The Carolina Way: Leadership Lessons from a Life in Coaching

Dean Smith is a great leader. He has won hundreds of games over the years and has accumulated many trophies that prove his worth as a coach. Great! I got that out of the way. The Carolina Way should have been called the Dean Smith way. I believe that he would have been successful in almost any profession. He didn't try to win basketball games. He mastered the process that led to winning. There are many coaches understand basketball X's and O's. Unlike Dean, some successful coaches walk around like they invented the basketball. The difference between Dean Smith and most coaches is his focus on working hard, working smart, and working together. Mastering these traits will help you become successful not matter what you do in life. Who said nice guys always finish last?

A year or so after Dean Smith's retirement from coaching the Tarheels, I was waiting on a connection flight from Charlotte and noticed a man sitting alone in the corner, fartherest away from the ramp. He had his back to me, but he looked strangely familiar. I casually got up, walked closer to determine if this was someone I knew and whether or not I should speak. About 15 feet from his seat, I noticed that it was the Dean, sitting alone, with a pen and a yellow legal pad, diagramming plays all by himself. It sounds corny, but it happened and made an indelible impression on me. After all those years, and wins - more than anyone else in college basketball history - the notion that he still had more to learn, that in 35 years, he had not already diagrammed ever possible play, was incomprehensible to me. I wanted to say hello and tell my children later in life that I had met him, but I did not disturb him. Our plane arrived, we boarded, and he walked alone to his seat. I never met him. But I feel like I already knew him having watched him from my baby crib, up to the day he retired. And reading "The Carolina Way" brought back many memories and reminded me of not only why I am a Carolina Fan but also why he commands such deep respect and admiration. He succedded the right way, never cutting corners, and believing in a system that was based on working hard, working together and being smart. You do NOT have to be a Carolina fan to enjoy and love this book. But if you are, you won' be disappointed, either!

It's par for the course, but the slime still manage to advertise their stupidity in the face of excellence. A leadership book that's one of a kind, missing the redundancy so prevalent in so many leadership books. The fundamentals are broken down into sections, such as:Part Three:Chapter 11: TeamworkChapter 12: Defining and Understanding Our RolesChapter 13: Why Unselfishness WorksChapter 14: Team-Building TechniquesAn excellent read, well off of the typical mundane management path that we've all seen and heard too many times.

I've heard Jerry Bell speak before, so I was thrilled to see him collaborate with Dean Smith on this book. Bell frequently uses words like caring, honesty, integrity, and discipline on his lectures on leadership and it's obvious from reading the book that these were the cornerstones of Coach Smith's teams. I wish more business leaders would understand that there is a correlation between investing in their people and sustained success. So many companies look at employees as disposable commodities, so it's refreshing to hear two men who have achieved so much in their careers say that it starts with genuine care for your people. Smith's philosophy, though simple in word, is truly applicable to the business arena because it promotes thinking intelligently, working extremely hard, and a committment to a greater whole than just oneself. That approach, combined with the real concern for each and every member of his program, created the most successful coaching career in college basketball history. If more CEO's would adopt these principles in their companies, then their work environments would improve, their employees would be more reciprocal in their committment, and bottom lines would increase.Kudos to Bell and Smith for a thoughtful book with an important message - good guys do win!

I'm biased because I'm a basketball fan, a Tar Heel fan, and a big admirer of Dean Smith, but this is one of the 2 or 3 best books I've read in the past 10 years. The entertainment value of the book is very high, especially if you love the game of basketball. Additionally, There are valuable lessons in leadership for coaches to be learned in this book, regardless of the sport one coaches. One of the primary goals of the book is to take Coach Smith's philosophies as they apply to basketball teams and, with the help of Dr. Gerald Bell, with whom he co-wrote the book, to transfer them to business "teams" for leaders in business. Most of those principles are easy to transfer, but some of them can be a bit of a stretch. Regardless, it's a great book. I give it the highest recommendations.