A coach should never be afraid to ask questions of anyone he could learn from.
Interpretation
A good coach is open to learning from others, regardless of their status.
This quote emphasizes the importance of humility and continuous learning in leadership, particularly in coaching. A successful coach recognizes that knowledge can come from various sources and that asking questions is a vital part of growth and improvement, both for themselves and their team.
In practice
In a coaching seminar, this quote could be used to inspire new coaches to adopt a mindset of inquiry.
My dad was a very quiet person, and unbelievably tough. But my grandmother gave me my first look at negative thinking to bring about positive results. When I was just a little guy, anytime I came to my grandmother and said I wish for this or that, Grandma would say, 'If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.'
Your biggest opponent isn't the other guy. It's human nature.
People want national championship banners. People want to talk about Indiana being competitive. How do we get there? We don't get there with milk and cookies.
When we're playing a good scoring center, we tell our team that it is not our defensive man's job to stop the center. It's the responsibility of our perimeter people to stop the ball from going inside.
Failure, to me, is not having the desire to try. Having the desire to try is in it own way success.
I'm not sure that an athlete is prepared to be a role model. He has a lot of attention paid to him that he shouldn't have, and then the athletes tend to think of themselves as better than they are.
The priesthood is not really so much a gift as it is a commission to serve, a privilege to lift, and an opportunity to bless the lives of others.
A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be.
Leadership is not taken, it is given. People give leadership to those that they trust. They allow people that they trust to have influence over their lives.
There is small risk a general will be regarded with contempt by those he leads, if, whatever he may have to preach, he shows himself best able to perform.
Managing innovation will increasingly become a challenge to management, and especially to top management, and a touchstone of its competence.
I ask particularly that those of you who are now in school will prepare yourselves to bear the burden of leadership over the next 40 years here in the United States, and make sure that the United States - which I believe almost alone has maintained watch and ward for freedom - that the United States meet its responsibility. That is a wonderful challenge for us as a people.
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