Hall of Fame coach Pete Newell (1915 –2008) coached men's basketball for 15 years. He led USF to the NIT Championship in 1949, the University of California to four consecutive conference championships and the 1959 NCAA championship, and a year later coached the gold medal-winning U.S. team at the 1960 Summer Olympics. After his coaching career ended, he ran a world-famous instructional basketball camp. Newell was considered "America's Basketball Guru". His contributions to the game of basketball have been so great that according to many, Newell has perhaps had as much or more influence on the game of basketball as any person in the modern era.
 
Coach Newell was fierce about Inspiring Initiative, not Dependency in his players. In the Bruce Jenkins book A Good Man: The Pete Newell Story, Coach Newell expanded on this idea:
 
"I wanted players with initiative, guys who could control a difficult situation on their own. People may not realize that years ago, you couldn't bring a player over to the sideline to talk to him. Players had to stand out in the middle of the court during your timeout. They changed that rule during my second year in coaching [1947] and I was angry about the change. I felt my team could always interpret what I was teaching; we didn't need all these darn meetings. The players have to know what they're doing, and why! I didn't want my players depending on me. I figured I'd teach them during the week, and when the game comes along, it's up to them. That's one reason I didn't like to call timeouts. I didn't want the players thinking that every time they got in a little jam, I'd bail them out. I wanted to make them figure it out"
 
Coach Wooden had the same approach. Newell described a game against UCLA that demonstrated the point:
 
"When I was at Berkeley, we were determined we weren't going to call a first time-out. John Wooden and I believed the same thing about time-outs, that it was a white flag, a last resort, almost an early surrender. At Berkeley, playing for the conference championship, neither one of us called a time-out in the first half. In the second half, with three minutes to go, UCLA called a time-out, because we "got them".
 
A parent doesn’t help their child when they constantly zoom in and fix things. A manager does more for his/her employees by asking them "What do you think?" as opposed to always being the answer person. A great teacher causes you to think rather than telling what to think. Abraham Lincoln said: "The worst thing you can do for those you love is the things they could and should do themselves."
 
The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu (600 BC) said: "A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves."

-In an interview with Jan Stenker for Unconditionally Strong Jack Clark, who has led the UC-Berkley Rugby program to 28 national championships in 33 years discussed one of the key traits of being a Great Coach:
 
"Strong Technical Knowledge and a Strong Technical Approach"
 
"In coaching, I think it's important to have really strong technical basis where you're applying science in the right way. You're using notational analysis, you're using video analysis. You're effective at teaching motor learning skill. You follow best practice in all of those things. You're not going to take the team's talent to its potential without a really strong technical approach.
 
This includes everything from the overall strategies that the team employs to match-day tactics to the preparation of the team. We are neurotic about capturing, sorting and publishing data — at least internally. You can't do anything around here where we're not going to rank it 1 through 65 on this team. That rank might be in your unit, it might be in overall rank, it might be both. But everything gets captured and ranked and internally published. We're always auditing our efforts to assess if we are on the right track. Where can we get better? That's created a real honesty to the team — we're OK talking about what we don't do well.
 
There's a term in coaching called fence-posting. If you can imagine building a fence, you dig a hole and you put the post in there and you walk about 10 feet and you dig another hole, you walk another 10 feet and dig another hole. That's kind of what you do in coaching. You've got to consistently talk about checkpoints in a collaborative fashion with the team and have the team talk about them. You've got to make the values and the mindsets surrounding them come to life. You've got to make them real and not some slogan on the wall — a very real belief system and value."
 
The result of posting individual detailed statistical results is that team members know specifically their strengths and weaknesses and where they stand. The checkpoints are real, not a slogan. I have had some businesses that are reluctant to post individual stats because they don't want to offend anybody. When I polled the employees they said they liked everybody's stats being posted because they knew where they stood and could seek out superior performers for advice in an area they were struggling in. They liked this much better than a management speech telling them "You just have to be persistent, hustle and work harder."
 
In the appendix of Practical Modern Basketball, written by John Wooden, you will find samples of detailed individual statistical results from his practice scrimmages during the 1961-62 season. The statistics are from more than 20 specific areas and most were posted on the player's bulletin board.
 
If you played for Jack Clark or John Wooden you didn't have to wait for a game or a speech to know how you were doing.

In a podcast for the Orrick Law firm, Jack Clark, who has led the University of California's Rugby teams to 28 National Championships in 33 years, described three of the keys to a high performance team:
 
1. NO BLIND SPOT
 
I don't think that the very best teams can have a blind spot, can have an area that's important that they don't have competence in. I don't believe that there's shortcuts. I believe you have to check all the boxes. If you just want to be in the upper half of the table; you want to maybe not be just mediocre. There probably are a few things. Just don't do this, and do that, and you know you're going to be okay. The requirements for being among the best teams are different.
 
2. NO BAD APPLES
 
Now, with that said, talent becomes important. There was a legendary football coach that died about 10 years ago named Bo Schembechler at Michigan. He had this quote that I think is great. It had to do with recruiting and who you want on your team. He said, "Well, if you ever really want a guy and you don't get him, that's OK. He'll only beat you once a year." I think that's kind of catchy. Then this old boy cleared his throat and said, "On the other hand, if you get the wrong guy on your team, he'll beat you every day." We want talent on the team, but one wrong guy? That can really hurt you.
 
3. MAKE STRESS YOUR FRIEND
 
There is a debilitating stress that we don't wish on anybody. That's a serious condition that we have to protect people from. But there's also a friendly stress, the stress of wow, I don't have all the answers. Wow, I'm running out of time. Wow, these other guys are pretty good. It helps us grow. It puts us under a pressure that once we repair ourselves, in the same way a muscle repairs itself. It grows. It gets stronger. And I think you becomes acclimated to it. You can make friends with stress. I think that there's a healthy amount of stress that helps us grow. If I don't have any stress I'm probably not trying very hard. I think we should have a big appetite for more, we should feel like that we're out over our skis, and we don't have all the answers all the time, and that we grow from that.
 
Does your team have a blind spot? Is there a bad apple? Has everybody made stress their friend?