Dean Smith was more than one of the greatest basketball coaches of all time. As a Hall of Fame coach, all of his achievements as the Head Coach at North Carolina for 36 years (1961 to 1997) are too numerous to detail here. They included two national championships, 11 Final Fours, 27 NCAA tournament appearances, including 23 consecutive and 27 consecutive 20-win seasons. Smith was also a powerful force for desegregation. In 1964, Smith joined a local pastor and a black North Carolina theology student to integrate The Pines, a Chapel Hill restaurant. He also integrated the Tar Heels basketball team by recruiting Charlie Scott as the university's first black scholarship athlete. In 1965, Smith helped Howard Lee, a black graduate student at North Carolina, purchase a home in an all-white neighborhood.
 
As a coach, his approach was effective and direct: Play Hard; Play Smart; Play Together. In his book The Carolina Way he expands on the approach:
 
"While we didn’t have a system at North Carolina, we certainly had a philosophy. It pretty much stayed the same from my first year as head coach. It was our mission statement, our strategic plan, our entire approach in a nutshell: Play hard, play smart, play together.
 
Hard meant with effort, determination and courage; smart meant with good execution and poise, treating each possession as if it were the only one in the game; together meant playing unselfishly, trusting your teammates and doing everything possible not to let them down.
 
That was our philosophy: We believed that if we kept our focus on those tenets, success would follow. Our North Carolina players seldom heard me or my assistants talk about winning. Winning would be the by-product of the process. There could be no shortcuts.
 
Making winning the ultimate goal usually isn’t good teaching. Tom Osborne, the great former football coach of the University of Nebraska, said that making winning the goal can actually get in the way of winning. I agree. So many things happened in games that were beyond our control—the talent and experience of the teams, bad calls by officials, injuries, bad luck.
 
By sticking to our philosophy, we asked realistic things from our players. A player could play hard. He could play unselfishly and do things to help his teammates succeed. He could play intelligently. Those were all things we could control, and we measured our success by how we did in those areas."
 
Coach Smith was a great leader on and off the court. Here are his thoughts on leadership from The Carolina Way: The most important thing in good leadership is truly caring. The best leaders in any profession care about the people they lead, and the people who are being led know when the caring is genuine and when it's faked or not there at all.

Tom Landry is regarded as one of the greatest coaches in National Football League History. Landry coached the Dallas Cowboys from 1960 to 1988. His 20 consecutive winning seasons and 29 consecutive years as the coach of one team are both NFL records. His teams also won two Super Bowls, five NFC titles and 13 Divisional titles. Consistency and innovation were his trademarks.
 
From his autobiography, here are some of Coach Landry’s thoughts on lasting leadership that works:

1. Knowledge: The first requirement of leadership is knowledge. A leader needs to demonstrate a mastery of his or her field. Mastery means more than just knowing information; it requires an understanding of the information and the ability to apply that information.
2. Innovation: A Successful leader has to be innovative. Innovation starts with preparation and knowledge. As a leader, you have to understand the present system, situation, or problem you’re faced with before you can react effectively - before you can be a successful innovator.
3. A Basic Philosophy: Every leader in every organization has to have a clearly understood philosophy. A basic philosophy that everyone agrees on can provide powerful sense of unity within an organization. But it also means one of the responsibilities of a leader is to make sure everyone buys into the philosophy.
4. Shared Goals: Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan. It is important to break down the major objective into minor objectives. The resistance we must overcome to achieve the minor objectives will be a major objective until it is attained. Coach sai " I don’t believe you can effectively manage people without helping them understand where they fit into the goals of the organization."
5. Motivation: Real motivaion is built up over time and its foundation is preparation. Careful preparation fosters confidence. That confidence becomes contagious and translates into a lasting kind of motivation that really pays off. A team that has character doesn't need stimulation. The secret to winning is constant, consistent management.
6. Handling Adversity and Criticism: As a leader, you have to understand you will face adversity. You need to approach difficulties and adversities as a challenge to overcome rather than a problem to worry about. A leader can’t afford to get too emotionally upset about the last mistake or the last play. You have to focus on what you would do differently next time. Sometimes a good leader has to be able to listen to criticism and change his or her plan accordingly. Other times you’re better off just ignoring the critics. The trick is considering which to do when. Consider the source. Perhaps the most important step in dealing with criticism is realizing it's part of the job.

 
Which of Coach Landry’s ideas can you use to improve your effectiveness as a leader?

,​Pat Riley is one of only five coaches in the history of professional basketball to have won five or more NBA championships. He won four with the Los Angeles Lakers during their Showtime Era in the 1980s, and one with the Miami Heat in 2006. Prior to Riley becoming the head coach in 1981, the Lakers had won two NBA championships in twenty years. Under Riley they won four championships in the next seven years.
 
Like all coaches who have accomplished amazing results Riley had great talent, but not every coach who has great talent achieves amazing results. Riley was a great team builder. In 1986, the Lakers were eliminated in the conference playoffs. They had won two NBA championships in the previous four years and Riley was concerned the players had become complacent.
 
Following that 1986 season, Riley launched a new program that he called the Career Best Effort Program or CBE. The Lakers coach recorded data from basic categories on the stat sheet and effort hustle plays, applied a plus or a minus to each column, and then divided the total by minutes played. He calculated a rating for each player and asked them to improve their output by at least 1 percent over the course of the season. They were updated on their progress each week. If they succeeded, the season would become individually and collectively their Career Best Effort. The next two seasons the Lakers became the first NBA team to repeat as back to back champions in twenty years. Riley described the importance this way:
 
"Players can't excel in every area, but they can strive to better themselves in the areas that we value most for each individual. Then we can show them what they need to do to have their Career Best Effort."
 
As a master team builder Riley also preached against what he called "The Disease of Me."
 
In his book The Winner Within, Riley describes "The Disease of Me" as the overpowering belief in the importance of oneself. "The most difficult thing for individuals to do when they're part of the team is to sacrifice. It is so easy to become selfish in a team environment." The Disease of Me is ever present, but it can be anticipated and overcome. Riley lists the following symptoms of the disease:

• Inexperience in dealing with sudden success
• Chronic feelings of underappreciation
• Paranoia over being cheated out of one's rightful share
• Resentment against the competence of partners
• Personal effort mustered solely to outshine a teammate
• A leadership vacuum resulting from the formation of cliques and rivalries
• Feelings of frustration even when the team performs successfully

 
By using his Career Best Effort Program and using his list to coach against the Disease of Me Riley created a check list to prevent complacency and promote team work.