The Ten Principles of Leadership I Learned from Coach Wooden

Principle 4: Create a Learning Laboratory
Swen Nater

What is the primary job of a classroom teacher? Is it to use the classroom as an Information Dispensing Center and teach the curriculum so students test well? After all, there are standards to be met. If that’s all teachers do, they will graduate a group of students whose heads are filled with knowledge. At the most, they will be equipped to apply some of that knowledge to life after school.

Socrates didn’t believe in giving information for information sake. The Dictionary of Education presents the Socratic Method as, “a process of discussion led by the instructor to induce the learner to question the validity of his reasoning or to reach a sound conclusion.” Socrates did not think of himself as one that gave out information. Rather his actions implied he considered himself more of an intellectual midwife. When he presented ideas, he followed them with comments and questions that caused his students to dig deep and discover meaning for themselves. In this way, he created thinkers, not parrots. In other words, Socrates did not teach in a classroom; he held class in a laboratory.

Creating a Learning Laboratory is good leadership. Leaders who don’t give out fish, but rather teach their people how to fish, develop employees who take initiative to improve things because they will question the quality of the status quo, and will generate suggestions on how to improve things. That’s great leadership.

I want to introduce you to a leader like that. Coach Wooden believed a person should continue to learn until the day he departs from earth. Two statements many of us have heard him say often were:

If you’re through learning, you’re through.
Chris Sonksen

It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.
Harry S. Truman

 He practiced that himself but he also encouraged us to do the same.

The year he became head coach of UCLA, 1948, Coach began his own research and development system. Each off season, he tackled one aspect of basketball—like half-court offense, half-court defense, the full-court press, rebounding, and out-of-bounds plays—and mastered the subject. He used the standard “Scientific Method,” moving through the steps: Defining a Research Question, Selecting a Sample, Developing a Survey Instrument, Procedures, Data Collection, Data Analysis, and finally, Drawing Conclusions. I imagine, by 1964, he had a pretty good handle on the game. Perhaps that explains, at least in part, why he ran off ten national championships in the next twelve years.

As a leader, Coach Wooden believed his team should practice self-improvement as well. He became a better coach through study and experimentation and concluded, his team would benefit in the same way. So he turned the gymnasium into a laboratory of controlled experimentation. 

Let’s’ talk about offense. With the basic framework of the plays in place, he allowed us to test them against various defenses. Plays work perfectly when no defense is present. Put some opposition against them, and it’s a different story. Intelligent defenses attempt to cut off the primary options of an offense. If the players can’t adjust, everything comes to a halt. That’s when it’s time for some improvisation and coach applauded our initiative. Well, he applauded it when it worked. There were many times he said, “No, no, no. That’s not what to do.”

At the beginning of Bill Walton’s sophomore season, when I was a junior, Coach had him staying close to the basket most of the time. By the middle of the year, because of Bill’s passing talent, he was allowed to go to the high-post once in awhile. That started in a practice session when, all of a sudden, as the forward was overplayed, Bill ran up the key, received the ball, and gave Larry Hollyfield a gorgeous backdoor pass for an uncontested layup. By the time Bill was a senior, the entire offense ran through him. He touched the ball almost every time down the court, at the low-post and the high-post (freethrow line area).  

Great leaders like Coach Wooden know, you can teach the workers how to do things, but 90% of most jobs involve solving problems that come up. Give workers the freedom to learn how to solve their own problems and you create thinkers. Create thinkers and your team/group/company will, in time, develop a culture of improvement. It all happens in the laboratory.

I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.
Socrates