Lou Holtz on Teaching

"Without the ability to teach, it is really difficult to perform the responsibility of a coach."

Gene Stallings on Fundamentals & Teaching

Gene Stallings Thoughts On Fundamentals & Teaching

There are fundamentals that have to be adhered to and mastered in any business. Some people grasp those fundamentals and teach or learn them and others don’t. And those who don’t are never as successful as those who do.
Intriguing part of coaching is that those fundamentals are there for everybody. They apply to both teams and they can be utilized by one as well as the another.
A primary goal of teaching anything is the advantage that learning gives to people over their competitors who haven’t been well taught.

Senior Leadership--Taking Responsibility

Taking Responsibility For Your Own Life
1. No excuses
2. Dependable—need guys who we can count on “trustworthy”
3. Self-Esteem—confidence comes from demonstrated ability
4. After four years you should be dependable in all phases of life. Don’t leach off friends or be pulled under by them. No one should limit your attitude or effort.

John Wooden's Teaching

In a study of John Wooden's teaching the researchers noted that there were no lectures and no extended harangues. None. Not one in all they months they observed. Although frequent and often in rapid-fire order, his comments were so distinct that the researchers were able to code and count each one as a separate event.

Most of Coach Wooden's statements in practice were short corrections or statements of how to play basketball. In fact, 75% of everything he said carried information intended for learning.

Of the 2,500 comments the researchers recorded most were just plain information about how to play basketball. Information about the proper way to do something in a particular context. They didn't observe praising or criticizing that much.

Coach Wooden focused on delivering information players could use to remedy errors and correctly perform what he had previously explained and demonstrated.

It was information that promoted change.

Players learned to expect correction for every error, at the time it occurred, no exception. Perfection was the goal and perfection could not be reached unless every error was addressed and rectified.

You Haven't Taught Until They Have Learned

Wooden's Laws of Teaching and Learning

A key goal of Coach Wooden was the development of players who were creative, confident problem-solvers.

A basketball player who had learned to automatically execute a specific offfensive maneuver might be successful as long as the opponent fails to adjust. But once the other team makes defensive adjustments, the offensive player's success depends on the ability to develop solution methods in response. Coach Wooden's goal was to teach the underlying concepts of offensive and defensive basketball.

The laws of learning:

1. Explanation/ Demonstration

2. Imitation/ Correction

3. Repetition

What It Takes To Be Great

What It Takes To Be Great
From Fortune Magazine by Geoffrey Colvin

“What makes Michael Jordan great? What made Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett the world’s premier investor? We think we know: ‘Each was a natural who came into the world with a gift for doing exactly what he ended up doing.”

It’s not that simple. For one thing, you do not possess a natural gift for a certain job, because talented natural gifts don’t exist. You are not a born CEO or investor or chess grandmaster. YOU WILL ACHIEVE GREATNESS ONLY THROUGH AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF HARD WORK OVER MANY YEARS.

The good news is that the lack of a natural gift is irrelevant—talent has little or nothing to do with greatness. You can make yourself any number of things, and you can even make yourself great.
Talent doesn’t mean intelligence, motivation or personality traits. It’s an innate ability to do some specific activity especially well.

No Substitute For Hard Work

Nobody is great without work. It’s nice to believe that if you find the field where you are naturally gifted, you’ll be great from day one, but it doesn’t happen.
There is vast evidence that even the most accomplished people need around ten years of hard work before becoming world-class, a pattern so well established researchers call it the ten-year rule.
Greatness isn’t handed to anyone; it requires a lot of hard work. Yet that isn’t enough, since many people work hard for decades without approaching greatness or even getting significantly better. What’s missing?

Practice Makes Perfect

The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to what the researchers call “deliberate practice.” It’s activity that’s explicitly intended to improve performance, that reaches for objectives just beyond one’s level of competence, provides feedback on results and involves high levels of repetition.

For example: Simply hitting a bucket of balls is not deliberate practice, which is why most golfers don’t get better. Hitting an eight iron 300 times with a goal of leaving the ball within 20 feet of the pin 80% of the time, continually observing results and making appropriate adjustments, and doing that for hours every day—that’s deliberate practice.

Consistency is crucial. “Elite performers in many diverse domains have been found to practice, on the average, roughly the same amount every day, including weekends.”

In a study of 20-year-old violinists the best group averaged 10,000 hours of deliberate practice over their lives; the next best averaged 7500 hours and the next 5000 hours. It’s the same story in surgery, insurance sales, and virtually every sport. More deliberate practice equals better performance. Tons of it equals great performance.

The critical reality is that we are not hostage to some naturally granted level of talent. We can make ourselves what we will.

Thoughts From Felicia Hall Allen's Assistant Coaches Symposium

We were fortunate enough to attend Felicia Hall Allen's Assistant Coaches Symposium this past weekend in Atlanta. I wanted to encourage all to find a way to attend next year.

I tried to think of the best way to describe the weekend and while running this morning it hit me. The weekend was like a great sermon or church service. You felt like what every speaker said was directed to you. I left with 35 pages of notes, but most importantly I left thinking, questioning and examining my job, attitude, commitment, etc. I left with a greater appreciation for my university, our staff and our student-athletes.