Wooden's Lesson

A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court written by Coach John Wooden is unlike any other book on leadership or biography I have ever read before. This book tells a story, a story about John Wooden’s life, the lessons he shares, the experiences he has had, and the people who have shaped the leader he became. There are no chapters, there are merely titles of the stories he is sharing and the lessons he wants to tell. In the book, there are four parts, Part 1: Families, Values, Virtues, Part 2: Success, Achievement, Competition, Part 3: Coaching, Teaching, Leading, and Part 4: Putting It All Together: My Pyramid of Success. Throughout each part, the stories reflect the overall theme of that section. The way this book reads

I am one that is always open to suggestions and feedback so I can better myself and better help the students I work with. Personally, I love reading about other people’s leadership styles because they are so much more experienced than I, and have tried and tested more than one approach before landing on one that works for them. While reading about Coach Wooden’s experiences and the lessons he wanted to share, I also feel I have a new understanding of what it would be like to be a coach. Since I have not coached or been involved with many typical team sports growing up, I don’t have many of the same experiences to relate to as my classmates. Reading this book has helped put in perspective the amount of time, dedication, and skill it takes to work in the world of collegiate coaching. By skill, I don’t just mean sport knowledge/ability, I more so and talking about the people skills, leadership ability, and managerial experience it takes to build and run a team like Coach Wooden did. Many of the lessons and rules his father instilled in Coach Wooden from such a young age are so important and can be easily forgotten when in the heat of the moment or in a tough situation. Those same rules are the ones I plan to print out and use as inspiration to help me remember the things I found important throughout the