Steal from the Greats: My Top Coaching Lessons from Basketball

From plaster pours to parquet courts

Spending the summer mixing plaster isn’t any kid’s idea of a fun job, trust me. But it’s how I spent my summers with my dad, Stanley.

He grew up one of eleven children. For him, becoming a plasterer was a way to provide for a family of his own. For me, these summer jobs were his way of teaching me about hard work so I could get into college and succeed.

It worked. I went off to college (determined to never mix plaster again), earned a scholarship and played Division II basketball. After graduating, I coached college ball for five years before getting my start in financial services. So there I was, this young general agent leading his team for the first time and looking to pass on the same inspiration that got me to that moment.

Except at that time, I didn’t have anyone I knew well in the industry to serve as a role model. I had my dad, and I had my coaches. Coaching was what I knew, and it’s how I’ve seen people from all walks of life succeed—and come from some of the toughest urban areas in the 70s and 80s to thrive at top schools across the country.

You can learn from almost any coach who has been able to not just build a successful program but sustain it year after year. These are just three of the ones I’ve had the privilege of working with in one way or another:

1. Stu Grove: The relentless pursuit of recruiting.

Stu was my high school coach, and he took the time to see my potential. He made sure I worked like crazy, but later -- when I worked as his assistant coach at the University of New Haven -- I started to understand why. Two key lessons:

1) When you are a great coach, it’s not about you: if you don’t have top players and work to develop them, you’re not going to win.

2) At the same time, you can be the best coach in the world, but if you don’t keep up a relentless pursuit of recruiting you’ll never build a legacy.

And one more funny thing about Stu and his leadership: after he stopped coaching, he came to work for me as an agent, and I got to be his coach in financial services. And Stu took his own leadership lessons to heart as a new player—he’s been a top advisor ever since, earning numerous trips to MassMutual’s Blue Chip Council.

2. Jim Larrañaga: If you think you’ve arrived, you’re about to get left behind.

Jim was my coach at American International College (he’s at the University of Miami now). He’s won several national coach of the year awards, he has over 600 wins under his belt as head coach. In other words, this is someone at the top of his game, who has earned the right to enjoy it.

But I’ll never forget what he told me:

You can never think you’ve arrived. The day that happens is the day you stop working as hard—and that’s when people blow right past you.

This isn’t always what we want to hear after we’ve already worked so hard to achieve success, but it is what we need to remember if we want to stay successful.

3. Coach K (Mike Krzyzewski): You need a tireless willingness to change.

This goes hand in hand with Jim Larrañaga’s mindset. It’s one thing to play defense and just try to keep up with changes. But you can’t lead from behind. You need to actively embrace change, and build it into your leadership.

In college basketball, you don’t have a choice: top programs constantly lose their stars to the draft. And that’s okay with Coach K: helping people succeed, whether that’s at Duke or somewhere else, is a big part of his long-term legacy.

Everybody wins if you continue to attract outstanding talent who knows you’re a leader, and most of all, who realizes you will always look out for their best interests.

Who are you looking out for?

Anyone who’s ever worked with me knows that being called “coach” is the highest compliment I could ever receive from my team. And why not? It’s a blessing to get to develop others and help them realize their full potential.

All these lessons from coaches have one thing in common: the idea that a good coach is more steward than superstar. With the right mindset, we can turn excellence into a tradition, not just a trait.

Follow me on Twitter at @coachpetenovak