Coach Bill Self doesn't like quick fixes
This week on Extraordinary Happens, Kansas Head Basketball Coach Bill Self joins us to talk about coaching insights and building a winning culture. Bill is a five-time conference coach of the year, a two-time national coach of the year and he just led Kansas to its 12th straight Big 12 title. And through it all, he’s a remarkably humble guy.
Bill talks about his formula for winning and how a huge piece of that is creating a great culture with a relentless pursuit for greatness through hard work. Throughout his career, Bill has steered his teams to success by constantly challenging them to “be uncomfortable.” It’s about doing things differently to inspire players to be extraordinary and fight for the good of the team.
“Now, everything is a quick fix. If you’re a college student and you make a bad score on the first test, the first thing you think about is dropping the class. Or if you attend high school and you’re an athlete and it doesn’t work out very well because you’re not playing, the first thing you think about is transferring. We allow people so many outs when things don’t go well as opposed to grinding through it and fighting through it. One thing that we want to do here – and I think all coaches do – is you’ve got to be tough enough to fight through it. You can’t go around it. You got to go through it. And the way that culture is today, that’s not natural for kids. So that’s something we try to hit home right from the beginning. And by the time they leave, they understand the value of seeing something through and what can potentially happen when everybody gives themselves for the good of the cause.” – Bill Self
Bill tells me about how sports and life connect and how so much of what we learn from sports, helps us to be better people.
“What do we really learn through athletics, whether it be an individual sport or a team sport? You learn work. You learn grind. You learn sacrifice. You learn being a good teammate and a team player. You learn the value of so many intangibles, that if you were going to look at any successful person non-athletically, they would have those same intangibles. Athletics and life are intertwined.” – Bill Self