BUS518 Wooden on Leadership For Business Environment

Answers:

Introduction

John Wooden was a basketball coach. He observed and worked with various teams to achieve the championships. By working with and analysing various team behaviours he proposed the model called pyramid of success. The model is a blue print for the individual and team success. It consists of 25 common behaviours in a triangular diagram. This model is an effective tool to manage effective project management leadership (John Wooden, 2017).

John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success fits today’s business environment

John Wooden’s pyramid of success still fits the today’s business environment. Many organisations and leaders have adopted this model to achieve great success. This pyramid helped John wood in achieve many championships in his carrier.   It can be applied in every sphere of life to achieve success. The model displayed various life principals that contribute to be a better person and an effective business leader. This model can help my organisation to achieve organisational heights. John Wooden also differentiated between being quick and being in a hurry. He emphasised on being quick at situations where it is required. It is the perfect fit for today’s dynamic business environment (Lawler, 2014).

Examples- Pyramid of success emphasised on team spirit. Leader of my organisation has developed a good team spirit therefore the tasks are easily accomplished. Competitive greatness is behaviour that wooden considered important to achieve his idea of success, Apple is the organisation that is a market leader through competitive greatness. Industriousness is another characteristic that can never be substituted, all the business leaders’ credit hard work for their success. Nothing can be achieved without hard work.

Leadership style related to or in contrast with themes discussed in John Wooden’s pyramid of success:

Leadership styles can be of different types like directive, consultative, participative, or delegative. My leadership still is consultative. This is a type of leadership style that welcomes the ideas and opinions of everyone in the team but still the decision making authority is credited to the leader. My leadership style relates as well as contrasts to various themes discussed in the John Wooden’s pyramid of success. My expectation from the team members is the accomplishment of tasks in any of the ways either through hard work or through smart work. The success pyramid emphasised that there is no substitute for hard work but smart work is much efficient than hard work. I have a cool temperament and motivate employees with suitable rewards for their efforts. This usually boosts up the enthusiasm of the employee which is an important theme of the success pyramid. My leadership is based on grooming the skills of the employees. I believe in behaving as a teacher rather a leader. Skills are the behavioural characteristic that is vital for achieving the success. I usually emphasise on overall skill development.

Suggested changes in John Wooden’s pyramid of success:

According to John wooden success is something that gives you a sense of self satisfaction. It is a kind of feeling that makes you believe that you tried your level best. In his pyramid of success John Wooden identified 15 factors for successful leadership. These factors are Industriousness, friendship, loyalty, cooperation, enthusiasm, self- control, alertness, respect, intentness, condition, skills, team spirit, poise, confidence and competitive greatness. John wooden was amongst the most successful basketball coaches of the world. John wooden pyramid of success is a result of decades of research. It is suitable approach even for today’s business leaders. The model is much more based on practical approach and been developed through years. Almost all the aspects in the model can be agreed .This model is very effective and provides very little scope for disagreement. But there are few aspects that cannot be agreed upon. The model states that there is no substitute to hard work but today’s business environment requires smart work.  One of the basic reasons behind this is hard work doesn’t yield creativity (Edwards, 20176). Another point is friendship; a leader not always needs to be friendly. Leader has to strict sometimes to achieve the goals. Strictness is required to establish discipline in the organisation. Discipline at the workplace is important to avoid serious workplace problems and timely completion of various tasks (Reddy, 2017).  Leader always needs to develop both trust and responsibility in its team members (Laufer.

New Pyramid of Success model based on John Wooden’s pyramid of success:

Pyramid of success proposed by John Wooden was appropriate and effective. It does not require many changes in it. The new pyramid will include only few changes and the rest of it will be same. The aspects that will be changed include two points’ hard work and friendship. Hard work will be substituted to smart work and friendship to command. Today smart work is the need of time. In the changing business world the challenges have become so complex that organisations need be quick to be ahead of the competitors. Command means the leader should have an ability to guide the team towards the goals. Command and control both walk hand in hand. In order to command the team members the leader needs to establish effective control (Mitchinson, 2014).

Few aspects that have been ignored in this model also needs to added to this model are communication, positive attitude and creativity. Communication skills are sole characteristic required for any leader. Through good communication skills leader can spread the organisational goals, values and influence the behaviour of others (Mcintosh and Luecke 2008).  Positive attitude is necessary to keep your team motivated. It is required to maintain and effective balance between work and play among the team members (Prive, T. (2012).). Creativity is very essential characteristic required in today’s world. In order to meet the growing needs of volatile business every leader needs to create innovative teams. Creativity is an important characteristic to build an innovative team (Amabile, and Khaire, 2008).

Strategy that self-directed project team members may use to adapt to any project-related crisis:

Based on the new model the stage strategy that can be developed for self – directed project team members may use to adapt to any project related crisis is explained below-

Positive atmosphere

Team needs to build positive atmosphere among the members through coordination, positive attitude and loyalty so that they willingly help each other at the time of crisis.

Effective communication

Effective communication skills among the team members ensure quick problem solving. The communication can enable the members to share opinions and knowledge with each other to reach to a fruitful solution.

New opportunities

The alertness and the creativity of the team help them to grasp new opportunities.

Take initiative

After grasping new opportunity the team also have to look for its implementation. This can be done by if the team has ability of self-control, taking initiative , poise, skills and intentness.

Achieving competitive greatness

Competitive greatness can be achieved by team spirit, work skills, enthusiasm and confidence.

All these steps will help the team to deal and adapt with the various changes at the time of crises.

Conclusion

It can be concluded that John Wooden’s model is very effective for being a successful leader. It enables the leader to develop individual as well as the teams. It is a very effective model, but needs few modifications. Few points need to be changed and few aspects need to be added. Many organisational leaders are able to achieve their goal by learning from this success pyramid.

References 

Amabile, T. and Khaire, M. (2008). Creativity and the Role of the Leader. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2008/10/creativity-and-the-role-of-the-leader

AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn

Edward, S. (2016). 10 Reasons Hard Work Isn’t Enough to Make a Business Succeed. Inc. Retrieved from https://www.inc.com/samuel-edwards/10-reasons-hard-work-isn-t-enough-to-make-a-business-succeed.html

Freedman, L. D. (2012). Smart Work: The Syntax Guide for Mutual Understanding in the Workplace. Happy About.

John Wooden, (2017). Pyramid of success. Retrieved from https://www.coachwooden.com/pyramid-of-success

Laufer, A. (2012). Mastering the leadership role in project management: Practices that deliver remarkable results. FT Press.

Lawler, E.E. (2014). John Wooden's Contribution to Organization Agility. The Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardlawler/2014/09/30/john-woodens-contribution-to-organization-agility/#39aaac442f15

Mcintosh, P. and Luecke, R.A. (2008). Interpersonal Communication Skills in the Workplace.

Mitchinson, K. W. (2014). Command and Leadership. In The Territorial Force at War, 1914–1916 (pp. 148-177). Palgrave Macmillan UK.

Prive, T. (2012). Top 10 Qualities That Make A Great Leader. The Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyaprive/2012/12/19/top-10-qualities-that-make-a-great-leader/#7b092f807754

Reddy, C. (2017). Workplace Discipline. Retrieved from https://content.wisestep.com/important-discipline-workplace/