Page 152 - How to Create a Winning Organization

Wooden on Leadership
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He always talked about balance: body balance, scoring bal-
ance, team balance, and most of all, mental and emotional
balance. Your feet have to be in balance. Your body has to be
in balance over your feet. Your head needs to be in balance
with your body and your arms. He said if you’re not in bal-
ance, you’ll eventually fall over, and he meant it in more ways
than one.
I came to see balance as one of the keys to success not only
in basketball, but in life. When things get out of balance, it’s
generally not good. Everything needs balance. That one word
he kept drilling at us—balance—has stuck with me, became
important in how I try to do things.
He never talked about winning, even in the locker room
just before the first national championship game against
Duke. He calmly went through our game plan and said if we
played a good 94-foot game, meaning execution of the Press
at one end of the court and good play making at the other
end, we’d be able to come back in the locker room afterward
with our heads held high. Never mentioned winning a cham-
pionship or winning the game.
But then, just before we went out on the court, he asked
us, “Does anybody here remember who was the runner-up in
last year’s national championship?”
Nobody raised his hand. That’s as close as he ever got to a
pep talk.