Dear Reader,
Genuinely curious. A friend or family member gifts you a book for Christmas. It is not a read you put on your Christmas list. Yes, gratitude and appreciation is implied—but how many times out of ten do you read said book?
I say this because one of my favorite gifts was the book "When Life Gives You Pears: The Healing Power of Faith, Family and Funny People" by Jeannie Gaffigan. My brother gave it to me, I gave it to a friend and have recommended it to countless others. In the event you need a recommendation for a friend who has several children...a woman of faith...someone who needs a good laugh—Gaffigan's work is worth it. If your child happens to participate in high school sports, espeically during the winter season, here's something for their coach: Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success by Phil Jackson.
Whether or not this person coaches or plays basketball is inconsequential. I say this because the head coach of the Golden State Warriors Steve Kerr has read and re-read "The Inner Game of Tennis." In fact, he sighted this as a source that prepared him for the position of head coach. None other than Pete Carroll, head coach of the Seattle Seahawks recommended it to him. Two coaches of two completely different sports consulted one another on a book about an entirely different one. Sounds fascinating. I gain so much insight through compare and contrast.
I read "Eleven Rings" because a former student recommended it to me. As you can see from the tabs, I found more than a few things worth remembering. The purpose of this post is to not to get you to buy the book, but to learn a few ways Jackson opens his teams to Sports and Spirituality. If you decide to make the purchase, I would love to talk to the recipient of this book. It's so rich. It's real—Jackson did the work, and it's inspirational.
According to Dolly Duffy, the executive director of the University of Notre Dame's alumni association, the number one request from alumni and friends during shelter-in-place was for spiritual resources. On the Wednesday before Easter 2020, 50,000 people went online to pray with the University's President, Father John Jenkins. This desire for meaningful prayer reminded me that our hunger and thirst for God is unassailable. I believe coaches are in a privileged place to help the people they work with tap into their desire for meaning, for connection, for the holy, and the unassailable. Jackson does this in unconventional ways. Maybe a coach you know is open to leading in this way. I have taken but a few of his basic principles and included them .Jackson writes:
I'd like to give you an overview of the basic principles of mindful leadership that I've evolved over the years to help transform disorganized teams into champions. You won't find any loft management theories here. With leadership, as with most things in life, the best approach is always the simplest.
Enjoy. Pass them on. Read them for yourself or give them to a coach you care about/who cares about your child. Merry Christmas!
The Jackson Eleven: #5. Turn the Mundane Into the Sacred
As I see it, my job as a coach was to make something meaningful out of one of the most mundane activities on the planet; playing pro basketball. Despite all the glamor surrounding the sport, the process of playing day after day in one city after another can be a soul numbing exercise. That’s why I started incorporating meditation into practices. I wanted to get players something besides x’s & o’s to focus on. What’s more, we often invented rituals of our own to infuse practices with a sense of the sacred.At the start of training camp for instance, we used to perform a ritual that I borrowed from football great Vince Lombardi as a players formed a row on the baseline. I’d ask them to commit to being coached that season, saying “God has ordained me to coach you young men, and I embrace the role I’ve been given. If you wish to accept the game I embrace and follow my coaching, as a sign of your commitment. step across the line." Wonder of wonders, they always did we did this in a fun way with it but with a serious intent the essence of coaching, as a sign of your commitment, step across that line.” Wonder of wonders, they always did it.
We did this in a fun way, but with a serious intent. The essence of coaching is to get players to wholeheartedly agree to being coached, then offer them a sense of their destiny as a team.
The Jackson Eleven: #6 One Breath = One Mind
Mindfulness meditation is an easily accessible technique for quieting the restless mind and focusing attention on whatever is happening in the present moment. This is extremely useful for basketball players, who often have to make split-second decisions under enormous pressure. I have also discovered that when I had the player sit in silence, breathing together in sync, it helped align them on a nonverbal level far more effectively than words. One breath equals one mind.
The Jackson Eleven: #8 Keep your eye on the spirit, not on the scoreboard
Management guru Stephen Covey tells this old Japanese tale about a samurai warrior and his three sons: the samurai wanted to teach his sons about the power of teamwork. So he gave each of them an arrow and asked them to break it. No problem. Each son did it easily. Then the samurai gave them a bundle of three arrows bound together and asked them to repeat the process. But none of them could. That’s your lesson, the samurai said “if you three stick together, you will never be defeated.“
Hearing the Unheard: I was always looking for new ways to get inside the players’ heads. When I started coaching the Bulls, I had the players create what I called a personal shield, a simple profile based on questions such as What your greatest aspiration? Who’s influence do you the most? And what is something people don’t know about you? Later I asked them to fill out a more formal questionnaire and use their answers to probe more deeply drain our one on one meetings midway through the season.
My favorite psychological tool was one called a “social bull’s-eye,” which creates a picture of how people see themselves in relation to the group. On one of our long road trips, I’d give each of the players a sheet of paper with a three ring bull’s-eye, representing the team’s social structure, in the center. Then I’d ask them to position themselves somewhere on the bull’s-eye based on how connected they felt to the team. Not surprisingly, the starters usually placed themselves somewhere near the eye, and the back ups scatter themselves in the second and third ranks. One year back up forward Stacy King, a fast talking, stylishly dressed player who made everyone laugh, drew himself hovering far outside the third ring. When I asked him why, he said, “I don’t get any playing time, Coach.” Which wasn’t true, but it was how he felt. On the surface, Stacy seemed confident and gregarious, but inside he felt like an outsider struggling for recognition. I don’t think I ever figured out how to heal that wound.
We did this in a fun way, but with a serious intent. The essence of coaching is to get players to wholeheartedly agree to being coached, then offer them a sense of their destiny as a team.
The Jackson Eleven: #6 One Breath = One Mind
Mindfulness meditation is an easily accessible technique for quieting the restless mind and focusing attention on whatever is happening in the present moment. This is extremely useful for basketball players, who often have to make split-second decisions under enormous pressure. I have also discovered that when I had the player sit in silence, breathing together in sync, it helped align them on a nonverbal level far more effectively than words. One breath equals one mind.
The Jackson Eleven: #8 Keep your eye on the spirit, not on the scoreboard
Management guru Stephen Covey tells this old Japanese tale about a samurai warrior and his three sons: the samurai wanted to teach his sons about the power of teamwork. So he gave each of them an arrow and asked them to break it. No problem. Each son did it easily. Then the samurai gave them a bundle of three arrows bound together and asked them to repeat the process. But none of them could. That’s your lesson, the samurai said “if you three stick together, you will never be defeated.“
Hearing the Unheard: I was always looking for new ways to get inside the players’ heads. When I started coaching the Bulls, I had the players create what I called a personal shield, a simple profile based on questions such as What your greatest aspiration? Who’s influence do you the most? And what is something people don’t know about you? Later I asked them to fill out a more formal questionnaire and use their answers to probe more deeply drain our one on one meetings midway through the season.
My favorite psychological tool was one called a “social bull’s-eye,” which creates a picture of how people see themselves in relation to the group. On one of our long road trips, I’d give each of the players a sheet of paper with a three ring bull’s-eye, representing the team’s social structure, in the center. Then I’d ask them to position themselves somewhere on the bull’s-eye based on how connected they felt to the team. Not surprisingly, the starters usually placed themselves somewhere near the eye, and the back ups scatter themselves in the second and third ranks. One year back up forward Stacy King, a fast talking, stylishly dressed player who made everyone laugh, drew himself hovering far outside the third ring. When I asked him why, he said, “I don’t get any playing time, Coach.” Which wasn’t true, but it was how he felt. On the surface, Stacy seemed confident and gregarious, but inside he felt like an outsider struggling for recognition. I don’t think I ever figured out how to heal that wound.
As the regular season wound down, I thought it was important for us to have closure as a team. This was the end of an era, and I wanted us to take some time to acknowledge our accomplishments and the strength of our connection. My wife suggested that we perform a ritual that she had used with children whose parents had died in the hospice program where she worked so I scheduled a special meeting before the start of the playoffs and asked everyone to write a short paragraph about what the season and our team had met to them. We met in the travel room. It was just off the inner corner of the team, the players the coaches and the training staff. Only about half of the people wrote something ahead of time that everyone spoke.
I could do go...I'll let Jackson's book speak for itself! What a gift
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