Turn Your Business into a National Champion!

If you’re not a sports fan the end of March and early April probably hold no special significance for you.

However in my household nearly all semblance of normalcy disappears as we hang on every second of action during March Madness, those few weeks before spring where college basketball teams battle it out to be the national champion! 

Scores are checked incessantly, “smack” is talked amongst friends about who will win the title (I have the University of Connecticut winning it all this year), and the days between games seem like weeks and months. Yes, I’m a bit of a college basketball fan.

Becoming a Champion

One of the greatest coaches of all time in college basketball was John Wooden, his accolades are too long to list here, but he did win 10 national titles while coaching at UCLA. 

But what does this have to do with business? On the surface it may look like not a lot. However, I got to thinking about the similarities between a successful basketball team, and a successful business, and saw quite a few parallels – teamwork, leadership, poise under pressure, just to name a few.

Coach Wooden’s teams were some of the most well coached, and best prepared to ever step on a basketball court. When it came to leadership, and fostering teamwork, nobody was better than Wooden.

Learn from the Best

So can we learn anything from Coach Wooden, keys that made him a successful coach, that we can take back to our own businesses and make them more successful? You bet.

Here’s coach Wooden’s 12 lessons in leadership, and I think you’ll see how these traits transcend basketball and can be used to make yourself a better leader and thus your business more successful.

12 Lessons in Leadership

1. Good values attract good people.
2. Love is the most powerful four letter word.
3. Call yourself a teacher.
4. Emotion is your enemy.
5. It takes 10 hands to make a basket.
6. Little things make big things happen.
7. Make each day your masterpiece.
8. The carrot is mightier than a stick.
9. Make greatness attainable by all.
10. Seek significant change.
11. Don’t look at the scoreboard.
12. Adversity is your asset.

Success Pyramid

Also Coach Wooden had what he called a success pyramid – which I love. It shows how success really builds onto itself. You can’t skip any step, or have a piece of the pyramid missing, without it falling down.

Success is like that, everything you do builds on itself. You can’t afford to be missing one piece of the pyramid and expect to continue building your business upwards.

Again, Coach Wooden was thinking of the success pyramid in the context of basketball, but the core values here are the same for any endeavor you want to succeed at.

You’ll notice the pyramid is built around “Faith and Patience”, with the pinnacle being “Competitive Greatness”, which Coach Wooden defines as “Performing your best when your best is required. Your best is required each day.”

Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable

Coach John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success – Free Legal Forms

In Closing

Take some time to think through Coach Wooden’s principals of leadership, and the success pyramid, and see how you can apply the concepts to your business. Anyone as successful as he is certainly worth listening too – who knows it could make your business a national champion!

What do you think is the most important aspect of leadership?

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