The Ten Principles of Leadership I Learned from Coach Wooden

Principle 6: Develop a Team
Swen Nater

Behind every great team, you’ll find a great leader. 

My first year in the ABA, I was fortunate to win Rookie of the Year. When I returned to LA for the summer, Coach Wooden called me and asked if I would make a guest appearance at his basketball camp in Thousand Oaks. Of course, I accepted. The plan was for me to teach the players something about post play. So, I studied up and wrote my notes down on 3 X 5 cards. I was going to show them how to execute a hook shot and a counter move. I was to speak for about an hour, right after the campers had lunch.

When I walked into the gym, the counselors were playing a full-court pickup game while the campers watched. Most of the counselors were college players. Some of them were pretty talented and they were doing their best to show the kids how good they were. The scrimmage was a perfect demonstration of the complete opposite of what Coach was trying to teach the campers, complete with lots of one-on-one, trash talking, and chest pounding. The debacle was in its most primitive form when Coach walked into the gym.

He watched for about one minute and called the head counselor over. By that time I was standing pretty close to him. He told the counselor, “From now on, there will be no more counselor games.” That was that.

If there was a “signature attribute” of Coach Wooden’s teams, it would have been “Impeccable and Unselfish Team Play.” How did he accomplish that? It was a tough task because each one of us was capable of scoring 30 points in a game. How did he take a bunch of high school and community college stars and convince them to sacrifice what they could do for themselves, and instead do what they should do for the group? How did he get us to believe, an engine, where all cylinders share the load, will go farther than one that puts the load on the two best ones? How did he get us to believe, the only chance we had at a championship was to send the NCAA’s best team, not its best players?

The task at hand was not one exclusive to sports; wherever a group of individuals have a common goal, the default is towards looking out for number one, not working together. It takes a leader to bring them all together and mold them into a group of eager and likeminded team players. It takes a skilled leader to help them understand, teamwork is a two-sided coin. On one side, individual success is dependent on the help of others. The other side is where team success is contingent on the contribution of the individual. Rudyard Kipling captured that concept in his poem, “The Law of the Jungle,” of which the end reads,

Now this is the law of the jungle,
As old and as true as the sky.
And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper,
But the wolf that shall break it must die.

As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk,
The law runneth forward and back.
For the strength of the pack is the wolf,
And the strength of the wolf is the pack.

How did Coach develop a real team? Any book, speech, or article cannot cover the subject completely because it’s far too broad. But I can tell you four things he did that, if you do them, will get you started toward creating a coordinated and focused unit. It has to do with “connections.”

1. Create Connections
Turn on almost any college basketball game and you’ll see one or two players handling the ball too much and everything is out of sync. In Coach Wooden’s system, the ball moved and each player had a defined role, with boundaries, to make the play work. Each role was connected to all the other roles. One could not work without the others. Connections create dependency.

2. Explain Connections
Coach was very good at defining each role and explaining how they were connected and, every situation, how they could help each other. All of us were looking to score when the opportunity came and he wanted that, but he explained clearly we were to be primarily concerned with doing what was necessary at the time, to create the best shot possible, no matter who would take it. And that required detailed explanations of how connections worked.

3. Recognize Good Connections
After one of our televised games, Coach was asked if Bill Walton could be interviewed. He told the announcer he was going to have two players there: Bill and me. In my opinion, my contribution to UCLA’s success was not very much, but Coach thought it was and wanted to let everyone know how much I helped Bill in practice. Coach rarely recognized the leading scorers but he rarely failed to recognize players that made contributions not found on the statistic sheet. This helped create a team.

4. Fix Loose Connections
What do you do if a player is not connected to the others? Coach always said, “The bench is a coach’s greatest ally.” The leader can fulfill numbers one, two, and three above but, if he does not “bench” those that become “islands,” he will not develop the best team possible. In fact, it will fall apart. 

Now back to Coach Wooden’s basketball camp. I did a pretty good job, showing the hook shot and counter move. I even had a player or two come up so I could teach him. When my hour was almost over, I opened it up for questions. Like always, someone asked, “Can you dunk?” So I dunked the ball. Then another camper asked, “Can you do a 360?” (That’s where I do one complete revolution in the air before dunking.) I was about to fulfill the request when, guess who stopped the show? Yup. Coach did and I don’t need to say why.

Team Spirit
Swen Nater

I’ve been awed by a solo performance,
And spectacular flashy display,
But I crave for the best
And my eyes are more blessed,
When an unselfish team makes a play.

A play that’s so perfect and simple,
With the weaving of role with a role-
Every piece partly seen,
Like a fine-tuned machine,
And you notice not one, but the whole.

(Like an orchestra tuned to perfection,
Where harmonious beauty is found,
Every note has a quest-
To be part of the rest,
So the whole is a masterpiece sound.)

Every wild one, once blinded by glory,
Is now cured and is one of the tame.
He receives his esteem,
As a part of the team,
And is eager to sacrifice fame.

It’s amazing what teams have accomplished.
It’s astounding how much they have done,
When the ultimate call,
Is when one is for all,
And the credit is reached for by none.