Wooden On Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

Leadership literature has emerged in recent decades as a subgenre of nonfiction encompassing self-help, management, and business books. Over this time, it has steadily grown in both the number of titles and overall sales. Leadership titles aim to give readers advice and practical tips on how to become effective leaders in their professional or personal lives. The first popular title of leadership literature is arguably Dale Carnegie’s 1939 How to Win Friends and Influence People. Its success led to a burgeoning of the genre, including the influential titles The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey (1989) and Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek (2009). 

Leadership books are generally written by—or with—those who have achieved renown in a particular area of expertise, usually business, sports, politics, or the military. These books’ authority as guidance literature relies on the leadership credentials of their authors, many of whom have distinction in niche areas and are not household names before publication. As a result, the popular appeal of leadership titles depends strongly on the genre’s ability to present specific skills as transferable into the everyday lives of readers. In this way, the genre fosters a sense of inclusivity and potential: that exclusive secrets of success can be shared and adapted for all. 

In this context, sports has become a key area for leadership literature, drawing on the wide variety of training and coaching approaches, the wide popularity of sports, and the celebrity of many sports leaders. These books draw on the perception, embedded in US culture, that sporting prowess is a sign of wider personal skills and virtues such as physical health, discipline, perseverance, and teamwork. Best-selling leadership titles include those written by the famous sports coaches Bill Walsh, Mike Krzyzewski, Nick Saban, and Pete Carroll, all of whom emphasize how sporting leadership techniques can be transposed to other fields. John Wooden is arguably the most prominent coach to write on leadership, and he is one of the first to combine sports and leadership for a popular audience. His first title was published in 1972 at the height of his career, followed by 11 more books until the year of his death, 2010. Wooden’s stratospheric success as a basketball coach brought him life-long celebrity, creating a mystique around his personality and approach to competition. Wooden’s first book kick-started the sports leadership genre, and his work has significantly influenced its mode and style. Key characteristics include an optimistic and inclusive tone, the idea that elite skills are transferable, and a morally charged, quasi-religious approach to inner values and self-improvement. Wooden on Leadership is a case in point. Wooden provides leadership tips that are transferable from sports to virtually any type of organization. In his Prologue, Wooden writes that he believes that “helping others to achieve their own greatness by helping the organization to succeed” is what leadership means (xv). One of the primary aspects that sets Wooden on Leadership apart from other books in the subgenre is the central focus on the success of a team or organization rather than an individual leader. Throughout his work, Wooden examines leadership through the lens of how it affects a group of people working toward the same goal.