What Made John Wooden a Great Coach? (#240)

Last week I was driving across Alabama and listening to a podcast. The hosts asked “What is a great coach? What makes a great coach?” It is a great question and really got me thinking.

First, a sports coach is a person who teaches and trains the members of a sports team and makes decisions about how the team plays during games. On the other hand, an executive coach is someone who specializes in developing an executive’s leadership performance and their ability to more effectively manage stress and additional responsibility. Typically, we define a great sports coach as one that gets his or her team to win — win the World Series, the Super Bowl, the World Cup, the College Football National Championship. Others define great coaches as ones that can get more from their team than anyone thought possible. Think of Coach Norman Dale, the coach in the movie Hoosiers who was played by Gene Hackman. Still others define great coaches as ones that develop their players to their full potential. In short, a great coach is one that wins, gets a team to perform above its potential, or one that develops people to their full potential. I think all of us have had the opportunity to work with a great coach at one time or another.

Great coaches include people like Woody Hayes, Phil Jackson, Dan Gable, Pat Summitt, Nick Saban, Bear Bryant, Dean Smith, Vince Lombardi, and John Wooden. Great executive coaches include Tony Robbins, Phil Towle, and Bill Campbell.

I am not a great coach. But I thought I could benefit from learning more about the great coaches and applying some of their techniques to make me better. So far, I have read a half-dozen biographies of great coaches. For the next two months I will be posting some ideas that can help you improve your skills as a coach, leader, and teacher, based on my studies of some of the great coaches.

Coach John Wooden

Of course, I will begin this series with Coach John Wooden. Coach Wooden was the men’s basketball coach at the University of California at Los Angeles. His teams won 10 NCAA National Championships in the space of 12 years, including 88 straight games. He was named the coach of the century by ESPN. John Wooden ended his UCLA coaching career with a 620–147 overall record and a winning percentage of .808. I talked about his leadership and teaching style in one post and in the 15 building blocks of Wooden’s Pyramid of Success.

There are three levels of leaders or leadership — strategic, tactical, and direct. A basketball coach is a direct leader since he works directly with his 5 players on the court, ~7 players on the bench, assistant coaches, and scouts. Direct leaders or leadership is the face-to-face or first-line leadership that generally occurs in organizations where direct reports see their leaders all the time. The direct leader's span of control may range from a few to dozens of people.

Psychologists Roland Tharp and Ronald Gallimore were interested in coaching, education, and learning. They thought that observing and analyzing John Wooden’s teaching methods might deepen their understanding of how to help improve the style of leaders, coaches, and teachers. Over the course of 15 practices during the 1974-1975 season (Wooden’s last at UCLA), Tharp and Gallimore sat, observed, and systematically tracked Wooden’s specific coaching behaviors – which added up to 2326 “acts of coaching.”

Wooden’s Top Coaching Behaviors

So how did Wooden coach during these 15 practices? Just over half (50.3%) of Wooden’s behaviors were pure instruction – specific statements about what to do or how to do it. No judgment. No approval or disapproval. Just information. The next most frequently occurring coaching behavior (12.7%) was called a “hustle.” This was basically a cue or reminder to act on some previous instruction. For instance “Drive!” or “Harder!” or, of course, “Hustle!” Next most frequent was what the researchers affectionately named a “Wooden,” a unique feedback technique that was a combination of scolding and re-instruction (8%). This was designed to make it clear he was not satisfied, but followed by an immediate reminder of the correct way to do something. For example, “I have been telling some of you for three years not to wind up when you throw the ball! Pass from the chest!” Next up were praise (6.9%), scolds or “reproofs” (6.6%), positive modeling – or how to do something (2.8%), and negative modeling – or how not to do something (1.6%).

So, altogether, ~75% of Wooden’s teaching acts contained specific information geared at providing the basketball player with a clear picture of what to do or what not to do. The two researchers felt that this was a major contributor to his coaching success. It also makes perfect sense given that Wooden, at his core, saw himself as a teacher. Knowing that something is good or bad is not especially helpful if you don’t know exactly what should be done the same or differently the next time. Otherwise, it’s just more shots in the dark.

Application

Think about your interactions with your direct reports this week. How much was instruction? How much was praise? How much was negative feedback? If you are leading like John Wooden, it should be in the neighborhood of 70%, 10%, and 10% respectively.

Conclusion

Interested in improving your leadership skills and accomplishing your goals? Let's work together to make sure your personal purpose, goals, and perseverance are aligned and you are the best leader you can be. Hit one of the buttons below to see if executive coaching might enhance your performance.

In the meantime, go on the offensive and use these insights on how John Wooden coached to improve your interaction with your direct reports.