Page 108 - How to Create a Winning Organization

Wooden on Leadership
90
didn’t place a wall between my professional and personal life, and
at appropriate times I invited players and coaches to our home. I
knew about their families and their challenges away from basketball.
Oftentimes, it really is the thought that counts most.

Know What Time It Is.
With regard to policy, effective leadership recognizes that there is a
time to be flexible and a time to be firm. Recognize the difference
between rules that can be waived occasionally and those that go to
the core of your philosophy. For example, my dress code had reper-
cussions beyond the individual; replacing steak with beans and yo-
gurt didn’t. Knowing the difference is often most challenging.
However, a good leader knows what time it is: Time to be flexible?
Time to be firm?

ON WOODEN
Jim Powers: South Bend Central High
School Varsity, 1941–1943; Indiana State Teachers
College Varsity, 1947–1948

NOBODY IN THE FAMILY GETS LEFT BEHIND
When I got back from World War II I went to Indiana State
Teachers College, because that’s where Coach Wooden had
been hired. A lot of his former South Bend High School play-
ers followed him there because we wanted to get back to that
family he created in basketball.
However, during the war I had been shot down in a B-24
raid on some oil fields in Italy, and came very close to getting
killed. I didn’t want to fly for a long time after that, including