Wooden's Wisdom | Leadership Resource Center

Issue 557 - My Favorite Dynamic Duo: Booker T. Washington and John Wooden: "Honesty in Everything" (Booker T. Washington Part Thirty-Seven)


Wooden's Wisdom - Volume 11	Issue 557
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MY FAVORITE DYNAMIC DUO: BOOKER T. WASHINGTON AND JOHN WOODEN: "HONESTY IN EVERYTHING" (BOOKER T. WASHINGTON PART THIRTY-SEVEN) John Wooden Video Clip (1 min. 39 sec.): Coach Wooden is asked: "What happened if a player was not playing their best?" Booker T. Washington and John Wooden believed that Honesty should not only be a part of what you say but should also include what you do and how you do it. In his book Coach Wooden's Pyramid of Success, with Jay Carty, Coach Wooden defined honesty in the following manner: Honesty is doing the things that we know are right and not giving in to the temptation to do the things that we know are wrong. Honesty must occur at all times, in both thought and action. In his 1902 book, Character Building, Booker T. Washington made the importance of "Honesty in Everything" clear to his students: "When we speak of honesty, the first thought may be that the word applies only to the taking of property that does not belong to us, but this is not so. It is possible for a person to be dishonest by taking time or energy that belongs to someone else, just as much as tangible property. In going into a classroom, office, store, or shop, one person may ask themself the question:" How little can I do to-day and still get through the day?" Another person will have constantly before them the question: "How much can I put into this hour or this day?" Now we expect every student who goes out from Tuskegee to be, not the person who tries to see how little she/he can do, or the average person who proposes to do merely his duty, but the person above the average, who will do more than their duty. I like to see young women or young men who, if employed in any capacity, no matter how small or unimportant that capacity may be, if the hour is eight o’clock at which they must come to work, I like to see them at work ten or fifteen minutes before that hour. I like to see a young woman or young man who, if the closing hour is five o’clock or six o’clock, goes to the person in charge and says "Shall I not stay longer? Is there not something else I ought to do before I go?" Put your whole souls into whatever you attempt to do. That is honesty." Are you honest? Click here for personal development exercise: Issue 557. Click here for Printable Poetry: Issue 557. Yours in Coaching, Craig Impelman www.woodenswisdom.com Follow @woodenswisdom	COACH'S FAVORITE POETRY AND PROSE Rebellion 'My Crown Prince was fine and fair,' a sorrowful father said, 'But he marched away with his regiment and they tell me that he's dead! 'We all must go,' he whispered low, 'We must fight for the Fatherland.' Now the heart of me's torn with the grief I know, and I cannot understand, For none of the Kaiser's princes lie out there where my soldier sleeps; Here's a land where grief is the common lot, but never the Kaiser weeps. 'My Crown Prince was a kindly prince, and his eyes were gentle, too, And glad were the days of his youth to me when his wonderful smile I knew. Then the Kaiser flattered and spoke him well, and he sent him out to die, But his Crown Prince hasn't felt one hurt and the heart of me questions why? He talks of war in his regal way and he boasts of his strength to strike, But his boys all live and he doesn't know what the sting of a bullet's like. 'Rebellion gnaws at the soul of me as I think of his Crown Prince gay, And my Prince cold in the arms of death, and harsh are the things I say. I join with the grief-torn muttering men who challenge the Kaiser's right To build his joys on the graves of ours. We shall rise in our wrath to smite! And this is the thing we shall ask of him: to give us the reason why Our boys must fall on his battlefields, but never his boys must die?' Edgar Albert Guest (1881-1959)
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