Excerpt from: Wooden, J. (2005). Wooden on Leadership. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
John Wooden was one of the most successful American basketball coaches of all time. His 10 national championships in a 12 year period while at UCLA are unmatched by any other college basketball coach. To learn more about him, Click here.
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Values Create an Environment of Integrity
Let me be clear: Results matter. They matter a great deal. But if this is an organization's singular purpose, then the people who sign up are doing it for the wrong reasons, (p. 69).
A person who values winning above anything will do anything to win. And such people are threats to their organizations. We don't have to look further than the daily newspaper headlines to see how true this is. "Never stoop to playing dirty..play hard and don't complain." (p. 70).
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Character is What You Do
Here is a small example of how I tried to offer some guidance to players in the area of values and character. You may think it's trivial
Basketball players would often take home their cotton UCLA practice t-shirts as souvenirs...For some reason, those T-shirts were ...popular. ...athletes did not view it as theft, any more than employees view as theft the taking of office supplies ....I viewed it differently. Taking equipment that doesn't belong to you is wrong. "If you want a t-shirt...just come in and ask me for one. I'll give you a t-shirt, but don't just take it; its' not yours (p. 72).
This mattered to me because it went to the kind of person I wanted on our team. It made me feel bad to look the other way...and taking what isn't yours is wrong--even it's just a cotton t-shirt used in practice. ...it mattered.....knowing I would take a stand on this issue gave players an insight into my value system and what I stood for. Aristotle said, "We are what we repeatedly do."...character, the values and habits of our daily behavior...reveal who and what we are. I wanted to create good habits..., not only in the mechanics of playing basketball, but also in the fundamentals of being a good person. Thus, a small issue such as putting towels in the towel basket where they belonged was something I viewed as big, something that connected to my overall principles and beliefs--values--that went beyond just picking up after yourself (p. 72).