The Carolina Way: Leadership Lessons from a Life in Coaching

Army Lawyer, April, 2005 by Jayanth Jayaram

Every college basketball fan is familiar with Dean Smith's reign as coach of the University of North Carolina men's basketball team from 1961 to 1997. (3) With 879 wins, Smith is the winningest coach for men's basketball in the National Collegiate Athletic Association. (4) His longevity and consistency, combined with a very high graduation rate and unfettered admiration from his players and assistant coaches, is a testament to the success of Smith's goals: play hard, play together, play smart. (5)

In The Carolina Way, Coach Smith and Gerald D. Bell, (6) try to "fully explain[] ... [Smith's] entire coaching philosophy and show readers how to apply it to the leadership and team-building challenges in their own lives." (7) Divided into five titled parts, (8) the book consists of chapters written in three segments, offering Smith's views and thoughts of his former players; Bell then provides a business perspective for each topic. (9)

The authors do a good job of describing Smith's coaching techniques, intertwined with interesting stories about players and situations. Coach Smith details his building and continued improvement of his different teams, since each year its composition changed. (10) Throughout the book, he describes how he recruited prospects, conducted practice, made personnel decisions, and interacted with players, coaches, and media. Understanding these processes would certainly assist those in the coaching field and inform those interested in how Smith was able to keep his program at such a high level for decades, while gaining the admiration of his players. A fair critique of the book, however, must include an examination of the internal inconsistencies in the authors' analyses as well as an assessment of the applicability of their findings. Although the book provides insight on leadership lessons and ways to make a team perform effectively and efficiently, this review contends that the book is, at times, internally inconsistent and does not provide convincing applicability of all of Smith's techniques to the military. The Carolina Way does not rise to the "must read" level for the military judge advocate.

Smith and Bell identify many traits of successful leaders: "Honesty, integrity, discipline administered fairly, not playing favorites, recruiting the right people, effective practice and training, and caring are foundations that any organization would be wise to have in place." (11) They discuss effective leaders as those who are flexible, (12) confident, (13) loyal, (14) modest, (15) unselfish, (16) dedicated (17) and able to foster an environment in which his or her "players" can play hard, play together, and play smart. (18) Readers can gain perspective from how Coach Smith embodies these traits through his coaching philosophy and how Dr. Bell translates these into fundamental traits of a good leader. (19)

The Carolina Way offers many valuable tips on leadership, but there are several inconsistencies within the book. The most glaring inconsistency is the order in which Smith lists the basis of his basketball philosophy. The book is structured in the order of play hard, play together and play smart. (20) In at least two places, however, Smith switched the order to play hard, play smart, and play together. (21) This does not necessarily invalidate the underlying principles for his teams' success, but it reduces the credibility of other portions of the book.

One technique Smith implemented to add some perspective for his players was the "Thought for the Day," (22) later testing his players to recite the day's message. If a player was unsuccessful, the entire team would do extra sprints. (23) With this as background, the "Thought for the Day" seems pale in comparison to the essence of Smith's basketball philosophy. (24) Smith's inability to enunciate his basketball philosophy consistently demonstrates his failure to follow his own drill and negates the effectiveness of "Thought for the Day" exercise.

Although Smith identifies many foundational principles for leaders in the book's introduction, (25) he only addresses some of them in Part One, The Foundations. In this section, the authors fail to follow up with the principles of disciplining evenly and not playing favorites. (27) If these are basic principles, they should be discussed in further detail in the proper section of the book.

Another inconsistency is the equation he uses when discussing hard work. In the introduction he states, "Hard work that results in success equals confidence." (28) In the chapter titled Building Confidence, however, Smith writes, "Hard work equals success, which equals confidence." (29) These two statements are not synonymous. Confidence in the first statement occurs only when the results are successful through hard work. In the latter definition, confidence only requires hard work, irrespective of the results.

Reconciling Smith's stance on peer pressure is difficult. He believes that "peer pressure is more effective in building good habits and morale than motivation created by fear, reward, or other means." (30) He continues, "Peer pressure can be a valuable weapon." (31) He believes, however, that teammates should not criticize each other for making mistakes. (32) Instead, they should unequivocally support each other. (33) This belief is further obfuscated by Smith giving the players the option to be criticized by him in front of the team or on an individual basis. (34) If peer pressure is such a powerful motivator, he should not give the players the option to be counseled individually when the criticism could benefit or influence other players on the team. (35) If teammates are there only to support, and not criticize, the motivating force of peer pressure would be reduced and therefore detrimental to the team's success. But, despite not allowing teammates to criticize one another, Smith also discusses how he had all the players review and grade each shot taken during a game. (36) How can peer pressure be a powerful, motivating force if teammates can only provide support? If criticism of a teammate is not permitted, why are players evaluating each other? This illustrates the confusion Smith creates on this issue with his inconsistent assertions on peer pressure.