Wooden on Leadership essay

1. John Wooden is a legendary coach of the UCLA basketball team: he won numerous awards as a coach, his team won 10 National Championships and had 88 victories in a row (Yeh & Yeh, 2004). Wooden was not only a legendary coach, but also a great leader and thinker. He created the Pyramid of Success – a pyramid consisting of 15 core building blocks essential for winning and achieving excellence in life. Wooden stated that “success is a peace of mind” (Yeh & Yeh, 2004) and believed that the present moment is the moment when the success was actually created.
Wooden was a remarkable leader, and his principles of success are applicable to all spheres of life, including business.

One can trace different examples of use of Wooden’s pyramid of success in modern business. For example, one can consider the success of a local retailer which was largely determined by the effective and inspiring leadership of the company’s director. He used the philosophy which significantly resembled Wooden’s approach: he loved his project (enthusiasm), established positive relationships with all team members and created a cooperative group climate (friendship and cooperation, respectfully), he was loyal to the team and team members were loyal in return (loyalty). In addition to this, he was extremely hard-working and persistent (industriousness and intentness). All clients of this retailer felt the presence of team spirit in the company, the employees were skilled and did their best to satisfy the customers. Perhaps, this retailer did not achieve absolute competitive greatness, but the members of the team were doing their best. This example illustrates that Wooden’s model can be successfully applied in modern business.
Two more examples are Google and Starbucks. Google lists their philosophy in the section called “Ten things we know to be true” (Google, 2013). Among these values, there are: focusing on the user, reaching excellence in doing a few things, doing things fast, paying attention to the democracy on the web, focusing on mobility, making ethical business, acknowledging the need for information, making challenge fun and striving to excellence all the time. This philosophy is very similar to Wooden’s Pyramid, for example such blocks as competitive greatness, enthusiasm, cooperation, alertness, intentness, condition and skill, poise and confidence are perfectly aligned with Google’s values. The success of Google and its competitive excellence are unquestionable, so this example is one more proof of the effectiveness of Wooden’s pyramid for business.

Howard Schultz, Starbuck’s CEO, is a third example of leadership which illustrates the efficiency of the Pyramid of Success. According to Gallos (2012), Schultz’s leadership is driven by his passion and personality, by focus on people and on motivation, on keeping the company’s spirit and exceeding expectations. The relevant pyramid blocks are clearly visible in this philosophy: enthusiasm, team spirit, cooperation, loyalty, friendship, industriousness, alertness, confidence and competitive greatness (The Official Site of Coach John Wooden, 2013). Overall, these three examples show that the stories of success in the modern business environment are based on effective leadership, and such leadership is based on the philosophy of success consistent with Wooden’s Pyramid.

2. Leadership styles can be classified in a variety of ways. One of frequently used typologies of leadership styles is the Myers-Jung typology. In this classification, eight core leadership styles are identified: participative leadership, ideological, change-oriented, visionary, action-oriented, goal-oriented, executive leadership and leadership theorist (Leadership Styles, 2012). Leadership test taken at Team Technology website shows that my personality type, according to Myers-Jung typology, is ENFP, and the appropriate leadership style is a change-oriented leader. The characteristics of this type do match my patterns of leadership: I am eager to try new things, to look for unexpected results, to identify new opportunities and always ready to experiment. However, these traits are also accompanied by trying to do too much at once, ignoring the routine, discipline and stability. The blocks of Wooden’s Pyramid of Success which are clearly present in my leadership style are enthusiasm, cooperation, friendship and loyalty, alertness, initiative and team spirit. At the same time, my leadership style lacks such blocks as industriousness (working hard all the time is a challenge for me), self-control, intentness and poise. In general, Wooden’s Pyramid is a good instrument for identifying own strengths and weaknesses as a leader, and for determining the perspectives for personal growth.

3. Wooden’s Pyramid is based on the core blocks which are mentioned as important leadership qualities in the sources on leadership. Two blocks, in my opinion, are particularly important and valuable: they are enthusiasm and industriousness. Wooden wisely placed them as cornerstones of the pyramid. Indeed, to achieve success, it is necessary to have a passion for the business (or for the job) and to work hard to reach excellence. These two blocks create a continuous path to excellence. There is no such block as “striving for excellence”, but I believe it is embedded in competitive greatness block.

I disagree with the block named “self-control”. Wooden states that it is necessary to put the emotions under control (The Official Site of Coach John Wooden, 2013), but from psychological point of view this is a direct road to burnout and stress. Instead, I would offer a block which emphasizes the need to accept own emotions, experience them and let them go. Furthermore, the emotions are signaling where the things are going, so after experiencing the emotions it is best to reflect why these emotions appeared. This block might be named “emotional ecology”. The idea of the block is to adopt a healthy attitude to emotions, and acknowledge emotional experience as essential human experience.

4. Basing on the results of the previous section, it is possible to create an amended version of Wooden’s Pyramid of Success. All other steps and parts of it remain the same, and the flawed “self-control” block is replaced by “emotional ecology”. Such model represents a healthier path to success from psychological point of view. Table 1 shows the updated Pyramid of Success.

competitive greatness
poise
confidence

condition
skill
team spirit

emotional ecology
alertness
initiative
intentness
industriousness
friendship
loyalty
cooperation
enthusiasm

Table 1. Updated version of Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success

5. Basing on Table 1, it is possible to develop a five-step strategy that self-directed project team members may use to adapt to any project-related crisis. At the first step, it is necessary to establish a positive team atmosphere with the help of cooperation, friendship and loyalty, and focus the team on solving the problem using such qualities as enthusiasm and industriousness. At the second step, when the climate in the team is established, the team should review new opportunities (alertness), align them with the goals and resources available (intentness), take action (initiative), monitor the progress and associated changes, and accept transformations as the essential part of change (emotional ecology).

At the third step, team empowerment takes place. Team members should ensure that all of them are in the proper shape (condition), possess enough skills and knowledge to complete their parts of work (skill) and are motivated to contribute towards team success (team spirit). Finally, at the fourth step, the team should focus on maintaining internal balance regardless of external events (poise) and establish a firm self-belief basing on the results of the previous three steps (confidence). Finally, the team should focus on doing their best and reaching the maximum of their potential (competitive greatness).