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GREAT COMMUNICATION SECRETS OF GREAT LEADERS
Live your message. Lombardi’s ability to inspire comes not simply
from words but from his ability to challenge his players to do
their individual best and to challenge the team to do its collective
best.
HARVEY PENICK—LESSONS FROM A PRO
When you think of leadership communications, chances are you don’t think of
golf. After all, golf, even in its competitive form, is chiefly a solitary game—
one course, one player. Communications are chiefly internal; players and cad-
dies are allowed to converse, and players of course speak to one another, but
the game itself revolves around finding the shortest and best way to put the
ball into the hole using nothing more than variously fashioned clubs, all
derived from an ancient game that Scottish shepherds once played.
Well, there is an exception—the communication that occurs between a
player and his or her coach. Plenty is said during coaching sessions, and in fact
you can make the case that the lessons imparted on the golf range or in the
clubhouse must be the most enduring, since player and coach are not allowed
to converse during a match. The player must rely on lessons reiterated, rein-
forced, and remembered. One master of such teaching is Harvey Penick, a golf
teacher for more than 70 years and a best-selling author as an octogenarian
and even nonagenarian. His lessons were simple, straightforward, and down to
earth. In his own unique way, Penick was a leader who was able to communi-
cate with a directness that was as effective as it was heartfelt.

GETTING THE WORD OUT
Harvey Penick was a coach at the University of Texas as well as being club pro
at the Austin Country Club in Texas. Along the way, he nurtured the careers of
many a great player: Tom Kite, Ben Crenshaw, Mickey Wright, and many
others. He himself had played collegiate golf and had flirted with the profes-
sional game. But watching (and hearing) Sam Snead shape his shots so purely
and accurately made Penick realize that if he were to remain in golf, his place
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was in shaping the talents of others. Along the way, Penick kept notes on
what he told his players, and over the years the range and volume of his notes
grew. It was his son, Tinsley, also a club pro, who urged him to publish. 18
And what happened next tells you all you need to know about Harvey
Penick. Bud Shrake, a respected sportswriter and novelist with a pedigree
that included Sports Illustrated, teamed with Penick to do a book. The story
goes that Shrake informed Penick that “his share” from the book deal would