Page 146 - How to Create a Winning Organization

Wooden on Leadership
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rect: “For the strength of the pack is the wolf; and the strength of
the wolf is the pack.” That describes the relationship between the
individual and the organization—the player and the team. In bas-
ketball, a field goal is usually scored only after several hands have
touched the ball. No shot is blocked, no play is run, no game is
won, unless everyone is doing his job—serving the team to the best
of his ability. No one player should take credit for the effort of all
the others.
That is the primary reason I strongly discouraged individuality—
showboating or flamboyance—in the context of team play. Show-
ing off or doing something contrived to gain attention for oneself
not only demeans that individual, it is dismissive of the effort made
by all the other team members.
A player who is thumping his chest after he makes a basket is ac-
knowledging the wrong person. Thus, I insisted the player who
scores give a nod or “thumb’s up” to the teammate who helped—
the one who provided the assist. That way it was more likely to
happen again.
I taught our players to think as one, a unit, and not just a col-
lection of independent operators in which every person was out for
himself. By insisting that the scorer acknowledge others, I was
strengthening the connection those “others” felt to the production
process.
Sharing credit is a surefire way of improving the performance re-
sults for any organization. Everyone starts helping everyone. To
confirm that this was happening at UCLA, I would periodically
check the statistics and look for balance in our attack to ensure that
no one position or player had a disproportionate role. For exam-
ple, I once added up the numbers and found that in the preceding
20 seasons our scoring was distributed as follows: Out of 39,135
baskets scored, guards had made 16,131 of them; forwards had
made 15,355; centers had made 7,649. This meant that during a