Page 99 - How to Create a Winning Organization

Use the Most Powerful Four-Letter Word
For a parent, the family counts most of all; for a good leader, the 81
team is nothing less than extended family. Those you lead are not
just a random collection of people who show up at your doorstep,
put in time, and collect a paycheck. At least, they shouldn’t be.
For me the members of our teams were never plug-in parts,
“jocks” whose individual value was in direct proportion to the
number of points they could score. Never. In fact, next to my own
flesh and blood they were the ones closest to me. Those I led were
my extended family. And love is present in every good family. You
must truly care about the lives and welfare of your team members,
and demonstrate it with concern and support within a disciplined
environment. However, it took me a while to figure out what this
really means and how to apply it in my own way.

SOME MORE; SOME LESS
In my early days back at Dayton, Kentucky, and South Bend, In-
diana, I told players at the start of a new season that I would like
them all the same. Of course, this turned out to be false. There
were some whom I could barely stand. This troubled me because
it seemed that a coach should have affection for—and be friends
with—those under his supervision. I wanted to like all the players
on our team.
That had been my own experience as an athlete. Coach Ward
Lambert at Purdue seemed to like all of us on the team equally, and
I considered him a friend. My teammates, I assumed, felt the same.
This had also been true when I played basketball in high school at
Martinsville.
As a coach, I found this same kind of relationship simply did not
exist with certain members of my team, and I was very concerned
about it; it didn’t seem right. But then I read a statement by Amos
Alonzo Stagg, Chicago’s legendary football coach, which helped in