Larry Brown, NBA and Olympic basketball coach on positive coaching
✓ Strive for a high ratio of positive-to-negative comments.
✓ Explain to players/workers you’re trying to teach, not criticize.
Be sincere when you tell them you want them to reach their potential.
✓ When they trust you’re on their side, then correct them. That's coaching
✓ No player/worker thrives on intimidation or shame.
✓ Don’t hire people unless you believe in them.
✓ Recruit “A” players with great character. Reward them with money, but they must be part of the team. Great NBA players get more public adulation, but they must be good teammates or there are problems in the locker room. Likewise, hire “A” employees who don’t need to be treated like prima donnas.
“If your best player has great character, the chances of succeeding are incredible. If your best player is not of good character, then you have a problem.”
✓ Give pep talks. Tell the team to play hard, play together, play smart, and have fun.
✓ Win by maximizing everybody's talent.
✓ Tell them they don’t win as individuals. They win by being unselfish and doing their jobs.
✓ Put people in an environment where they can be successful.
“Getting beat doesn’t mean failure. When I was at the University of Kansas we lost five straight and ended up winning the championship.”
✓ Don’t play it safe. Accept mistakes are a part of taking the risk to win.
✓ There are different kinds of mistakes. Mistakes for lack of effort are bad. Mistakes for fear of losing are bad. Mistakes from giving best effort are good.
✓ Take the blame when the team screws up. Give them credit when they do well.
Did you know?
• Brown never had a regular job. He says that coaching is the only thing he could do. Enshrined into the Basketball Hall of Fame 2002.
• Joined the advisory board of the Positive Coaching Alliance after his 8-year-old son was screamed at by a youth baseball manager.
• His 2004 Detroit Pistons won the NBA championship months before his U.S. Olympic team limped home with a bronze medal. He said he was proud of both teams.
Brown is included in Advice from the Top: 1001 Bits of Business Wisdom edited by Del Jones, who wrote the historical novel, The Cremation of Sam McGee loosely based on the poetry of Robert W. Service. The novel is set in the 1898 heyday of yellow journalism. The narrator is a fabricating newspaper reporter working for William Randolph Hearst during the Spanish-American War and Yukon gold rush.
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