There's more to building a winning team than just the 7 C's. Other principles are just as important and, while they don't begin with the letter C, we would be remiss if we didn't share them. In this spirit, here are some of our key areas of focus and things to consider as you build your team.

Integrity

Jon Gordon

In 2014 I attended the Cornell Hall of Fame induction dinner, where I heard David Eckel, a cross country track and field champion, share a story from the fall of 1955 during the Heptagonal Championship in Van Cortlandt Park in New York City. David said he had led most of the race with his Cornell teammate, Michael Midler, right behind him in second place and Doug Brew from Dartmouth about 60 yards behind them. With about a mile left in the race, David and Michael took a wrong turn and headed down a path away from the finish line. Doug saw them going the wrong way and shouted to them, “You are off course! You are off course! You are going the wrong way!” David and Michael quickly got back on the right path and finished in first and second place while Doug Brew finished third. That year, Cornell won the individual and team championship, and if it wasn't for Doug's integrity, it never would have happened. David and Doug still keep in touch and Doug said he never regretted it. He felt it was the right thing to do and that the Cornell guys would have done the same thing for him. David told me that he spoke about Doug because he knew his induction to the Hall of Fame might not have happened if it wasn't for the integrity and help of his competitor.

Doug Brew could have easily let his competition go the wrong way and become a champion. Instead he became a champion of integrity. Sixty years later, people are still sharing this story and talking about it. When you lead with integrity you won't always win, but you will always do the right thing. When leading your team, you have to ask yourself, “Am I building this team for the short run or long run? Do I want immediate gratification or sustained success? Will I lead with integrity or violate my principles and compromise my ethics?” There's a lot of temptation to make decisions that lead to worldly success but unfortunately, when you do this, you will lose your soul in the process. You may win today but you will lose in the end. Always remember that there's tremendous power generated from leading with integrity. It may not be manifested this year or next, but over time this power will lead to powerful results. There's only one way to build a winning team and that's the right way. Stay the course. Lead with integrity. Do the right thing. You'll be glad you did.

Be Passionate, Not Emotional

Mike Smith

It is important to understand that there is a difference between passion and emotion. The difference between the two is that passion involves a belief about something. Emotions involve feelings about something. You want to be a passionate leader who makes decisions that are based on belief and principle over those that are based on feeling. After all, you won't always feel like doing the right thing, but if you live based on belief and principle you will do what needs to be done. Sometimes you don't feel like working hard, but your belief in improvement and growth moves you to do it. When you have a belief in something, there is a process that you have gone through to form that belief. When you are passionate about a subject, you are well versed in it and the decisions that you make are going to be well thought out and studied. Emotion, on the other hand, causes you to act in illogical ways more often than not. An emotional decision is usually a spur-of-the-moment, by–the-seat–of-your-pants decision that has not been well thought out and often leads to poor outcomes. Emotions are hard to control and they are usually self-serving and illogical, weakening your leadership. Passion, on the other hand, is the engine that drives you to be a great leader and build a winning team.

Create Your Own Style of Leadership

Mike Smith

How many times in sports have we seen the hot assistant coach from a highly successful program get hired by another team and fail miserably? It happens quite often in sports and business. The reason for failure is that new leaders come into a team or organization and attempt to mimic the leadership style of the head coach or CEO from their previous jobs instead of being the person they truly are. They believe that if they do it exactly the same way, they will have the same amount of success. We have seen time after time that it is a recipe for disaster. It is difficult to be a genuine leader if you are making decisions for your team or organization solely because that is the way the previous team did it, or that's how someone else did it. Leadership doesn't work like this. No two teams or organizations are the same. Each will have a different leadership structure and organizational culture that you will have to deal with. You must be the person who you have always been and use all of the experiences that you have had throughout your career to mold and create your own style of leadership. What worked for one leader and coach may not work for you. One person might have the kind of personality that is tough but likeable, and another might be tough but not likeable at all. Some people might be able to lead a certain way because of the experiences they have had, the success they have earned, and the respect they have garnered. If you try to lead like them without having gone through the same experiences, it won't work for you.

When I became the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons I borrowed ideas, routines, and principles from the great leaders I worked with and admired but created a framework and approach that fit my leadership style and personality. I took all the experiences and lessons I've learned over the years and made them my own. You have to be yourself. Everyone else is taken. Create your own style that fits who you are and you will have a much greater chance of building a winning team.

Leadership Is Both Macro and Micro

Jon Gordon

Macro-leadership involves culture, vision, strategy, and the ability to lead at the organizational level, while micro-leadership involves leading at the team and individual levels. Macro- and micro-leadership require a different set of skills. While visiting West Point I learned that when cadets graduate, most are technically better at macro-leadership than micro-leadership. Like many leaders and managers in the civilian world, they have to learn to coach, lead, and build their teams at the micro level. When thinking about your own leadership, it's helpful to think about leading at both the macro and micro levels. Today more than ever micro-leadership is essential to build winning teams and organizations.

Lead Your Leaders

Jon Gordon

I realize that not everyone reading this book is a head coach, CEO, or main boss. Many of us are in positions where we help lead a team but we are not at the top of the organizational chart. I can relate—even at home I'm second in command. But I've learned that no matter what role you play in your organization, you can lead from where you are and help your leaders be their best. For example, upon graduating from West Point, a cadet will commission as an officer and be placed to lead a platoon. West Point cadets are encouraged to listen to the advice of their non-commissioned officer (NCO), who is often an expert at micro-leadership (coaching). I had an officer tell me that when he arrived to lead his platoon, his NCO coached him and gave him leadership advice behind the scenes that made all the difference with his platoon. I greatly admire the NCOs who do not possess the title of a commissioned officer but who coach and serve their leaders in a powerful way. A big part of leadership is leading from where you are and influencing people around you regardless of your title, rank, or position.

My friend Brendan Suhr was the assistant coach to Chuck Daly for the Detroit Pistons NBA Championship team and the original U.S. Olympic Dream Team. Brendan wasn't considered the leader but he coached up the leader and down to the team. Because of him, both the leader and the team were successful. Anyone who knows Brendan knows he has spent a lifetime in the role of leading the leader. His title is assistant coach but his leadership and influence are of primary importance. Brendan told me that a suggestion, a question, a story, a book recommendation, and advice behind the scenes can make all the difference. Even to this day Brendan is a coach of coaches, leading Coaching U. Live and helping leaders get better. He believes that, with help, stronger leaders will build better teams. If you want to build a winning team, this means that there may be times when you have to lead your leader and build him or her up.

Focus on the Process

Jon Gordon

When people ask me how long it takes to become an overnight success, I say at least 10 years. There's no such thing as an overnight success. Success takes time. Building a winning team and organization requires grit and perseverance. Consider that Starbucks did not reach store number five until 13 years into its history. Sam Walton did not open his second store until 7 years after starting his company. Dr. Seuss wanted to burn the manuscript of his first book after it was rejected by 27 publishers (thankfully, he didn't). And it took John Wooden almost two decades to win his first championship at UCLA. In the weekly newsletter of the John R. Wooden Course (woodencourse.com), “Wooden's Wisdom,” Craig Impelman wrote:

March 15, 1963; Provo, Utah: Arizona State defeats UCLA 93-79 in the first game of the NCAA Western Regional Tournament…and the final score made the game sound closer than it was. Arizona State was leading 62-31 at halftime. That season was Coach Wooden's 17th at UCLA; that appearance was his fifth NCAA tournament. And in those tournament games, he had a painful record of only three wins and nine losses. But something was different about this particular game. Coach Wooden had just added a new dimension to his defense: a full-court 2-2-1 zone press that was designed to force teams to shoot the ball quickly. It had worked to perfection in the Arizona State game; the Sun Devils were forced over and over again to shoot the ball quickly. Unfortunately for UCLA, they couldn't miss a shot. But Coach Wooden liked what he saw. The final score did not discourage Coach or cause him to panic because of his philosophy: “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing that you made the effort to do the best of which you are capable.” To break down his point further, Coach included some explanations of how this philosophy of success applied to his overall approach to coaching:

1. “In my opinion, a mark received in class is no more valid a way to judge the success of a student than a score validly determines the success of a sporting event. It may determine a winner but not necessarily success.”
2. “If you truly do your best, and only you really know, then you are successful and the actual score is immaterial whether it was favorable or unfavorable.”

Coach Wooden said that although Arizona State had broken the press quickly and shot the ball extremely well, he liked the effect that the press had had on them. He thought Arizona State had just had a great day shooting and they would've been equally effective against whatever defense he had played. In spite of the score that came down against his own team, Coach was very pleased with the way the 2-2-1 press sped the game up. He decided that, in spite of the loss, he would keep the 2-2-1 press and bring it back the next year as the primary activator of his defense. March 20, 1965; New York City: The best high school player in the country, Lewis Alcindor (later known as Kareem Abdul Jabbar), watches the telecast of UCLA winning their second consecutive National Championship, defeating Michigan 91-80 using their now-famous 2-2-1 press to speed the game up. Alcindor decides UCLA might be the place he wanted to play because he liked their pressing/fast break style. March 31, 1975; San Diego, California: UCLA defeats Kentucky 92-85 to give John Wooden his 10th National Championship in the last 12 seasons. Since that loss at Arizona State in 1963, Coach Wooden has now enjoyed a record of 44 wins and one loss in the NCAA Tournament. This includes seven straight National Championships and 38 consecutive wins in tournament games – and the 2-2-1 press had been a key ingredient. Sometimes when an individual, team, or business faces a loss, they want to change their strategy and try something new just because they aren't happy about the final numbers. Instead of looking at the big picture application of the lessons learned or the overall implications of the game, they are quick to embrace something different just because they are desperate to see a different result on the scoreboard. Those thinkers are sometimes referred to as The Idea of the Month Club. It's lucky for UCLA fans that John Wooden's definition of success prevented him from joining that club.

John Wooden focused on the process, not the outcome. In fact, he never focused on winning. He focused on the culture, process, principles, people, and team building that produce wins. As a result, he won a lot. Yes, it took time but his principles and process paved the way for incredible sustained success.

Forget the Past, Focus on the Fundamentals

Jon Gordon

Past failure does not determine future failure. Past success does not determine future success. Future success is determined by what you do today. To build a winning team, you must help your players and staff have amnesia about past outcomes and remember all the little things they did to get better. In a wonderful article about Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers, my friend James Clear wrote the following in his blog JamesClear.com:

It was July of 1961 and the 38 members of the Green Bay Packers football team were gathered together for the first day of training camp. The previous season had ended with a heartbreaking defeat when the Packers squandered a lead late in the 4th quarter and lost the NFL Championship to the Philadelphia Eagles. The Green Bay players had been thinking about this brutal loss for the entire off-season and now, finally, training camp had arrived and it was time to get to work. The players were eager to advance their game to the next level and start working on the details that would help them win a championship. Their coach, Vince Lombardi, had a different idea. In his best-selling book, When Pride Still Mattered: A Life Of Vince Lombardi, author David Maraniss explains what happened when Lombardi walked into training camp in the summer of 1961. He took nothing for granted. He began a tradition of starting from scratch, assuming that the players were blank slates who carried over no knowledge from the year before.…He began with the most elemental statement of all. “Gentlemen,” he said, holding a pigskin in his right hand, “this is a football.” Lombardi was coaching a group of three dozen professional athletes who, just months prior, had come within minutes of winning the biggest prize their sport could offer. And yet, he started from the very beginning. Lombardi's methodical coverage of the fundamentals continued throughout training camp. Each player reviewed how to block and tackle. They opened up the playbook and started from page one. At some point, Max McGee, the Packers' Pro Bowl wide receiver, joked, “Uh, Coach, could you slow down a little. You're going too fast for us.” Lombardi reportedly cracked a smile, but continued his obsession with the basics all the same. His team would become the best in the league at the tasks everyone else took for granted. Six months later, the Green Bay Packers beat the New York Giants 37-0 to win the Super Bowl. Vince Lombardi is carried off the field by his players after defeating the New York Giants 37-0 to win the 1961 NFL Championship. The 1961 season was the beginning of Vince Lombardi's reign as one of the greatest football coaches of all-time. He would never lose in the playoffs again. In total, Lombardi won five NFL Championships in a span of seven years, including three in a row. He never coached a team with a losing record.

The past is gone. Every year is a fresh start to focus on the process, develop your fundamentals, and build a winning team.

LOSS: Learning Opportunity, Stay Strong

Mike Smith

As a leader it's important to provide your team with the right perspective, especially after a loss. Every great team will experience losses on their journey. Only one team in the league can win the championship each year. I wrote this book after seven seasons with the Falcons. I won a lot my first five years. Some may say I lost the last two, but I don't consider it a loss. I've learned so much and know that whatever I decide to do going forward I will become wiser, stronger, and better and I help more people learn from my victories and defeats. I also shared the same mindset and belief with my teams. When we lost we analyzed why and identified ways we could improve. Every loss was a learning opportunity and we had to stay strong and positive in order to move forward. Your team's attitude and belief will determine how you deal with setbacks, challenges, and losses, so make sure from the beginning you spend as much time cultivating their belief system as you do your offensive system or defensive scheme. When adversity strikes, your belief system is the very thing that will get you through and help you triumph.

Culture Contamination

Jon Gordon

Leaders often ask me how long it takes to change a culture. My answer is, the more aligned everyone is, the less time it takes. If everyone buys into your vision, purpose, and belief system, culture change can happen very quickly. If you have energy vampires on your team, the process will take longer—and you probably won't be able to completely change your culture until they change or leave. The quicker you transform or remove the vampires from your team, the faster it takes to transform your culture. The longer you allow people from your old culture to contaminate your new culture, the longer it takes to change and build a team. If you want to build a winning team, you have to make sure everyone is all-in and you can't allow negative people from your old culture to impact the new mindset you are trying to build. The last thing you want is for negative veterans to contaminate positive rookies. This goes for sports, businesses, and schools. I've had the opportunity to work with Insight Global, the fastest growing technology staffing company in the United States, and discovered they won't hire people from outside the company. Their culture is the ultimate key to their success. It's so important that they don't want new employees who might bring negative energy to contaminate their culture. So they hire people who fit their culture right out of college and develop and promote from within. It's hard to argue with their track record and success.

Don't Focus on Winning Championships; Focus on Developing Champions

Jon Gordon

We hear it all the time. Coaches say, “We are going to win a championship.” Players say their focus is to win a conference championship and then a national championship. It's all well and good but the truth is everyone in the country is writing down the same goals and saying the same things. Focusing on winning a championship doesn't mean you will win one. Instead, the focus should be on developing champions. To build a winning team, spend all your time and energy developing champions. Cultivate leadership, character, work ethic, grit, belief, and selflessness in each person on your team. Help them grow into great leaders and people. Teach them how champions think and act. When you do this, you'll find that champions do the right things and make plays that ultimately lead to championships. Of course there's no guarantee that you will win a championship even when you develop champions, but you'll give your team a greater chance and in the process create better human beings. This, I believe, is the purpose of sports. To create better human beings. When you develop champions you develop people who will change the world.

The Time Is Now

Mike Smith

There are three different time frames that we all live in. Each year I would share this concept with my team because to be successful, efficient, and healthy, everyone must make sure they spend the appropriate amount of time and energy in each time frame.

The first time frame is yesterday, the past. We have to learn from past experiences whether they resulted in positive or negative outcomes. When you use your past as an opportunity to grow in a positive way, it will pay dividends in the other two time frames. Many people spend way too much time reliving what happened yesterday and trying to justify what they are doing now because of it. The past has to be viewed as a springboard to the future. We have all been around people who spend too much time reminiscing about the past and what they have or have not accomplished. They spend so much time in the past that they don't focus on what they can do now to create their futures. The game is over. The mistake happened. You lost the business account. Find the lesson and move on. Don't be bitter. Get better.

The second time frame is tomorrow, the future. There is nothing wrong with looking forward to the future as long as you are using that time to improve and stay ahead of the curve. You just have to make sure you guard against fantasizing about a future that won't happen unless you take action to create it. You also want to make sure you don't spend your time worrying about the future that is not here yet. The angst that results can cause weak performance and morale problems on the team. Too many teams worry about the playoffs when they have half the season left. You can't worry about the future. You just have to take it one play, one game, at a time.

This brings us to the third time frame, which is today, the present. Some people call it living in the now. Jon calls it living in the moment and I don't know that there is any better way to describe it. When you are living in the moment you are immersing yourself in the process to be the absolute best that you can be right now. When you have a team that is focused on today and what they can do to make themselves better every moment, these series of moments will help you create a future that you love. Looking back on all the teams I have coached, the ones that were most successful were the ones that embraced the now and seized the moment. They had a vision for the future but they focused their energy in the present. They let go of their past mistakes and learned from them to make better decisions in the present, which lead to better results in the future. We need to utilize all three time frames, but we want to make sure we only live and focus on one—today.

Looking for Murphy

Jon Gordon

Gus Bradley, the head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars, told me about a great way he helps his team reframe a negative mindset and shift into a positive one. In sports a lot of negative things happen. Your team can be leading and all of a sudden your quarterback throws an interception and you lose the game. You might win a couple of games in a row and then you lose one of your key players. Unfortunately Murphy's Law comes into play. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and in sports it seems to always go wrong at the worst possible time. Instead of letting his players have a victim mindset when things go wrong, Gus reframes the situation. He doesn't say, “Just when everything was going great, this happened!” because he knows that would undermine morale. Instead Gus tells his team that they are looking for this guy Murphy who is a big jerk. They aren't waiting for Murphy to show up and ruin their day. Instead they are going to find him and when they do they are going to kick Murphy's butt. Instead of letting Murphy bring them down they focus on being mentally tougher to take on Murphy. So now the players expect to see Murphy but they have an even greater expectation that they will defeat him. Instead of a victim mindset they have a hero mindset. Victims and heroes both get knocked down but heroes get back up and, armed with belief and grit, turn the challenge into victory. To build a winning team, you'll need to help reframe situations and events from negative to positive. You will need to help your team take on the things that go wrong, and you'll all be stronger when you do.

Pressure, Not Stress

Jon Gordon

Another lesson I learned from Gus is the difference between pressure and stress. Gus said that leaders put stress on their teams when they place expectations on them that are beyond the players' control. Focusing on outcomes such as goals, wins, points, and so on creates stress because you can't control how many wins you will have or how many points you will score. Saying “We had better win and we need to win” will only cause stress, which causes anxiety and weakens performance. As a coach you never ever want to put stress on your team. Instead, you want to apply pressure. Gus says that you should apply pressure on the things your team can control. Apply pressure when it comes to your team's effort, work ethic, knowledge of the playbook, preparation, process, and other things they can control, such as the fundamentals and teamwork. This is the approach John Wooden and Vince Lombardi took, and your team will perform better if you follow suit. As a leader you want to apply pressure, not stress.

Compete, then Unite

Mike Smith

The best teams, coaching staffs, and leadership groups that I have been associated with are the ones that were willing to challenge one another in meetings, game planning sessions, and practice. Everyone understood the challenge and that every action we took was predicated on making the team better. This means at times we would argue and fight in coaching meetings and game-planning sessions. One person would feel strongly about what would work, while another might disagree and have other suggestions. We understood that you couldn't take anything personally in these meetings. We had to be willing to disagree in order to consider all the possible plans and come up with the best one. It was uncomfortable at times because in our quest to get better there were always different views and strong opinions. These discussions, while difficult, were very healthy and ensured that we were utilizing the full talents and knowledge of our staff. Some of the best game plans that I have been involved in putting together were the ones that came out of the most disagreements and discussions, and some of the best wins came after meetings where not everyone agreed on our course of action. But here's the deal: Even though we may have disagreed, once the final decision was made, we united and every coach in that meeting adopted the plan and sold it to the players. You have to be unified when you are presenting plans to the players. When you leave the meeting room, your team's game plan for the week is set in stone. Everybody had an opportunity to contribute, so when we left the room we all took ownership of it. Another benefit of having this structure in meetings is that you eliminate the chance for there to be second guessing or Monday-morning quarterbacking from staff members. You compete in the meeting room and then you unite when you leave.

Competing on the field is just as important. Our goal every practice was to compete against each other to make each other better, but once it was game time, we united as one team to compete against our opponent. Competition followed by unity builds strong coaching staffs and teams.

Speaking as One Voice to the Media

Mike Smith

In Chapter 4, I talked about communicating your message to your team. Well, whether you are a head coach or the CEO of a large company, it is also very important to communicate and control your external messaging. With today's 24/7 news cycle and in our multi-channel, multi-blog, multi-platform environment, it is impossible to have only one person and one voice speak for the entire organization. The NFL, NCAA, NBA, and every other pro sports league all have rules in place that say you have to make players and coaches available to the media throughout the season and even at different times during the off-season, and other industries also require regular contact with the press. Even though you can't have just one voice speaking for your organization, you want to make sure all your voices are speaking as one.

Speaking as one voice starts with a communications department that has a complete understanding of the way information and news is gathered and disseminated. This is an ongoing evolution that has to be dealt with on a regular basis. Do not give it lip service. I would strongly suggest you have a media-training program in place to teach your team members how to handle the challenging questions they will be asked. It should also cover the pitfalls of irresponsible postings on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media outlets. We have all seen the consequences of even one irresponsible tweet or negative comment about the team on social media. When it comes to the team and the workplace, people benefit from guidelines that encourage them to think before posting. Of course, players and other employees can voice their opinions, but they must be aware that when they make public remarks, they are representing the organization. An off-the-cuff comment can hurt the team, so social media education is crucial.

Speaking as one voice involves everyone on the team thinking about what they say before they say it. When someone speaks out, they should also be prepared to take responsibility for their comments. The last thing you want is information about your team attributed to an “unnamed source,” “unnamed player,” “unnamed coach,” “unnamed member of the personnel department,” or “a person close to the team on the condition of anonymity because he or she is not authorized to speak on the subject.” Phrases like these are usually signs of an unhealthy environment in which individuals are putting their own interests in front of the team's. It's also a sign that as a leader you haven't addressed an issue up front, and it presents the team as fractured. You must be aware of these pitfalls and address them with your team before they become a problem. You don't want to wait until a crisis hits to start communicating with your team about these issues. It's too late then. You want to do it before so you can avoid a crisis. I recommend that you talk to your team about communicating as one voice that says things that build the team up instead of tearing it down. Complaints and issues should be addressed in the locker room and meeting rooms, not through the media. Nothing ever gets solved in the media and in most cases, it makes things worse. Dedicating resources to educate and assist members of the team or organization up front will limit the number of times that your PR department has to operate in damage-control mode. It will also reduce the chances of an inconsistent message coming from within the organization. Consistency in organizational messaging and media training will go a long way in minimizing issues both internally and externally. Many voices speaking as one help create a united team.

Become a Lifelong Learner

Mike Smith

We should all strive to be lifelong learners. Today it is easier than ever. Advancements in technology provide so many different platforms that present us with opportunities to learn from some of the greatest teachers and most successful people in the world. If you have an Internet connection or a couple of bars on your smartphone, you have access to a large reservoir of the world's learning materials. The opportunity is available to all of us and it is up to you to take advantage of it. Instead of relying on only your own experiences, take advantage of the opportunity to always advance yourself by learning from the experiences of others. But, as you seek out mentors in the digital world, do not forget the importance of finding mentors in the real world as well. One of the things I love most about the coaching world is that there are so many lifelong learners. It's common practice for coaches to call other coaches, visit with each other, and share ideas and best practices. In fact, it's more common at the professional and college levels than it is at the high-school level. I believe every coach at every level should seek out other leaders to learn from. It's a practice that would greatly benefit businesses and schools as well. Can you imagine how your business would grow if a sales manager met with a few sales managers from a different company or division and they exchanged best practices? Imagine what would happen if teachers from different schools could gather together and learn new techniques and syllabi.

I have had the opportunity to be around some of the most successful leaders in business and sports, and I try to learn as much as I can. When you get the chance to be around teachers, experts, and other people in your profession, act like a sponge and soak up all the wisdom you can. Take time to read about successful leaders and what they have to say about the art of leadership. Even if you have never had a chance to sit and talk with a great leader like coach John Wooden, you can learn from him by reading about his theories on coaching and leadership. Seek wisdom and you will be surprised how it forces you to use your brainpower in ways that you didn't think was possible. Challenge yourself and do not let a day go by in which you are not learning something new. The minute you think you know it all is the moment that you stop growing and improving.

Leave Your Legacy

Mike Smith

The coaches who I have had have influenced me more than anybody except my mother and father. I can tell you the name of every coach who I have ever had, in every sport that I have played, from little league and rec basketball, all the way through to the last coach I played for as a member of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. From coach George Russell to coach Ray Jauch, I still remember fondly the different lessons I learned and experienced playing football, basketball, and baseball as a young kid. These coaches left an impression on me that has lasted a lifetime. I still vividly remember their styles of coaching and how they would find a way to bring a group of guys together to work toward a common goal. We did not always win but we learned many valuable lessons about teamwork, sportsmanship, leadership, and humility—and, most importantly, we learned that it is more about the journey and preparation for life than the game that we played.

If you are a coach, please never forget how much of an influence you are to the people you come in contact with. Even if you aren't a sports coach, every one of us can be a coach and influence the people around us. Everyone can leave a legacy by the way they lead and the impact they have on others. When you coach others and build a winning team you build winners for life. No statue, no building, or road named in your honor can compare to the legacy you leave in the lives of others.