Everyone's a Coach- You Can Inspire Anyone to be a Winner
 
Authors:           Don Shula & Ken Blanchard
Harper Business, New York, New York, 1995
 

WELD Book Review
By Mary Dunn

Don Shula's leadership skills led the Miami Dolphins to five Super Bowls and the Baltimore Colts to one - more than any other NFL football Coach.
 
Ken Blanchard is an internationally known management consultant, organizational leader, teacher and coauthor of  The One Minute Manager.
 
 The authors use a tag-team format.  Shula shares his five secrets of successful coaching and then
Blanchard demonstrates how to apply those same principles to an organization.
 
C:  Conviction-driven - - never compromise you beliefs - - do the right things for the right
      reasons.  Have a clear idea  of what you believe, where you're headed, and what you're
      willing to go to the mat for.
 
O:  Overlearning - - Practice until it's perfect - - attend to details and monitor the results - -
      have high expectations of people.  People generally respond well to leaders, managers,
      coaches and parents who have high expectations and genuine confidence in them.
      Over-learning/preparation is based on limiting the number of goals, reducing errors,
      become a master so that when necessary, you can operate on autopilot and have a
      philosophy of continuous improvement.
 
A:   Audible-ready - - know when to change - - be adaptable.   Be prepared for the
      "What-if's".   A fixed game plan or published organizational chart can be deadly to
       organizations.
 
C:   Consistency - - Respond predictably to performance - - People's performance is what
      should dictate a response - -not your mood.   Be consistent with praise, redirection or
      reprimand.
 
H:  Honesty-based - - Walk your talk.  Effective leaders are clear and straightforward in
      their interactions with others.  
 
The book is filled with quotes and examples.  The concluding chapter has a "score" sheet to help you develop a continuous self-improvement plan.  They suggest that you give the Score Sheet to those around you for feedback and then ask those same people for feedback at a later time to see if their perceptions have changed.
 

Some of the quotes from the book: 
 
Learning is defined as a change in behavior.  You haven't learned a thing until you can take action and use it.                          Don Shula and Ken Blanchard
 
Success in not forever, and failure isn't fatal.
 
The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his
labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love
and his religion.  He hardly knows which is which.   He simply pursues his vision of
excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing.
To him he's always doing both.                    James Michener
 
My goal in life is to be an applied behavioral scientist.  I want to take the BS out of the
behavioral sciences and make what we know about people come alive so it can be useful to
everyone.                     Ken Blanchard