The Carolina Way: Leadership Lessons from a Life in Coaching [Audiobook, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Dean Wesley Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 29, 2004

For forty years, Dean Smith coached the University of North Carolina basketball team with unsurpassed success. Now, in The Carolina Way, he explains his coaching philosophy and shows readers how to apply it to the leadership and team-building challenges they face in their own lives. In his wry, sensible, wise way, Coach Smith takes us through every aspect of his program, illustrating his insights with vivid stories. Accompanying each of Coach Smith’s major points is a “Player Perspective” from a former North Carolina basketball star and an in-depth “Business Perspective” from Gerald D. Bell, a world-renowned leadership consultant and a professor at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. The keystones of Coach Smith’s coaching philosophy are widely applicable and centrally relevant to building successful teams of any kind.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Smith won more games (875) than any other coach in college-basketball history. His teams at North Carolina were characterized by unselfishness, preparedness, and basketball intelligence. It's not surprising that Smith has a few cogent thoughts to offer on the matter of leadership. He begins by explaining what leadership means to him. Then former players comment on the concept as Smith applied it during their careers. Next, he tailors his lesson to a business application. Among the topics he explores are teamwork, winning, losing, planning for the future, building confidence, and setting goals. "Successful-coach-offers-business-advice" books are a publishing staple, but too often they consist of little more than commonsense platitudes mixed with some playing-field anecdotes. Smith breaks the pattern here, thanks in large part to his understanding that business isn't basketball, and direct correlations between sport and real life are often specious. It's apparent that Smith would have found success in virtually any field he'd chosen as his life's work. Readers will sit up and pay attention because the coach has something to say. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Coach taught me the game....He''s like a second father to me." —Michael Jordan



"Dean Smith epitomizes what a coach can be-teacher, counselor, mentor, example, friend." —Bill Bradley



"He''s a better coach of basketball than anyone else." —John Wooden



"To say that much of what I learned as a player from Dean Smith is directly applicable to the business community would be an understatement. Everything I learned during my stay at North Carolina has helped me be a better manager. To this day I rely on principles taught on and off the basketball court by Dean Smith to help me be more effective. Honesty, integrity, discipline, practice, and training certainly are the cornerstones to build from. If you care for your employees the way Coach Smith cared for us, success is a natural byproduct." —Mitch Kupchak, General Manager, Los Angeles Lakers



"There were a few truly great college coaches in twentieth-century America, and Dean Smith is one of those. In my mind, Coach Smith represents everything good about intercollegiate athletics. Call it what you want: the Carolina Way, the Smith Way, the Right Way—it’s about the pursuit of excellence with integrity. Dean Smith is much more than a great coach. He is a great leader, a man of conviction, integrity, and toughness. If you’re in a leadership position or aspire to one, The Carolina Way is a must read." —Lloyd H. Carr, Head Football Coach, the University of Michigan



"Dean Smith is one of the greatest coaches of all time and I was pleased to have the opportunity to read of the leadership principles that contributed to his success. The Carolina Way also includes terrific vignettes from his former players, further illustrating Dean’s powerful impact on their lives and how he was able to encourage his players to perform at their personal best." —Congressman Tom Osborne, former Head Football Coach, the University of Nebraska



"The Carolina Way provides an invaluable primer on good leadership techniques and, if the ‘proof is in the pudding,’ then there is no doubt that Dean Smith’s way works. My com pany and I had the benefit of hiring a number of Dean’s players from Phil Ford to Pete Budko. All of them were winners—ambitious, energetic, loyal team players. He never sent us a bad one." —Hugh L. McColl Jr., Chairman of the Board and CEO (retired), The Bank of America



"I have had the great privilege of sharing a fair portion of my life with William Friday, the president of the University of North Carolina, during much of the Dean Smith era. As a result, I have learned what a blessing Dean Smith was to the integrity of basketball in a collegiate setting. I would highly recommend The Carolina Way to anyone in pursuit of excellence with integrity." —Reverend Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., President Emeritus, the University of Notre Dame

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Penguin Audio; Unabridged edition (January 29, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142800465
• ISBN-13: 978-0142800461
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 5.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,774,456 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars CEO's, President's, VP's - Start your reading, March 5, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Carolina Way: Leadership Lessons from a Life in Coaching (Hardcover)

I've heard Jerry Bell speak before, so I was thrilled to see him collaborate with Dean Smith on this book. Bell frequently uses words like caring, honesty, integrity, and discipline on his lectures on leadership and it's obvious from reading the book that these were the cornerstones of Coach Smith's teams. I wish more business leaders would understand that there is a correlation between investing in their people and sustained success. So many companies look at employees as disposable commodities, so it's refreshing to hear two men who have achieved so much in their careers say that it starts with genuine care for your people. Smith's philosophy, though simple in word, is truly applicable to the business arena because it promotes thinking intelligently, working extremely hard, and a committment to a greater whole than just oneself. That approach, combined with the real concern for each and every member of his program, created the most successful coaching career in college basketball history. If more CEO's would adopt these principles in their companies, then their work environments would improve, their employees would be more reciprocal in their committment, and bottom lines would increase.
Kudos to Bell and Smith for a thoughtful book with an important message - good guys do win!

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great!, if you're a Carolina fan...terrific if you're not!, May 11, 2004

By 

Thomas Del Corro (Raleigh, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Carolina Way: Leadership Lessons from a Life in Coaching (Hardcover)

On the way to a conference in New Orleans, my flight from Raleigh to Charlotte was cancelled due to mechanical problems, and I was booked on a flight to D.C. As I boarded the plane with "The Carolina Way" under my arm, a gentleman seated at the front of the plane asked how I was enjoying the book. I explained that I had not yet started the book, so I could not give an answer. The gentleman followed me to my seat and introduced himself as Dr. Gerald Bell, the co-author of "The Carolina Way". Myself a Carolina fan, I was pleased to meet Dr. Bell, as he spent several minutes talking about Coach Smith, whom I have admired for over forty years, and the UNC basketball program, which is presently undergoing a much needed resurgence under Coach Roy Williams. Dr. Bell's contributions to the book tie Coach Smith's leadership philosophy to practical business applications by relating wonderful anecdotal references from Carolina's storied history to today's business situations. Surely, Coach Smith, given his ability to recruit top players, has been criticized by many for his failure to win NCAA championships in the manner of Coach John Wooden at UCLA, but winning two NCAA championships, winning at a consistency high level unmatched by any program without violating strict NCAA rules, and coaching top players that graduated at a +90% rate and have gone on to be successes in their chosen professions underscore the unique successes of Coach Smith's "system". Teamwork, integrity, loyalty, and hard work, are the cornerstones of the Carolina Way, and anyone in the position of managing, leading, or molding young people today would benefit from reading this book, corny as it is at times. This book is not just for Carolina basketball fans.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ignore the delusional "Grifterbob" clown..., April 13, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Carolina Way: Leadership Lessons from a Life in Coaching (Hardcover)

It's par for the course, but the slime still manage to advertise their stupidity in the face of excellence.

A leadership book that's one of a kind, missing the redundancy so prevalent in so many leadership books. The fundamentals are broken down into sections, such as:

Part Three:

Chapter 11: Teamwork
Chapter 12: Defining and Understanding Our Roles
Chapter 13: Why Unselfishness Works
Chapter 14: Team-Building Techniques

An excellent read, well off of the typical mundane management path that we've all seen and heard too many times.