25. The Cornerstones of Success - Thoughts on John Wooden's Pyramid

Hi coaches, this is Whitney from the Get the Pancake Podcast, a podcast for volleyball coaches. If you're listening in real time, we're at a weird point of the year where middle schools are ending their seasons, high schools are in the middle of their season, and then clubs are either conducting tryouts or they're just about to start practices with their teams. With so many of us all over the place, I thought today I would share just some general motivational information with you. I'm going to be sharing a portion of one of my favorite books that has impacted me probably more than any other book throughout my coaching journey. And although there are a couple of different versions of this book floating around out there, the one that I have with me right now is called Coach Woodens Pyramid of Success, Building Blocks for a Better Life, that's by John Wooden and Jay Carty. I am obsessed with John Wooden and his theories regarding coaching I've read probably at least three or four books about John Wooden, some by John Wooden, others just about him in general. But I've always been a huge fan of his Pyramid of Success. So much so in fact that I actually took it and I created my own version that I have hanging up in my office just as a reminder for what it takes to really reach success and help me determine what success means. I highly recommend this book. If you haven't read it or don't even know who John Wooden is, I really highly suggest that you check out his book, Google Him, Learn as Much as You Can, The Pyramid of Success is free all over the internet. So I suggest you search for that. I will include an affiliate link to the book that I have in other books about him or by him that I recommend. I'll include those in the episode description if you want to go and check them out. But again, I don't really recommend anything that I don't highly promote and this is one of those things that like I said has impacted me a tremendous amount throughout my coaching career as one of the first things that I read when I started coaching and I've come back to it year after year both when I'm feeling extra motivated and also when I'm feeling down. So it can help you kind of no matter where you're at in the season. So let's get into it. Today, I'm only going to be talking about two blocks in his pyramid of success and that's because I think these are the two most important. He refers to them as the cornerstone building blocks of the pyramid. They're on the bottom level. They're the basic characteristics that you need to have to ultimately reach success. Those are industriousness and enthusiasm. There are a lot more building blocks and you might have one that you gravitate towards more than others, but these are the two that help me the most and specifically industriousness. Maybe that's because industriousness is something that I struggle with on occasion. But these are the ones that I constantly come back to for motivation and I feel like once I focus on these two building blocks everything sort of flows and comes naturally after that. So the pyramid at the top what we're ultimately striving for is success. That's why it's called the pyramid of success. And in this book specifically, success is defined as piece of mind, which is a direct result of self satisfaction and knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming. Let me read that to you again. Success is piece of mind, which is a direct result of self satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming. Now I think this definitely applies to our teams, but we as coaches can use this in our careers as well. Like I said, we're going to talk about industriousness and enthusiasm. So let me define industriousness for you. The pyramid says there is no substitute for work. Worthwhile results come from hard work and careful planning. Now the book goes into greater detail on each building block, which is why I recommend getting a book to accompany the pyramid rather than just looking at the pyramid itself. But in the book, John Wooden discusses that industriousness is made up of two parts. It is work and planning. So you have to be willing to put in the work. You have to be willing to work hard, but you need to have a plan as well. And in my mind, especially in coaching, doing what is hard is what sets you apart from other coaches. Although I think it's shifting, there are many coaches who are in this line of work because it's fun. And that's fine if you're coaching because you think it's fun. That's great. We need coaches who enjoy what they're doing, which we'll get to enthusiasm later. But if you want to be successful, there's more to volleyball than just having a good time. You need to have a plan. You need to know what you're working towards. Have an end goal in mind. And it might be easier for some of you to do one or the other. I know I can spend plenty of time researching drills, finding new drills, talking to people about new drills. But if you don't put in the work of actually making sure that they all flow together, that they're addressing weaknesses with your team, then you're not fully embodying industriousness. And something that I've noticed maybe over the last year or two for myself personally with the rise of technology and how simple everything is to find on the internet, I think a big part of industriousness moving forward, at least for me, maybe for you too, is to schedule myself some time simply to think. And I don't know about you, but it is really hard to even put my phone in a different room and just sit down with a pen and a piece of paper and think. I don't know why thinking is so hard, but I've found that it's usually uncomfortable at first to come up with a question in your mind and not have the answer immediately available via search or Siri or what have you. But to come up with a question like, "My team is struggling, what do I do?" The answer isn't to just go online and find a new drill. The answer is to sit down and think, "Well, what is my team struggling with?" Oh, we're struggling with serve receive. Whether you use stats or not, I don't really care, but maybe subjectively you think serve receive is what the main issue is for your team. So then you think, "Okay, well, how can we work on our serve receive?" And you're going to want to get up and go get that phone and look up a simple serve received drill. And while there are plenty out there that will work for you, I know I have a lot on getthepancake.com, you might be able to come up with a better solution for your team because of what they are specifically struggling with. And once you get into the habit of thinking, you're going to come up with some great ideas. I can pretty much guarantee it. And there are going to be days where you don't want to put in the time planning practice. There are going to be times when you don't want to calculate stats. If your end of season is coming up, you might just think, "Whatever, it's over. I don't want to deal with it. I guess we'll go get pizza." But no, finish strong, put in the work. It doesn't matter if you feel like it or not. If you want to know that you have had a successful season that you are doing a good job of coaching, you need to put in the work regardless of how you feel. Speaking about feelings, now let's talk about enthusiasm. On the pyramid, in the description box under enthusiasm, says enthusiasm, rushes off upon those with whom you come into contact. You must truly enjoy what you are doing. Guys, it's volleyball. At the end of the day, let's remember that we are so lucky to have such a great position where we get to teach children, young adults, life lessons, and give them confidence and help them build their self-esteem through sport, which is a great way to stay active, stay healthy. It's hard to not have enthusiasm when you put it that way. However, I know I've had bad seasons before. I know that sometimes it is really hard to drag yourself to practice when you know that there's going to be team drama or it's tough to walk off the core after a big loss to a rival school. It's no fun going and reporting scores of yet another loss to your school booster program. Maybe you had to sit a player for bad behavior and you see their parents walking towards you after practice or after a match. Yikes. I know that enthusiasm can be hard to summon in these situations, but we've got to be able to shake off those things and show up day after day to practice, to matches, to tryouts, to our award bankwits, show up with a smile and high energy. That's going to rub off on others. You are in control of the culture of your team. And unfortunately, it might take longer than one season to have that culture become the norm. But we need to be there for our kids when they've had a bad day at school or they're having troubles at home. We can be there and we can help them turn that around. That's on court also with planning practices. There's a lot that goes into running a team. Planning practice, doing stats, do that with enthusiasm. Be excited to track the stats for your team, to track improvements, to track challenges that you've had and try and come up with creative solutions to those challenges. So although enthusiasm is critically important, which is why it is one of the cornerstones of the pyramid of success, there can be too much of a good thing. In the book specifically, it says that "hives lead to lows. I always teach my teams in the beginning of the season when we win and when we lose, our face should look the same. Either we expect it to win or we're thankful for the competition." I think that goes along with maintaining a high level of enthusiasm, but a manageable level of enthusiasm. We don't want to get too excited because that can swing right back the other way and can bring us down and have us feeling low, low energy, bad vibes, all that sort of stuff. Some maintaining an appropriate level of enthusiasm. So coming in, smiling, being excited, that's what we all need to strive for. I'm just in the beginning stages of helping a local program expand and I'm relying 100% on my own personal enthusiasm to do the job and industriousness. Obviously there's a lot of work and planning that's going to go into this new undertaking, but I think showing up, being excited for how the program can grow and spreading my love of volleyball is what's going to make a difference here locally. As that progresses, I will share more with you, but for now it is in the very early stages and there's not much more to share than that. So ultimately, what I want to encourage you to do today is to get a copy of Coach Wooden's Pyramid of Success, my two favorite building blocks. Again, our industriousness and enthusiasm. And ultimately, the goal is to lead towards success and in the book, they put it so well. So I just have to read these few sentences to you because I think it's put so well. This is the wisdom of John Wooden here and he says, "Winning seems so important, but it actually is irrelevant. Having attempted to give it our all is what matters. And we are the only ones who really know the truth about our own capabilities and performance. So even in success, we might still not be successful. If you go out and win all your matches, but you know you're not giving your all, giving your best, they're still room for improvement. Likewise, if you are going out and your team is losing either a little or a lot, that's not what matters. And that is a message that I don't think is shared enough. Obviously, we all want to win. Let's be honest. If we didn't care about competition, we wouldn't be playing sport. So yes, in each competition, our goal is to come out victorious. But we want to do that by giving our best and demonstrating the skills that we've been working on over time. If that doesn't lead to a W at the end of the night or at the end of the day if you're playing in a tournament, that's okay. As long as you are truly giving it 100% you're all. So coaches, if this is speaking to you, if you know you can kick it up another notch, I really hope you take some time to evaluate how you've been doing over the season, maybe identify some things that are holding you back and really just dig in to the two cornerstone building blocks of industriousness and enthusiasm. I think that's a good note to end on. So I will let you go. But before I do, I want to let everyone know that I just recently created try out evaluation forms, which are available for purchase through GetThePancake.com. If you are one of those teams that has tryouts coming up in October, I highly encourage you to go and check it out. You can preview a little bit of the tryout forms. They seem very simple. And I know there are a bunch of free ones floating around online, but I've designed these specifically with my 10 years of experience. And I really believe that once you get them, they will make a big difference in how you select your teams for the next season. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Again, be sure to check out John Wooden if you haven't heard of him. And I will see you in next week's episode of The GetThePancake podcast. Please be sure to rate this podcast if you enjoy listening to it and share it with a friend.