful qualities that he viewed as the starting point for the kind of
00:28:03.480
success that he was telling his students and anyone else who cared to listen were fundamental for
00:28:10.680
success at the highest level. I've said to many people, John Wooden had a standard of success that
00:28:17.860
was higher than winning. And that higher standard was the quality of the effort you put forth. And the
00:28:25.640
pyramid of success was a blueprint, a guidebook to how you could go about achieving success,
00:28:33.800
making that total effort to become the best you're capable of becoming.
00:28:38.720
So I'm curious, throughout his career, he coached a lot of big stars. One of the most famous ones was
00:28:45.960
the player that would go on to become Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. And there's a lot of other stars
00:28:51.020
throughout his career. But at the same time, he was able to maintain a team that was team-focused.
00:28:57.340
So how did he do that? How did he manage all these, you know, what could be possibly big egos
00:29:06.580
Part of his skills, I might call it part of his genius, was to understand human nature and to
00:29:16.040
work with individuals in ways that were positive. He understood that when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,
00:29:23.260
who was Louis Alcindor, when he joined the UCLA Varsity in the 1967 season, that the hard part
00:29:32.020
of the equation would not be coaching Kareem, but rather helping the rest of the players understand
00:29:41.280
Kareem's role and Kareem's uniqueness. And to keep the team in balance, emotionally and mentally,
00:29:53.000
he would, at press conferences after a game, everybody wanted to ask him questions about
00:29:58.680
Louis Alcindor. And he would say, please, before we take any questions, I just want to point out.
00:30:05.000
And then he would pick a player who didn't get a lot of attention and say that so-and-so,
00:30:10.660
boy, that, you know, that steal that he made just at the half, that really made a big difference in
00:30:15.560
the whole game. He would shine a little of the spotlight on other players who didn't get it,
00:30:21.160
knowing Kareem would get more than his share, obviously. And in practice, he would occasionally
00:30:27.860
lay it on a little hard with the superstar to show that they didn't get special treatment.
00:30:33.700
He understood he had to work very hard to keep the team in sync and working together because if it
00:30:42.600
didn't, it would, it would break apart. You needed, he wanted that beautiful team spirit that he talked
00:30:48.040
about. And when he was a grade school basketball player in the little country school in Centerton,
00:30:54.020
where they played on a dirt court, their coach, who was the, you know, not really the coach,
00:30:58.680
he was the principal of the school, but they had a little basketball team. And his coach taught him
00:31:03.320
is that the star of the team is the team, believe it or not, that he carried through from grade school
00:31:09.540
all the way to his teachings as a coach in high school. And then at Indiana State University for
00:31:15.620
two years, Indiana State Teachers College, rather, and then UCLA, the star of the team is the team.
00:31:20.820
And it's not Bill Walton, and it's not Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, even though the celebrity they
00:31:29.460
achieved, obviously they were the star of the team. But the greater concept is the idea that
00:31:37.860
those superstars need the rest of the team for the team to win. And he had a little way of explaining
00:31:45.080
it when he would meet with a team. And again, he tells his story in wooden, he would describe a
00:31:52.620
car, a team as like a beautiful Grand Prix racing car. And that Grand Prix racing car might have a
00:31:59.480
powerful engine, a spectacularly powerful engine. That would be someone like Louis Alcindor. But that
00:32:06.540
engine needs a frame. And that frame of the car needs wheels. And the wheels need lug nuts. And he
00:32:16.860
was saying that each of the players that he was talking to had a role, you might just be a lug nut,
00:32:21.440
you might be the 12th player on the team at the end of the bench, but you had a role to play. And if the
00:32:28.780
lug nut comes off, the wheel comes off. And that powerful engine is, is dysfunctional. That would be
00:32:35.760
how he would try and add all kinds of approaches to work on the self-image of the team. That we're
00:32:41.060
not just backing up the superstar. We're in this together. And that was part of his magic. He had
00:32:46.580
superstars. I mean, totally crazy big superstars with Louis Alcindor and Bill Walton. There were other
00:32:53.800
prominent players. But those, those two particularly, he worked very hard on making the rest of the
00:33:00.280
players understand that the, that, that the team was the star of the whole process.
00:33:05.920
So as we've been talking about, he had a phenomenal career yet. He, I don't know,
00:33:11.520
stayed humble throughout all of it. How was he able to do that?
00:33:15.200
Well, I, uh, I think that there were two things involved. One was his, uh, basic nature. Some of us
00:33:23.340
are gregarious and walk into a room and start shaking hands. He was an introvert by nature.
00:33:30.060
And I think the other part of it was he was a very, he was a man of faith and, uh, he read the
00:33:37.100
Bible. I, he showed me one of his Bibles one time and it was threadbare. He had read it so much over
00:33:42.120
the decades, but there's so much in the Bible. It goes to this being humble. Pride goes before the
00:33:48.320
fall. Everyone who is arrogant of heart is an abomination. Those kinds of phrases stuck with
00:33:55.980
him. They were meaningful to him. And I think it, it went to his basic nature, which was, he was
00:34:02.300
humble. He was a modest man. He might've been a little bit shy in fact. And as the fame came about
00:34:09.740
and as the dynasty was underway being created by him, he just never got caught up in it all. In fact,
00:34:16.380
it was a distraction, the acclaim, the celebrity, all of it contributed to his retirement in 1975.
00:34:22.700
He just, he got tired of the, the bubble that he was in. And, and there were other reasons. He had
00:34:28.720
some health problems and his wife who he loved more than anything was having health problems,
00:34:33.800
but he also just the, the, the celebrity, the acclaim, the attention was all distasteful to him.
00:34:40.280
And so that kind of all went to why he was the same at the beginning as he was at the end.
00:34:46.460
It was, it was unbelievable. When I met him, he had been retired for many years and yet he was like
00:34:52.700
your favorite uncle. There was no sense of, I'm meeting a big shot. I'm meeting a great legend in
00:34:57.700
sports. He was just as friendly and down to earth as you could get. And everybody I have talked to
00:35:04.560
going back to his early days in Martinsville, the people that he knew and coached say the same
00:35:11.120
thing. He was at the end, just as he was in the beginning. Do you think, uh, he would be just as
00:35:17.800
successful today as a coach as he was back in the sixties? Well, let me, let me put it to you this
00:35:24.980
way. As I mentioned at the beginning, he won 10 national championships, seven of them in a row.
00:35:31.000
Could he do that again? Well, in 1963, he had not won a national championship. His teams had never
00:35:39.800
played in a national championship game. So at the end of that season, if you had said to anybody,
00:35:45.740
sports writer or John Wooden, do you think you can win 10 national championships in the next 12 years?
00:35:52.500
Everyone would think it was preposterous. What I'm saying is if you'd asked somebody back then,
00:35:58.680
whether he could do it, the answer would be absolutely not. He did it. Could he do it again?
00:36:06.920
Absolutely not. But who knows? I'll tell you this. Good coaching is good coaching. He knew his
00:36:13.500
basketball. He was a modern thinker. He was open to ideas. He was a man that people wanted to follow.
00:36:20.940
They wanted to do what he said, the players, and that's a pretty effective formula then and now.
00:36:28.200
So, you know, it's a good bar room conversation. Could he do the same as he did then? I don't know,
00:36:33.780
but he'd be among the best coaches coaching today if he were still at it.
00:36:37.780
Are there any wooden light coaches or leaders today that you see?
00:36:41.840
Well, this is a good question. I'll give you the one who always gets mentioned and rightfully so is
00:36:46.240
Coach K. Coach Kraszewski at Duke has won five national championships, has the same attitude towards
00:36:52.200
his players, that the players' lives mean something in addition to what they mean as players. He cares
00:36:57.400
about his guys. But John Wooden told those who asked about this that there were many, there are many
00:37:05.940
coaches, thousands of coaches out there like him. The reason that he gets the attention is because of
00:37:13.520
that record. But when I say like him, I mean they have the same values. They teach the same good
00:37:20.540
things. They are concerned about their players after they graduate and that they do graduate.
00:37:26.220
At the high school level, most coaches and most of the sportsmen and women, they are in it because
00:37:31.380
they see this coaching as a teaching mechanism to help kids. It's not just about winning games.
00:37:38.480
That's obviously a big part of it. But it's about helping these student-athletes become better people.
00:37:46.060
And I believe the high schools and colleges are full of great coaches like that today. It's when big
00:37:52.840
money starts to get involved that things change.
00:37:55.400
I'm curious, after all this work, you know, working with him for so long, what's been, what has been the
00:38:01.500
big change in your own life? Working with him, talking with him and writing about him?
00:38:05.220
This may sound kind of silly, but one of the biggest things that I've come to see, he died 10 years ago,
00:38:14.020
2008. Increasingly, I have come to comprehend how fortunate I was to have worked with him and to have
00:38:23.240
gotten to know him and to become a friend. It was an absolute stroke of great fortune for me that it occurred
00:38:31.760
because to become a friend or a collaborator or a co-worker assistant to someone of his
00:38:40.780
achievement and to see how he dealt with it and how he created it, it was simply a stroke of the
00:38:48.040
greatest good fortune. And then along the way, you see how a man with, like him, a man with his
00:38:54.960
credentials, stays humble. He treats everyone the same, whether you're the boss or a bus boy at a
00:39:01.020
restaurant, you get the same good treatment. He was sincere. He never got caught up in materialism.
00:39:07.980
He made $32,500 the last year he coached. That's what he was paid for the last five years of his
00:39:15.900
coaching. He had an assistant coach who was coaching at Duke. It was Denny Crum, Louisville,
00:39:21.840
who was making more than Coach Wooden while they were both coaching. He just didn't get caught up
00:39:27.400
in material items and celebrity. It was all kind of unseemly to him. All that mattered was this
00:39:34.580
teaching, teaching, teaching, and that's what mattered. Maybe that's why he was so good at it.
00:39:40.180
Well, Steve, is there any place people can go to learn more about your work and Coach Wooden?
00:39:45.180
Coach Wooden would be very happy if you were interested in learning a little more about what he did and
00:39:49.940
what he taught. As I said, we did eight books. The one that really is popular and broad-based is this
00:39:57.060
book called Wooden, A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections. And then his book on leadership
00:40:03.600
is called Wooden on Leadership. And that was a bestseller for the Wall Street Journal and it goes
00:40:10.320
into leadership and his ideas on it. Both are great, great exposés. Exposés is the wrong word.
00:40:16.760
Both tell very full stories of what he did, how he did it, what he believed. They're great reading.
00:40:26.600
Well, Steve Jameson, this has been a great conversation. Thanks for coming on.
00:40:29.360
Thank you very much. Appreciate your taking some time to talk about Coach John Wooden.
00:40:34.320
My guest there was Steve Jameson. He worked with Coach Wooden on several of his books. They're all
00:40:38.420
available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. The Essential Wooden is out in paperback. It's
00:40:42.600
fantastic. If you want a good overview of Wooden's philosophy on leadership, teaching, and coaching,
00:40:47.020
pick it up. It's available on Amazon.com and bookstores. Also, to find out more information
00:40:50.400
about Coach Wooden, go to CoachWooden.com. You can find the pyramid of success there. You can print
00:40:55.320
off if you want. Also, check out our show notes at aom.is slash Wooden, where you can find links
00:40:59.540
to resources. We can delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of
00:41:16.060
Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website
00:41:19.900
at artofmanliness.com. And if you enjoy the show, you've got something out of it, I'd appreciate it
00:41:23.360
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00:41:26.740
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00:41:30.540
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