Wooden's Wisdom | Leadership Resource Center

Issue 489 - "Improve Your Capability" (Coach Wooden’s "APPP")


Wooden's Wisdom - Volume 10	Issue 489
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"IMPROVE YOUR CAPABILITY" (COACH WOODEN’S "APPP") John Wooden Video Clip (1 min. 15 sec.): Coach Wooden is asked: "What is the difference between a coach and teacher?" Coach Wooden’s definition of success is: "Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable." To improve your capability, you can use the new John Wooden "APPP". It is not on your phone and it’s available right now for free. "APPP" stands for: Attitude-Plan-Process-Performance. Attitude: John Wooden says: Don’t whine, don’t complain, and don’t make excuses. Just do the best you can. Nobody can do more than that. Complaining, whining, and making excuses just keep you out of the present." Plan: A goal without a plan is just a dream. Coach spent two hours planning every two-hour practice and wrote a detailed post practice evaluation every practice for twenty-seven years. Process: Using the results of his daily self-evaluation he was able to improve his process every day. Performance: Coach kept himself and the players properly focused on performance in practice every day, every drill one minute at a time. The "APPP" will work if you use Coach Wooden’s philosophy to keep yourself properly focused: "Never try to be better than somebody else. Always understand that you'll never know a thing that you don’t learn from someone else. Never try to be better than somebody else, but never cease trying to be the best you can be. That’s under your control. The other isn’t and if you get too engrossed, involved and concerned in regard to the things that you have no control, it will have a negative effect on the things over which you have or should have control." In his book, The Essential Wooden with Steve Jamison, Coach described how this applied to his approach on competition: "I wanted to win every single game I ever played or coached. Who would think otherwise? We play to win however I never mentioned winning or beating an upcoming opponent. I removed stress - the kind that comes from a fear of losing or an overeager appetite to win - by focusing exclusively on improvement and teaching the team that ongoing and maximum progress was the standard, our daily goal. While I played to win-always-winning was never the way I measured my success. Nor was it how I gauged the success of those under my supervision." "For me there is a standard that ranks above winning. I would never allow the scoreboard to be the judge of whether I had achieved success." By keeping laser focus on process goals, not product goals, Coach Wooden was able to improve the capability of the team a little every day. Where is your focus? Check up on your: "APPP". Click here for personal development exercise: Issue 489. Click here for Printable Poetry: Issue 489. Yours in Coaching, Craig Impelman www.woodenswisdom.com Follow @woodenswisdom	COACH'S FAVORITE POETRY AND PROSE The Job The job will not make you, The job will not bring you to fame Or riches or honor or joy Or add any weight to your name. You may fail or succeed where you are, May honestly serve or may rob; From the start to the end Your success will depend On just what you make of your job. Don't look on the job as the thing That shall prove what you're able to do; The job does no more than to bring A chance for promotion to you. Men have shirked in high places and won Very justly the jeers of the mob; And you'll find it is true That it's all up to you To say what shall come from the job. The job is an incident small; The thing that's important is man. The job will not help you at all If you won't do the best that you can. It is you that determines your fate, You stand with your hand on the knob Of fame's doorway to-day, And life asks you to say Just what you will make of your job. Edgar Albert Guest (1881-1959)
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