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Issue 442 - "Leadership Styles" (Anson Dorrance Part Eleven)


Wooden's Wisdom - Volume 10	Issue 442
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"LEADERSHIP STYLES" (ANSON DORRANCE PART ELEVEN) John Wooden Video Clip (2 min. 20 sec.): Coach Wooden is asked: "How did you prepare for a UCLA practice?" As the Woman's Soccer Coach at the University of North Carolina, Anson Dorrance's teams have won 22 National Championships. Coach Dorrance coached the Women's Soccer team at UNC for 33 years and the men's team for 13 years. His experience coaching women and men gave him some valuable insights which he shares in his in his fantastic 1996 book, Training Soccer Champions, with Tim Nash: "There is a cliché we use: "You basically have to drive men, but vou can lead women." You have to drive a men's team to get them to conform to vour position but a women's team is more easily coached to that position. And, in my opinion, the way you coach women is a more civilized mode of leadership. If you read any books about leadership styles of men and women, you learn that the men's style is a hierarchical style. It is a very top-to-bottom structure. A woman's style is more like a network. In her book ,"The Female Advantage" , Sally Helgesen, talked about how she looked at great women leaders in the business world and philanthropy, and she took you through a typical day. The way these women led is by connecting with everyone they conceivably could within their organi¬zation. It was not by a hierarchy. A great female leader's secretary would almost be like a partner in the leadership process, and she would have a direct connection to her and almost everyone around her. No matter how far down in the organization they were, they all got the impression that they were personally connected to the leader. That is critical in coaching a women's team. All the players on the team have to feel like they have a personal connection with the coach, and it has to be unique. It seems like a male leadership style is done through status, memorandum and intimidation. The great leaders of men, the outstanding and consistently successful coaches of men, are strong personalities who lead with a powerful presence and will. Their effectiveness comes through their resolve. Yet with women, your effectiveness is through your ability to relate. They have to feel that you care about them personally or have some kind of connection with them beyond the game. Women want to experience a coach's humanity." A Gallup poll of more than 1 million employed U.S. workers concluded that the No. 1 reason people quit their jobs is a bad boss or immediate supervisor. I think a healthy reporting relationship is essential with women and men. "People leave managers not companies." Technology has made changing jobs easier in the workplace and the Transfer Portal has made changing schools easier in athletics. How are your relationships? Click here for personal development exercise: Issue 442. Click here for Printable Poetry: Issue 442. Yours in Coaching, Craig Impelman www.woodenswisdom.com Follow @woodenswisdom	COACH'S FAVORITE POETRY AND PROSE Carry On They spoke it bravely, grimly, in their darkest hours of doubt; They spoke it when their hope was low and when their strength gave out; We heard it from the dying in those troubled days now gone, And they breathed it as their slogan for the living: 'Carry on!' Now the days of strife are over, and the skies are fair again, But those two brave words of courage on our lips should still remain; In the trials which beset us and the cares we look upon, To our dead we should be faithful- we have still to 'carry on!' 'Carry on!' through storm and danger, 'carry on' through dark despair, 'Carry on' through hurt and failure, 'carry on' through grief and care; 'Twas the slogan they bequeathed us as they fell beside the way, And for them and for our children, let us 'carry on!' to-day. Edgar Allen Guest (1881-1959)
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