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The Carolina Way: Leadership Lessons from a Life in Coaching Paperback – February 1, 2005

by Dean Smith (Author), Gerald D. Bell (Author), John Kilgo (Author),

4.7 111 ratings

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“Coach taught me the game. . . . He's like a second father to me.” —Michael Jordan

“Dean Smith epitomizes what a coach can be-teacher, counselor, mentor, example, friend.” —Bill Bradley

“He's a better coach of basketball than anyone else.” —John Wooden

For forty years, Dean Smith coached the University of North Carolina basketball team with unsurpassed success. Now, in The Carolina Way, he explains his coaching philosophy and shows readers how to apply it to the leadership and team-building challenges they face in their own lives. In his wry, sensible, wise way, Coach Smith takes us through every aspect of his program, illustrating his insights with vivid stories. Accompanying each of Coach Smith’s major points is a “Player Perspective” from a former North Carolina basketball star and an in-depth “Business Perspective” from Gerald D. Bell, a world-renowned leadership consultant and a professor at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. The keystones of Coach Smith’s coaching philosophy are widely applicable and centrally relevant to building successful teams of any kind.

Print length

352 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Penguin Books
Publication date

February 1, 2005
Dimensions

5.45 x 0.77 x 8.42 inches
ISBN-10

0143034642
ISBN-13

978-0143034643
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Coach taught me the game. . . . He's like a second father to me.” —Michael Jordan

“Dean Smith epitomizes what a coach can be-teacher, counselor, mentor, example, friend.” —Bill Bradley

“He's a better coach of basketball than anyone else.” —John Wooden

“To say that much of what I learned as a player from Dean Smith is directly applicable to the business community would be an understatement. Everything I learned during my stay at North Carolina has helped me be a better manager. To this day I rely on principles taught on and off the basketball court by Dean Smith to help me be more effective. Honesty, integrity, discipline, practice, and training certainly are the cornerstones to build from. If you care for your employees the way Coach Smith cared for us, success is a natural byproduct.” —Mitch Kupchak, General Manager, Los Angeles Lakers

“There were a few truly great college coaches in twentieth-century America, and Dean Smith is one of those. In my mind, Coach Smith represents everything good about intercollegiate athletics. Call it what you want: the Carolina Way, the Smith Way, the Right Way—it’s about the pursuit of excellence with integrity. Dean Smith is much more than a great coach. He is a great leader, a man of conviction, integrity, and toughness. If you’re in a leadership position or aspire to one, The Carolina Way is a must read.” —Lloyd H. Carr, Head Football Coach, the University of Michigan

“Dean Smith is one of the greatest coaches of all time and I was pleased to have the opportunity to read of the leadership principles that contributed to his success. The Carolina Way also includes terrific vignettes from his former players, further illustrating Dean’s powerful impact on their lives and how he was able to encourage his players to perform at their personal best.” —Congressman Tom Osborne, former Head Football Coach, the University of Nebraska

“The Carolina Way provides an invaluable primer on good leadership techniques and, if the ‘proof is in the pudding,’ then there is no doubt that Dean Smith’s way works. My com pany and I had the benefit of hiring a number of Dean’s players from Phil Ford to Pete Budko. All of them were winners—ambitious, energetic, loyal team players. He never sent us a bad one.” —Hugh L. McColl Jr., Chairman of the Board and CEO (retired), The Bank of America

“I have had the great privilege of sharing a fair portion of my life with William Friday, the president of the University of North Carolina, during much of the Dean Smith era. As a result, I have learned what a blessing Dean Smith was to the integrity of basketball in a collegiate setting. I would highly recommend The Carolina Way to anyone in pursuit of excellence with integrity.” —Reverend Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., President Emeritus, the University of Notre Dame

About the Author

Gerald D. Bell has master’s degrees from the University of Colorado and Yale and a doctorate from Yale. He has taught at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School for more than thirty years and has headed his Bell Leadership Institute since 1972. His leadership-training sessions have been attended by approximately 500,000 managers in more than 4,700 organizations from more than 85 countries

John Kilgo is an award-winning newspaper columnist, living in Davidson, North Carolina.

Roy Williams is the current head basketball coach at the University of North Carolina.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

While we didn’t have a system at North Carolina, we certainly had a philosophy. We believed in it strongly and didn’t stray very far from it. It pretty much stayed the same from my first year as head coach. It was our mission statement, our strategic plan, our entire approach in a nutshell: Play hard, play smart, play together.

Hard meant with effort, determination and courage; smart meant with good execution and poise, treating each possession as if it were the only one in the game; together meant playing unselfishly, trusting your teammates and doing everything possible not to let them down.

That was our philosophy: We believed that if we kept our focus on those tenets, success would follow. Our North Carolina players seldom heard me or my assistants talk about winning. Winning would be the by-product of the process. There could be no shortcuts.

Making winning the ultimate goal usually isn’t good teaching. Tom Osborne, the great former football coach of the University of Nebraska, said that making winning the goal can actually get in the way of winning. I agree. So many things happened in games that were beyond our control—the talent and experience of the teams, bad calls by officials, injuries, bad luck.

By sticking to our philosophy, we asked realistic things from our players. A player could play hard. He could play unselfishly and do things to help his teammates succeed. He could play intelligently. Those were all things we could control, and we measured our success by how we did in those areas.

When we put these elements together, the players had fun, which was one of my goals as their coach. I wanted our players to enjoy the experience of playing basketball for North Carolina. Each player on our team knew he was important. They all did a terrific job of sharing the ball, which also made the game enjoyable for more players. They won and lost as a team.

Of course, it is easier to talk about playing hard, playing smart, and playing together than it is to do all three. It begins by recruiting unselfish players who subscribe to the philosophy of team over individual. I once taught a summer physical education class at the Air Force Academy and we had one young man who shot every time he touched the ball. Exasperated from watching him, I pulled his four teammates off the court. He asked who would throw the ball inbounds to him. “You understand that it takes at least one more player,” I said to him.

Play Hard: Maybe a player wasn’t the fastest, the tallest, or the most athletic person on the court. In the course of any given game, that was out of his control. But each player could control the effort with which he played. “Never let anyone play harder than you,” I told them. “That is part of the game you can control.” If another team played harder than we did, we had no excuse for it. None. We worked on it in every practice. If a player didn’t give maximum effort, we dealt with it right then. We stopped practice and had the entire team run sprints because of the offending player. We played a style of basketball that was physically exhausting and made it impossible for a player to go full throttle for forty minutes. When he got tired, he flashed the tired signal (a raised fist) and we substituted for him. He could put himself back in the game once rested. We didn’t want tired players on the court, because they usually tried to rest on defense. That wouldn’t work in our plan. Therefore, we watched closely in practice and in games to make sure players played hard. If they slacked up, it was important to catch them and get them out of the game, or if it occurred in practice, to have the entire team run.

Play Smart: We taught and drilled until we made the things we wanted to see become habits. The only way to have a smart team is to have one that is fundamentally sound. We didn’t skimp on fundamentals. We worked on them hard in practice and repeated them until they were down cold. We didn’t introduce something and then move away from it before we nailed it. If we practiced well and learned, we could play smart. It was another thing we could control.

Play Together: One of the first things I did at the beginning of preseason practice was to spell out for our players the importance of team play. Basketball is a game that counts on togetherness. I pointed out that seldom, if ever, did the nation’s leading scorer play on a ranked team. He certainly didn’t play on a championship team. I made them understand that our plan would fall apart if they didn’t take care of one another: set screens, play team defense, box out, pass to the open man. One man who failed to do his job unselfishly could undermine the efforts of the four other players on the court.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books; Reprint edition (February 1, 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0143034642
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0143034643
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.45 x 0.77 x 8.42 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #715,234 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #198 in Basketball Coaching (Books)
- #7,667 in Leadership & Motivation
- #11,670 in Motivational Self-Help (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.7 111 ratings

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4.7 out of 5

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Mirza Hatipovic

A book full of wisdom and thoughts about work ethics

Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2009

Verified Purchase

A great book full of good examples from the basketball court on how to solve daily real world problems in your own life and business. The discipline and routine that coach Smith gave to his players are not magic tricks. They show you how hard work always pays out and how it gives us self esteem to overcome life's obstacles. The path that Dean Smith presents is not an easy one. Discipline, patience, intelligence and teamwork are the key ingredients of Smith's success formula. Not only that, he also tells us about his tricks he applied to overcome the difficulties that every individual player faced. There is a lot of creativity in his work. It's not only his hard work, but also his creativity that makes his approach enjoyable.

Really a book with greats tips to follow. Anyone who applies his approach in basketball to his life can expect tremendous results in his life.

5 people found this helpful

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Michael Polgar, PhD

Play hard, play smart, play fair

Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2014

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Coach Smith is our hero, especially for anyone in or nearby UNC and Chapel Hill from 1958-1998 (and beyond). He was hired by Carolina after working in Kansas for USAF and paid peanuts in the wake of a minor scandal. His leadership is exemplary for all sport and life. His work with the campus, community, students, and players was and is an outstanding example of cooperation and success. Teamwork and fairness matter to his teams and his teachings. Smith planned his practices, rules, teams, and seasons with this in mind: Play hard, smart, and fair. His ethics and lessons go far beyond basketball and sports into business and life. He has helped so many people, he integrated college basketball in the south, and he led US Olympians to victory in the process. Read or listen to learn more.

5 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Dean Smith

Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2020

Verified Purchase

Growing up in NC Dean Smith is one of the best role models one could hope for for the youth of America.

Reviewed in the United States on July 30, 2021

Excellent read!

Coach Smith is an icon and his philosophy applies to ...

Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2018

Verified Purchase

Coach Smith is an icon and his philosophy applies to all facets of life. Read this book and apply his principles and you will be successful!

One person found this helpful

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DJA

Good, not great

Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2017

Verified Purchase

As a basketball coach, I wanted to like this book, but I found it slightly dull. I was hoping to walk away with some interesting insights on coaching and leadership, but I found the "lessons" to be pretty generic in nature. I'm not a Carolina fan, so I enjoyed learning why Dean Smith is held in high regard and some of the innovative things he did years ago. The business anecdotes were interesting as well, but the book just didn't possess the depth that I was hoping for.

3 people found this helpful

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Scott Clamme

This is one of the best that I have read

Reviewed in the United States on December 15, 2014

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I have coached high school basketball for 15 years and read several books about sports and leadership. This is one of the best that I have read, and is excellent for young coaches.

One person found this helpful

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Stephanie Lewis

Review

Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2013

Verified Purchase

Everything is working well and easy to download. I had an issure with the first Kindel that i had and when I called and they troubleshooted with me, they did not hesitate to replace what couldn't be fixed!

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Milo Sharp

Product was delayed but arrived eventually

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 10, 2024

Verified Purchase

I initially left a negative review for this because I had not received the product by the time Amazon prompted me to respond, but it did arrive a few days later. I'm very satisfied with the product and delivery.

Doug Bennett

Though all the coaching wisdom coach Smith provides is great I didn't find the book very inspirational or enjoyable ...

Reviewed in Canada on July 18, 2015

Verified Purchase

Though all the coaching wisdom coach Smith provides is great I didn't find the book very inspirational or enjoyable to read. It was almost like reading a textbook.

Douglas G Connor

Great coaching book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 25, 2020

Verified Purchase

Great book, loads of useful lessons withon

Amazon Customer

This was the book which inspired me to start reading ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 12, 2016

Verified Purchase

This was the book which inspired me to start reading. Dean Smith is a legendary coach, and this book explains exactly how principles applied in basketball can also be applied in business and in life.

Daniel Atterbom

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 4, 2015

Verified Purchase

A great read from a great man.

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