Leadership from the bench: a coach's perspective

I had the honor and privilege last week of teaching two sessions of the NewsTrain seminar in Kansas City. As usual, I met some outstanding people, in this case mid-level newspaper editors and broadcast news managers, and I learn several good ideas from them on how to do things better in the newsroom.

One of the highlights for me on this trip was getting to meet and listen to one of KC's biggest celebrities, the head coach of the Kansas Jayhawks basketball team, Bill Self. I've been a big fan of Coach Self ever since his successful NCAA Tournament runs at the University of Tulsa, my wife's alma mater, but I've never met the man until now.

Coach Self was kind enough to come to our NewsTrain gathering and spend about a half-hour talking about leadership from his vantage point, at the head of a major college basketball powerhouse. With his permission, here are some of his obseverations:

Bill Self on Leadership

• "My attitude dictates my team’s attitude. Everything I do or say is reflected in how they perform." But his job is to empower other leaders. The best team has leaders that can lead themselves.
  
  
• As a coach, he needs to exude confidence. He says he was brash and cocky, even when he was younger, and even when he may have lacked confidence deep down. You have to have confidence.
  
  
• Re: hiring good assistants. He’s lost 6 in the past 7 years to head coaching positions. He may lose two more this year. He’s noticed that when he let them go to head coaching job, his pool of candidates got better. People wanted to come to a place where they knew they would get a chance to jump to a higher place. When you recruit, you want to show them you’ll help them get where they want to go.
  
  
• Change: new = good. The opportunity to hire new staff is the opportunity to address weaknesses and needs. Hire strong and give them freedom to work.
  
  

  Nowadays people want to take a job where they’ll have an immediate impact, not wait around to be a star. No one wants to put in dues any more. With young players these days, negative reinforcement is out. You have to begin with praise.
  
  

• He never gives a game ball to the leading scorer, or to the person who’s likely to get all the highlights on the news that night. He looks for the person who isn’t likely to get noticed, but contributed something equally important to the team’s success. Not the guy who took the shot, not even the guy who passed the ball to set up the shot, but perhaps the guy before that who passed the ball, or perhaps the guy who boxed out an opponent’s rebounder to get the rebound to start the break. He always celebrates the person who does the right thing that doesn’t get the credit.
  
  
• He places total emphasis on preparation … that is the best way to anticipate the desired result. He never talks about winning and losing to his team. He talks about the process and the preparation. Winning will take care of itself if you do the right preparation.
  
  
• He tries to create a fun environment. He tries to catch his players doing right and he reinforces that with his players. He watches his negative words very carefully, because he knows that if he says three positive things in a row, but then adds in a negative word at the end, the player only remembers the negative word. He always ends his timeouts with a positive message. It’s never a negative message. He makes sure his coaching at critical times is a positive. “Let’s block out this play” as opposed to “Don’t let them beat you to that rebound.”
  
  
• I asked him about managing in a crisis, comparing a breaking-news situation (for news people) to a basketball game. Both are examples in crisis management. He loves crisis management. He lives for it, because it’s a chance to define his mission, and a chance to succeed and to shine. He says he has to show total confidence in these situations. If he appears weak or shows a lack of confidence, his team will pick up on that.
  
  
• He has good systems for managing the game. He gets lot of information from his assistants (current stats, trends, analysis). They feed him key information during timeouts. Substitutions are a hunch, but he does have assistants who tell him who the most productive five people have been in that game. He may rank players 1-9, but his stats may show him that 1,3,5,6,7 have been the most productive in that game. He also has a cheat sheet that shows him what plays are available to him for specific situations, such as:
  
  
  • Need a 3 with short clock
    
  • Need a 3 with a long clock
    
  • Need a 3 against man-to-man, or zone.