Leadership Lessons from UCLA's John Wooden

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Today's economy makes patience hard to come by, don't you think?

Sure, things are different than they would be ordinarily. But in my pyramid there are two things that lead to the apex. On the one side, there is patience, and the other side there is faith. When things are down, you have to have patience and then you have to have faith that things will work out. And they always have [worked out] in this country, and they always will.

They may not work out the way you hope, but that's why you need the patience to stick to what got you there first place.

Today the reaction seems to be to lay off people. How would you deal with the human dynamics of that?

I hope that I would show my concern for them and I hope they would know me well enough [to understand] we are doing this as a last resort, and that sometimes you have to hurt a few people in order to save the entire organization.

The important thing is that you have to care for the others, and not just use them for your own business purposes. And you have to communicate that. If you don't care for them, they will never have that feeling for you, and the organization will suffer when things do turn around…. But you can't give up on your people when things aren't going well. Those things won't continue. Your people will. I don't know that business leaders always understand that when you help others in your organization, you are also helping yourself.

How do you nurture people to care for the organization as a whole, rather than their own interests?

Knowing your people is the most important thing. I remember talking to [Hall of Fame Center Lew Alcindor, now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar] and telling him we could create an offense that would make him the greatest individual scorer in the country, but we wouldn't win any championships. And he said, "Coach, I don't want that." And he went on and was a great player—and a great team player. There are some players you need to spank every so often to get them to succeed, and others [who] will go into a shell. You have to know your people.

Did you ever think about going into business?

No, sir. I don't want to put the lives of so many people under my hand and not have the time to run it right. A lot of other [former sports people] have done it, but I was never tempted. I had five different offers to coach professional basketball, and didn't take those either. You're away from your family a lot and the owner can fire you because you don't get along with the star player. I've seen it happen here in Los Angeles.

In the end, it's about the teaching, and what I always loved about coaching was the practices. Not the games, not the tournaments, not the alumni stuff. But teaching the players during practice was what coaching was all about to me.

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