John Wooden, the winningest college basketball coach, didn't obsess over winning. His Pyramid of Success built from industriousness and team-first thinking toward greatness, which he defined as personal development and being a great teammate, not chasing titles.
The thing that I have found amazing about Wooden is the winning-most coach in college basketball history was not obsessed with winning. No. Reconcile that for me.
When he was a high school basketball coach, he built a pyramid of success, right? Of here are the blocks of what it meant to be successful, and it's industriousness, and it's a willingness to be team first. Then you get to the very top, and the top block was greatness. And he believed that you build yourself toward greatness. You don't take greatness on. And he never talked about what it meant to be a champion.
It wasn't about being a champion but being a great teammate.
Correct. And being a team of great teammates. Right. So many teams have good superstars and good teammates. Your best player also was committed to being a servant leader. He required that if you hit a basket but somebody had passed you the ball, that as you ran down the court, you need to look at him and point and say, thank you, thanks for passing me the ball. Often the person scoring gets all the recognition, the person who passes it doesn't. He required that on the way down the court, you look for one of his players actually said to him, but Coach, what if I go to run down the court, the guy's not looking at me when I want to point at him? Coach said, if the guy knows you're going to point, he'll look at you, right? And so these are the kinds of things he was doing to try to establish not basketball standards, human standards. And if they were better together as a group of humans, they could win. And they won a lot.
AI Won't Tell You the Full Truth | Arthur Brooks + Simon Sinek | A Bit of Optimism Podcast
How To Make the Best Decision | Arthur Brooks and Simon Sinek | A Bit of Optimism
