Jack Clark has been the University of California's varsity rugby head coach since 1984. His teams have won 28 National Championships, compiling an overall record of 758–96–5. Clark's program has had domestic win streaks of 115, 98, 70 and 63 games and produced 135 All-Americans.
 
In an interview with Jan Stenker for Unconditionally Strong, Clark discussed his definition and system of leadership which includes everybody:
 
"We say that the definition of leadership is the ability to make those around you better and more productive. It's a skill to us. Leadership isn't a rank — it's not only for the coach, it's not only for the captain, it's not only for the seniors. It's a skill. We open up the leadership model; it's not just the conventional model of the minority leading the majority. I just don't happen to think that's all that powerful. If I'm the leader, that means everyone else is a follower. I'm not happy with that.
 
If it's just a handful of good players or captains or seniors that are the leaders, you have the same problem. I think where people get that mixed up is they confuse rank — how you make decisions, who's the boss — with the leadership model. On this team, the leadership model is open to everybody. For instance, even if you're a freshman, you have the ability to make those around you better and more productive: Don't be a distraction, be on time, know your stuff, play hard and well when you're called on. Even if you're not the star player, you're contributing to that leadership model.
 
Over time, you look at leadership as a skill and not as a rank. When we really get it right, we have a lot of people on this team contributing to the leadership of the team. That gets pretty powerful. That's magical, almost, to see a bunch of people trying to make each other better and more productive. I think in a culture that values leadership as a skill, a person can ask himself at any point in time, "Am I demonstrating leadership characteristics now or am I lost in my own little world?"
 
Coach Clark's system is clear: he defines leadership as making others better and more productive and he expects everybody to participate in this process: helping others improve, not just doing your own job in a vacuum. As Coach Wooden liked to say: "It's amazing how much can be accomplished if no one is concerned with who gets the credit."
 
Authority, chain of command and rank are needed on any team but they don't define the limits of who can contribute to leadership (helping others be better and more productive).

Aging with grace has allowed me to realize I can never stop learning. Every question becomes a journey of self-discovery. We are living in some interesting times right now where our devices can connect us to the exterior world at anytime yet we remain disconnected from our internal world. Practicing self-awareness and empathy has never been more essential in these rapidly changing times of human progression. 

Through all the hustle and bustle of the holiday season and New Year never miss an opportunity to tell people how much they matter to you. When you see something wonderful in another person. Tell them. Try to give more people what they need instead of what they want. Each day throughout the year is a unique opportunity to display love and good intentions not just during the holidays. Every one you cross paths with presents an occasion to demonstrate kindness. When you smile, smile with your entire body.

Before entering into the New Year spend some time reflecting and recharging. Nurturing your soul is never selfish. It is vital for your holistic personal growth. Forgiveness does not make you weak, it sets you free. Treat your spirit with care. Nurture it with growth while feeding it with love so you can continue on your pursuit towards exploring the outer depths of who you are. 

Keep learning from the setbacks, comebacks, successes, and failures so you can walk your own path while staying true to your goals and greatest desires. Our comfort zone is where our dreams go to die. Playing it safe will most likely always lead to future regret than meaningful achievement. 

Never forget in every human being, there is brilliance. That includes you. Develop an unconditionally loving and supportive relationship with the person you see in the mirror. You can be a masterpiece, and a work in progress simultaneously. Know I am wishing you and yours a marvelous holiday season filled with peace, love, and positivity. ​

Each of us defines our boundaries. One of the most significant challenges is to learn how to live in a world of constant disruption and instant gratification and yet be relevant. Be sure you are moving in the right direction of your most authentic truth and greatest desires. There is a thin line between ridiculous and brilliant. The only person you are ever competing against is yourself.

We can never let what we are good at limit our possibilities to explore the outer depths of who we are. Never stop wondering what is next and how you will get there. Spend your life living and not merely existing. Excellence is about being your best possible self. There will always be room for improvement. You can learn as much from identifying what does not work as you can from spotting what does. 

Live with peace in knowing that every action you took in your past had a meaning behind it. You are not your past failures. Recognize and acknowledge your mistakes. You are who you are. And you are here for a reason. You have the unique opportunity to find a "why" that resonates with your spirit. The obstacle is the way. There will always be a way out of a current situation. Keep moving forward and growing while being brave enough to innovate and to seek what's next and what's new.

Now more than ever we need an elevated discussion that encompasses love, empathy, transparency, and unity. We will have all the time to worry about the unimportant things when we are gone. Today is a great day to be a problem solver in as many lives as possible. Do not take away someone's sunshine. Be sure to smile today while making someone else smile! ​

​Don Shula led the Miami Dolphins to two Super Bowl victories and the only perfect season in the history of the National Football League. He led his teams to six Super Bowls. He had only two losing seasons in his 33 year career as a head coach in the NFL (1963-1995) Shula holds the NFL record for most career wins as a head coach with 347.
 
Shula's players accepted his leadership because he was always honest and ethical in his actions and words. To Shula, how you won was important. In his book with Ken Blanchard: The Little Book of Coaching, Shula discusses the critical importance of being direct and honest:
 
"The relationship I wanted to establish with my football team is one of mutual respect. The only way you can get respect is to earn it. Not by talking—but by having people see you doing things, time after time, that make sense to them. Your people have to recognize that your actions are motivated not by your ego but by your desire to have them be their best. As long as you have credibility, you have good leadership, and that's something people can hang their hat on—something they can immediately believe and accept.
 
If your highest authority is your boss or your organization, your last victory, or, worse, yourself, you won't be a very effective coach. With a big-picture perspective, adversity, circumstance, or even your own ego will not consume you. As a result, you don't have to panic, give up, start to cheat, lose control, or begin to take uncalled-for risks to get the results you want right now.
 
Genuine faith is eminently practical, and that vast resource for inner knowing stands ready to assist today's leader who will exercise it. Faith in something bigger than you isn't a passive emotion; it's an active belief that requires you to step onto the field and walk your talk. Doing something unethical or dishonest would erode my self-esteem—my image of who I am as a person. If I did something that was not right, I would have trouble facing my family.
 
I strive to make sure that what I say and what I do are the same. Dealing with others in a leadership capacity will test your character, especially if your role is a highly visible one. You should expect the pressures and be ready for them by becoming as clear as you can about what you believe, what's good enough for you, and how you need to treat people in order to get the job done."
 
In his book Practical Modern Basketball, Coach Wooden was direct in describing the critical importance of honesty:
 
"A coach must be sincere and honest in every phase of his/her work. He/she might lack something in knowledge and technique and still get along, but his/her fate is failure if he/she is lacking in honesty and sincerity."
 
People want the truth. Do you give it to them?

Recently, I found myself jotting down a few things that EVERY player could do to be better that had nothing to do with talent.  Things that regardless of their skill level, they could enhance their contribution by focusing on these areas:
1. Shot Fake and Pass Fake
Truly a lost art.  When’s the last time you said to yourself, “that player is excellent as shot and pass fakes.”  Of course part of the responsibility belongs to us as a coaches — are we teaching and emphasizing it?  Few things can help an offensive player more than the proper use of a pass fake and a shot fake.
2. Know and Execute the Plays
Sounds a little silly saying “know the plays” but it’s amazing to see a player or two who doesn’t know where they are supposed to be or what they are supposed to being doing.  Whether is an inbounds plays, a half-court set, a motion entry or anything else structured, take the time to know where you are supposed to be and what you are supposed to be doing.  Next is execution — doing it when you are supposed to and as well as you can.  This does not take talent but commitment to knowing and understanding your team’s playbook.
3. Play Hard
Again, seems like it shouldn’t have to be said but it does.  And here is the key to playing hard — you have to do it all the time…not just when your team’s ahead or the play is called for you.  Playing hard means that you are making all your cuts in your offense hard.  It means that you are sprinting to screen.  It means that getting back on defense is a full speed proposition.
4. Have a Team First Attitude
Be the player constantly encouraging their teammates…picking them up both physically and emotionally when the time comes.  Don’t be the player with the horrific body language when a teammate turns the ball over as if you were saying “I wouldn’t have made that mistake.”  If a played does make a mistake, correct it is a positive manner.
5. Understand Shot Selection
Forcing shots does not help your team nor does it impress a college coach.  Know what a good shot is for you — and yes, your shot selection will vary from those of your teammates.  Don’t hunt shots, let the shots find you.
6. Concentrate
As I heard Nick Saban once say, “Wherever your shoes are, be there.”  Don’t wonder mentally.  Stay focused to the job at hand.  Be a process oriented player.  Don’t worry about the past play — it’s over.  Don’t worry about a play in the future they may or may not happen.  All you can control is the current possession you are involved with — give the possession complete concentration.
7. Be a Great Listener
This actually can do a long way to helping with concentration.  In timeouts are you locked in with your eyes and ears.  Does you coach have your complete attention.  There’s a free throw situation and your coach or captain is barking out instructions.  Are you actually listening and processing or just hearing — and there is a difference between listening and hearing.
8. Be in Great Shape
Without doing anything in regard to skill work…without saying anything about your talent level…you can make an impact on your team by being in great physical shape.  When the game is in the fourth quarter or late int he second half and everyone else is starting to drag, this is where you can make a difference.  Not only will you be a step faster because of your conditioning level, but you will be mentally sharper as well.  How many times have we seen a team put on a late run and in large part because of players that are in just better shape that run the floor and past their opponent.
9. Control Your Intangibles
Again, these have nothing to do with skill or talent but they are game changers.  The three areas that players can control (but often choose not to) are: attitude, energy, enthusiasm.  Now I’m not saying it is easy but if you want to make a difference in your team its well work working on.  By controlling your intangibles, I mean you don’t let officiating, teammates, opponents, coaches, gym conditions or anything else effect you having a team-first attitude, with high energy and positive enthusiasm.
10. Be an Example
What do your teammates see when they see or think of you?  He or she is always early to the gym.  They stay late.  They are on time for meetings.  They listen to the coach.  They keep their composure.  Off the court they conducting themselves the right way.  They maintain a proper diet to put fuel in the tank.  They are positive talkers — not criticizing a coach or gossiping about a teammate.
11.  Rebound
Some of the best rebounders are lacking in talent and athleticism — they board well because of effort and tenacity.  Rebounding is one of the only areas in basketball where it’s alright to selfish.  I’ve coached for over 35 years and have never heard of a coach taking a player out for rebounding too much!
I would imagine some of my coaching friends can add to this list but the key for players to understand is that every player can adopt these principles and it will make them a better player and their team a better team.  There’s nothing on here that requires you to jump higher, run faster or have an amazing handle.  Be committed to areas that you can control and work towards being the best you can in those areas.

​ 
Don Shula led the Miami Dolphins to two Super Bowl victories and the only perfect season in the history of the National Football League. He led his teams to six Super Bowls. He had only two losing seasons in his 33-year career as a head coach in the NFL (1963-1995) Shula holds the NFL record for most career wins as a head coach with 347.
 
Shula's results were consistent because he gave his players constant feedback focused on their performance and unaltered by his mood. In his book with Ken Blanchard: The Little Book of Coaching, Shula discusses his definition of consistency:
 
"Most people have the wrong idea about consistency. They think it means behaving the same way all the time. If you praise people and are nice to them when they're performing well and also when they are behaving poorly, that's inconsistent. Your players need to be able to count on your consistency. What we're talking about here is a specific kind of consistency—a consistency in responding to people's performance.
 
In the typical organization, the most frequent response people get to their performance is no response. A no-response consequence occurs when nothing is said or done following the action. Good actions that receive no recognition at all are apt to be discarded eventually; bad actions will continue unchanged. Good coaching means being present, on the spot, constantly giving appropriate feedback on your players' performance.
 
My philosophy is that there are no minor mistakes. Mistakes cannot be tolerated, they should be redirected. When redirection occurs, performance is stopped, and people's efforts are rechanneled to do correctly what they were doing incorrectly. If people are redirected to do something correctly, they are apt to continue doing it correctly. Redirection can be a powerful way to get people to refocus their behavior. Redirecting is the way to correct a mistake when an individual or team has not yet learned to do what you want you want them to do. If people make a mistake while they are learning and you yell at them or punish them, you'll only increase their anxiety and motivate them to avoid the punisher—you."
 
Recognizing good performance is an important part of my coaching. I like to recognize our players in front of their peers.My coaches and I will stop and give a player a pat on the back or recognize a great team effort on the spot, but we'll usually repeat the feedback at a team meeting to give our players full recognition. I believe in spreading praising's out so that every contributor receives attention. Good coaching doesn't mean telling everyone they're doing great. You want to support people when they're first learning, then gradually get more choosy about when you give them praise. I try to fit my feedback to a player's personality. Consistency is key, but within this philosophy, you have to use different approaches."