The 7 Keys to Leadership with Coach Jim Johnson
Watch/Listen here or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts
“Servant leadership is the ability to teach your people how they can lead themselves and lead others. And I think the greatest thing you could say is a gift… how can I develop leaders that are better than me?”
— Coach Jim Johnson
Vision: Receiving Clarity About Your Mission
Clarity about your personal mission is essential for self-improvement and leadership, as it provides a foundation for evaluating your actions and decisions.
Developing a team mission statement is crucial for businesses and organizations, but it must be consistently lived and shared by leadership to have a meaningful impact.
A mission statement should go beyond immediate goals (like winning games or making a profit) and focus on broader values and principles, fostering lasting success on and off the court or in the business world.
Building Trust
Building trust is a critical aspect of effective leadership, but it requires an intentional plan for implementation.
Trust-building involves aligning words and actions consistently, demonstrating enthusiasm, and standing by one's commitments.
Building relationships and being honest with team members are essential elements of trust-building, with the understanding that feedback should sometimes be given privately rather than publicly.
Creating The Edge
Creating the edge in leadership involves continuous personal improvement, emphasizing the importance of staying committed to self-development.
Encouraging goal setting among team members and aligning individual goals with team objectives is crucial for achieving success collectively.
Effective leadership requires regular one-on-one meetings to understand individual goals and ensure alignment with the team's overall mission, preventing conflicts between individual and team objectives.
Effective Communication & Check Your Team’s Chemistry
Effective communication involves both speaking and listening skills.
Public speaking is valuable for leaders and can be learned and improved over time.
Being a good listener is essential for effective communication, and it helps build trust and engagement with others.
Asking meaningful questions and actively listening to the answers can empower team members and foster a sense of ownership and collaboration.
Leading by Example:
Leading by example is a fundamental aspect of effective leadership.
Leaders are always on stage, and their actions and behaviors are closely observed by others.
Leaving A Profit
Being a model for your team involves demonstrating core values, maintaining composure under pressure, and consistently striving to improve and make things better.
Servant Leadership
Servant leadership involves flipping the traditional leadership pyramid, with leaders adopting a service mindset to serve those they work with.
Servant leaders focus on teaching and empowering their team members to lead themselves and others.
Developing leaders who are better than oneself is seen as a valuable gift in servant leadership.
Thanks for listening!
Apply for a free coaching call with me
Get a Free Gift ⬇️
🆓 The limitless organization short video course
Connect with me
www.instagram.com/mikegoldmancoach/
www.facebook.com/mikegoldmancoach/
www.www.linkedin.com/in/mgoldman10/
I invite you to assess your team In all these areas by taking an online 30-question assessment for both you and your team at
-
Mike Goldman: most because the story here is something that you need to hear and you'll hear more from our, you know, from our great guest, but it's going to start with a longer than normal interview. Based on what transpired in a few short moments in early 2006, Coach Jim Johnson is now an authority on the subject of realizing your dreams.
Coach Johnson has developed winning high school basketball teams for 30 years, taking over three losing varsity programs and turning them into winners in short periods of time, of his 428 career victories, one in particular, will surely never be duplicated. On February 15, 2006, Coach Johnson made the kind hearted gesture of inserting his autistic manager, James McElwain, now known to the world as J Mac, into Greece Athena High School's final home game, which the Trojans won 79 to 43. J Mac scored 20 points in just over four minutes, including six, three point baskets to become an instant national celebrity.
Coach Johnson also was featured in major news outlets around the country. And I remember back then seeing that on all the news programs. To make the Hollywood ending complete, Grease Athena captured the first Section 5 title of Coach Johnson's career a few weeks later. In his many public speaking appearances, the Rochester, New York resident relates his role in a basketball game that got Hollywood calling.
He also emphasizes the importance of teamwork and sportsmanship, delivering his talks with a hard fed style that has brought audiences to their feet. Now, in addition to all that, there's two other reasons I am so excited to have Coach Jim Johnson with us. Number one, some of you may know, I have a son who's actually, as of recording this episode in a few days, going to turn 29, who is on the autistic spectrum.
He's got Asperger's. So, when we say heartfelt, man, I feel it, big time. And separate from that, I've always been interested since I started the show in taking some non business leadership lessons from sports, from music, from directing from wherever it might come from taking non leadership lessons into the business world.
And this is really my first chance to do that. So coach, you want to, should I call you coach Johnson or Jim? What do you want me to call you?
Jim Johnson: You know, coach or Jim are fine. Mike, as I said, a couple of things, coaches to me is an honor that I cherish because I did it for 35 years and also I've been called a lot worse.
Mike Goldman: So love it. I'm going to call you coach. I like that. So coach, I like to start all of my shows with guests with a really important question. After all, it's the better leadership team show. So we want to focus on leadership teams in one word.
What do you believe is the one most important characteristic of a great leadership team?
Jim Johnson: Well, there's certainly a lot, but the one that always jumps out to me, although I'm going to cheat and give you a second one, but by first one, it jumps out to me because one of my core values is one of the things we really spend a lot of time with our players on. And that is respect I don't think you can have a great leadership
team and a great group in any type of team. If you don't have a great respect for each other, which will develop two other words. I think love is a really important word. And when you can build that where people are really caring, which leads to, I guess, the other word that I always jumps out to me is, how do you build trust? So.
Mike Goldman: I love hearing that. And it's interesting how often that word love comes up. You know, I interviewed someone, not too long ago, an episode, called love as a business strategy.
and I just did another interview where love came up as leadership. And I was listening to Brene Brown had a podcast called, Oh my God.
Because she's got a few podcasts and I forgot the name of the courageous leadership, something like that. I may be getting it wrong, but she was talking about some work she did with the Air Force. And she was talking to an Air Force general who didn't use the word love, but he said the most important tenet of leadership in the Air Force is having an affection for the people that you lead. I'm like Air Force affection.
I don't put those two together, but it's amazing how off how often love and affection comes up. So, I appreciate that. So, coach, tell us before we get into some of the lessons on leadership. I want to know more more about that night. And if people, you know, if you look up.
You know, coach Jim Johnson, you go to his website and we'll give his links later. You'll, find the videos all over the place, you know, on the web, but tell me more about that night and what you were thinking. I want to know kind of, what were you thinking before you made that decision to book J Mac in?
What were you thinking during, what were you thinking and after? We know the story, but what were you thinking throughout that?
Jim Johnson: So I think in context, Mike, I got to take you back just to give you a little quick background so that it because it makes it more understandable to your audience is that Jason tried out for our team three consecutive years. He tried out for the JVs. I was the varsity coach and my JV coach was one they really recognized that even though Jason wasn't very talented, Jason's on the autism spectrum.
When he tried out for the JV team, he was five, six and maybe 90 pounds soaking wet. So he, and he wasn't a very talented player, but some of the other characteristics. And one of the things I talked to leaders is do you have clarity on how you pick your team? And that's something so and some of our characteristics, obviously talent was one of them.
But other things were, were you a we over me guy? We called it. Were you a person that had a passion for the game of basketball? Were you coachable? And so my JV coach came to me. I said, coach, Jason's not a very good player, but boy, he's got, other than talent, he's got some of the other characteristics. I want to keep him in the program.
And I said, well, what do you got in mind? He says, I'm going to offer him the team manager and I'm going to let him practice with the team. And that's what he did. And I've got to admit early on, there was some trials and tribulations as the team got used to Jason and Jason got used to his teammates. But because we had built a pretty good culture, I really started to see a bond. In fact, Mike he used to warm my heart because in our high school situation, we would play a JV game and then the varsity game would follow. And Jason would always come in a white shirt and black tie. And after the JV game, he'd be what I call a ted in disarray because he would be so pumped up for the game.
So his shirt will be hanging out, his tie will be on sideways. And to see one of our varsity players always go over and get them all straightened out to get them to sit on the bench for the varsity game is something I really cherish. Fast forward. So the other thing that was unique about Jason, besides some of his challenges in life, was that he didn't make the team.
And Mike, I could tell you, I was a head coach for 30 years. I could count on one hand, the amount of players that they didn't make the team would come back out. And if they did, it was usually a half hearted effort. Jason was different. Jason came to all our off season workouts between his sophomore and junior year.
I was picking him up at his house because he loved basketball like I did. We started to build a really nice bond tries out for a team as a junior. The team I coach, the varsity doesn't make it, but I ask them to serve as team manager, one little side story. So you mentioned that we won our first section five championship.
Well, that was kind of a big stumbling block and think of the people listening. If you ever had a major stumbling block where you didn't ever think you were going to get through. Well, in our situation. I had a lot of winning teams, but we kept losing in a postseason tournament. In fact, going into Jason's junior year, we had lost five times in the sectional semifinals, never making the finals.
So Jason, in our first meeting as junior year, I walk in the room and he immediately raises his hand. He says, coach, I need to share something. I said, sure, J Mac. He says, we're going to, we know you've never won the section five championship as a coach. I said, thanks Jason, for the reminder, but this year is going to be different.
We're going to, adopt this mantra, stay focused, and we're going to help you win your first section five championship. Mike, we have another great year. We get to the semifinals now for the sixth time in my career, and we lose at the buzzer to our crosstown rival. We are devastated. But Jason was such a great inspiration because he was more bound and determined to make the team and help us win our first section five championship his senior year.
I bring him in his senior year. And you know, again, we had a really good team coming back and he wasn't good enough to make the team. Well, I really want to do something special. So I said to him in our meeting, you know, when I was picking the team, I said, Jason, I've got some good news and some bad news.
He says, coach, tell me the bad news first. I said, well, unfortunately you're still not quite good enough to make the team. And this time, Mike, he was very disappointed. You can see his head dropped out. But he said, I do have some good news. And his head immediately popped back up. He said, yeah, coach, what do you got in mind?
I said, well, for senior night, because you've been so committed to our program, I want to give you a gift and the gift was, I'm going to give you a uniform for our final home game. And I kid people that periodically he would ask me during the season about that uniform. And of course I defined periodically is about every other day.
He was pretty fired up. But, I wrote a book about it called The Coaching Miracle because the crazy thing about his senior season, we were expecting a very good team, but we, after our first two games, which we won, we hit a real roadblock. We hit adversity and it's too long of a story, but it divided the team.
And think for you and your listeners, have you ever played on a team that didn't get along? How to work out.
Mike Goldman: Not alot of fun.
Jim Johnson: Yeah, probably didn't work out too well. Well, in our situation was no different. We lost three of our next five games. I didn't think we would lose any, but I did something different at a Christmas tournament, the day of the championship game. Cause we won in the first game, but the team that was hosting was great.
And they had hammered this team, in the other game. And I brought him in for a short practice because it was during Christmas break. And normally we bring out balls, we do some shooting drills, we do some plays and get ready for the game. I knew I had to do something different because our team was divided.
So I sat them down on the bleachers and I looked thm right in the eyes and I shocked them. I said, guys, I don't want to go the game tonight. They looked at me in disarray. What do you mean? And I, so I tried to share a little bit about them, but the best thing I did, and I think a great thing for all of our leaders, is you need to listen to your people and I became vulnerable.
You mentioned Brene Brown, which is a big part of her topic. And I said, guys, I don't have the answers. But you do, and you got to be willing to share how we can unite this team and I seem like Mike, I waited for an hour. It was probably only 30 seconds, but finally someone said, you know, shared an idea.
They said, that's great. Who else has got an idea by the end, everyone had shared something. And it really helped unite the team. And although we didn't win that night, we played a great team and we lost to them in overtime and it showed what we could do. Well, from there, we really got some momentum, won eight of our next nine games going into senior night.
Senior night was on February 15th. I gave J Mac his first jersey on February 13th. It was way too big. It was number 52. It was normally for a guy that would be like 6'3 J Macs 5'9 and 110 pounds. But he didn't care. In fact, there was a rumor going around in school that he slept in it for two straight nights.
So that night, for your listeners is the way we did senior night is we would bring all the senior players and the senior cheerleaders before the game and we'd bring their parents or guardians out and we would honor each of them. It's a really special night, but I will say it's a night I will always cherish just to remember seeing J Mac instead of his white shirt and black tie.
He's now Donnie number 52 and to see him embrace his parents in uniform is a memory I will always cherish. Well, now the game begins. And as you mentioned, there's a lot of videos. ESPN does a really great video that I often show in my presentations. It's very powerful. But my goal was, Mike, is to get him in the game where he could have enough time to score a basket.
Because I thought if he could score a basket, that's a memory he'll have for the rest of life. Well, I put him in with just over four minutes to go, and the place goes bananas. But what I didn't know is we had a very good student body following. If you see the video, it's on there, they call themselves as six men.
But what I didn't know, what Jason did not know is he as well is when they, he entered the floor for the first time, our student body not only gave him a standing ovation, but they showed these placards, these pictures of Jason's face that one of our parents had made behind our backs. And when I saw that, Mike, normally I'm a pretty macho guy.
I normally don't cry at basketball games. I sit down and tears are literally rolling down my face. I can't believe how they're, so the game begins and I'll just show, share a couple of quick things, a couple of low lights and a couple of highlights. The first low light, first time we get the ball, Jason gets it in the three point corner.
He's let's go with three. The crowd stands in anticipation. It misses by like six feet. And I know you're not supposed to pray in the public schools, but I'm praying, dear God, please help him get one basket. Second possession, he gets a much shorter shot. This time it hits the backboard, it hits the rib, it falls off.
I'm thinking, all right, God's starting to listen. We're getting closer. Then the third possession, he has a three pointer from the right wing. He lets it go. Magic. The place explodes. I'm thinking to myself, God must be a basketball fan. Not only has Jason scored, he's got a three pointer. It can't get better than this, right?
Wrong. For the next three minutes, J Mac turns into his boyhood idol, the late, great Kobe Bryant. And I got to fast forward real quick because it's very part of the story. Five months after that game, Jason is in California at the ESPY Awards. For your listeners that don't know, that's kind of the Grammys.
Or the Oscars for ESPN. And he's up for the greatest sports moment of the year. And Mike, I kid you not, one of the other finalists is his idol, Kobe Bryant. Kobe's up for the same award. He had scored 81 points in an NBA game. Jason meets his idol and then beats him out for the ESPY.
Mike Goldman: That's amazing.
Jim Johnson: Well, how does he do that?
Well, after making that first basket, he comes down, he makes another three. Then he makes a shot where it's actually his foot is on the line. Then he makes a couple, he misses a couple, the place was going crazy. And the two things I'll never forget with a minute to go. I'm sitting on the bench, tears still rolling down my face.
I can't believe what I'm seeing. I get a tap on my shoulder. I look behind me. It's Jason's mother and she's bawling her eyes out. And she whispers in my ear, coach, this is the best gift you could ever give my son. What would you have done if you heard that? I cried harder. Then, how the game ends is like out of a Hollywood ending.
With about 10 seconds to go, our opponents spend support. And I want to give kudos to their players and their coach. They were really good sports that night. They score a basket and our player takes the ball out of bounds. Instead of throwing it to our point guard, he throws to J Mac. And so I seen J Mac dribbling down and the clocks ticking down seven, six.
I thought they were just going to let them go in and make a short shot layup. Oh no. He pulls up like a foot behind the three point line, almost an NBA three. I'm thinking Jason, don't you for there. You're going to ruin this moment. He launches this rainbow swish. I look over, our student body runs on the floor, our players run on the floor.
I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I'm living the movie Rudy, but this is really true. And then they put Jason up on his shoulders and he's got the game ball over his head. At this point, I have no idea how many points he scored. And our public address announcer comes on and says the leading score for the Trojans tonight, J Mac.
With 20 points, and of course, by math brain, I'm thinking he played the whole game. He just scored 160 points. That's pretty good. And I'll just say, there's so many lessons about share one quick, and then we can move on is that, you know, it was so cool because I mentioned that we had a lot of adversity where it split the team for a while.
Was that I had never asked the four players on the floor to pass Jason the ball. Yet in those last four minutes out of their own hearts, they passed the ball to him each time. And to me. That's what teamwork is when you shine the light on someone on your team and they did that to the best.
Mike Goldman: That is such a beautiful story. I want, how come the movie hasn't been made yet?
Jim Johnson: Well, I'm going to share, I don't, can I speak too much? The movie Fizzled is a long story that I can't really share a lot, but, I can say that, I have a connection, with another, movie production company. And so we might be able to get this going. I'll keep you posted as we go forward.
Mike Goldman: Well, I hope so. And, again, before we get into business and to me, if we ended just on that story, this whole, this whole episode would be worth it, but, what's going on with J Mac today?
Jim Johnson: So J Mac actually, he was, as I mentioned, he was very small, 5'9 115 pounds, I think, senior year. The funny thing is, is I thought he might grow because his dad is 6'6 but his mom's 5'2 So, well, he did. He grew 5 inches after high school, and he's now 6'2 he's about 175 pounds. And he was also a runner in high school, but because he was physically not very strong, he was just an okay runner.
Well, he got back in. So after being on a program, he graduated from high school. He didn't, he went right to work at a local grocery store, but after a couple of years, he came back and he said, coach, I really missed the program. Can I go back and volunteer? And he volunteered for my last nine years.
And the crazy thing is, Mike, we won four more championships together. So for a small fee, I will run them out to you. He's been my good luck charm and a little side story. You talk about how he just keeps inspiring me while we're coaching together. He comes in the office one day and he says, coach.
I thank you so much for letting me be part of the coaching staff. I said, Jason is great to have you. He says, but I really miss being competitive myself. I'm going to get back into running. I said, really, what are you going to do? He says, I'm going to run the Rochester marathon. So I always talk to our players about goals.
And Jason and I always talked about goals. And so I said Jason, what's your goal? He says, coach, I'm going to qualify for the Boston marathon. Now, I don't know how many of your listeners. know anything about running. I'm not sure how much you have background, but I was a runner, although I've never run a marathon, but I'm pretty, familiar with times in that.
I said, so what's the qualifying time for your age, Jason? He says three hours and five minutes. Well, I nearly fell off my chair cause that's a fast marathon. So, I said, are you sure? He says, yep. I'm working with our cross country coach. I'm going to really upgrade my training. Mike, he runs the first Rochester Marathon in three hours, one minute and 46 seconds.
He qualifies for the Boston. Crazy thing is a month later he decides, I'm not ready, I got to prove myself. And the next year when he could have gone, he is actually the year of the bombing that you guys might remember. So he runs the Rochester Marathon again. So he's got to qualify again. This time he runs it in three minutes and 52 seconds.
So he qualifies. So he comes into the office. He's all pumped up. I said, so J Mac, what's your goal for the Boston Marathon? He goes, coach, I'm going to break three hours. I said, J Mac, Boston's a tougher course. It's got a higher heartbreak hill. He goes, I know I've upgraded my training. My first boston Marathon, two hours, 58 minutes and 46 seconds.
The kid never ceases to amaze me.
Mike Goldman: He's a superhero.
Jim Johnson: Yes, he is.
Mike Goldman: That's amazing. That's amazing. So that incredible story, let's kind of transition. I know you do a lot of speaking and a lot of work with businesses. What are some of the key lessons that you learned from basketball coaching the basketball team that we can use over on the business side?
Jim Johnson: Well, like you, Mike, I became a very avid reader. And so I obviously read, you know, a lot of books on coaching and that kind of thing, but I also read a ton of business books. And so I developed and it really helped me immensely because the first half of my career, I didn't do very well. And the second half of my career I did extremely well.
And so I learned a lot. And what I did, one of the presentations I talk about is how to be a more effective leader and I talk about seven keys. And the first key I talk about is what we call clarifying your vision. And really we talk about developing your own personal mission, because if you don't have clarity of how to lead yourself, it's hard to lead others.
And then giving clarity of what your own team or business or organization mission statement is. And so when I took over, I actually, and the other good little sidelight is that I became a head coach at a local high school about 20 minutes from where I grew up at 25 years old, which is pretty young.
And I did such a great job, Mike, that I led that team to 17 consecutive losses. And then I ended up leaving that job because I didn't like what the administration had to say to me. Of course, what they said to me was, you're fired.
Mike Goldman: So they fired you and then you said, that's it. I'm deciding to leave. I like it.
Jim Johnson: Yeah, yeah. So, I decided to leave because of their directions. But after that I got a nice thing because I got mentored by a year, and the crazy thing is I got mentored by a junior college coach. I was his assistant, and his name was Bill Van Gundy, and for your listeners, if they follow basketball, they've probably heard of his two sons.
Jeff and Stan have both been head coaches in the NBA, and the interesting thing back then, they were not, you know, they were my age and younger. Coach Van Gundy took me under his wing and I really started to get clarity.
So going to that point one is I started to really, I read Dr. Covey's book, seven habits and you know, one of the things he talked a lot about was getting clarity about your personal mission. And that's something I talked to leaders about, you know, why you put it on this earth, what are your most important core values and you live. And so I share my personal mission statement is to be an outstanding role model that makes a positive difference in the world by helping others make their dreams come true.
And why that helped me immensely and why I encourage your listeners to get clarity on that is because you're not going to be perfect. No one is okay. Other than Jesus. So, but what we're going to figure out is. Is every time you slip away, if you have clarity of your mission, you can come back to and say, Hey, for my case, you know, was I a good role model?
No, I wasn't. I got to make that change. Was I being someone that was serving and helping others make their dreams come true? I didn't do a very good job with that. So it gave me a real foundation and that helped me immensely and be a better coach because I led myself better, which led to that. And then. I know in a lot of businesses, they have a mission statement.
But one of the things, that we learned, I learned from a guy that I know you've read a lot of his books as well, Patrick Lencioni. He calls it the CRO, the Chief Reminding Officer. And that's what I started to do very good is that I wanted to develop our own team mission. Because when you go into a business, usually they have a mission, but they under,they don't live it.
Okay, I'm sure you work a lot of businesses, you know, they have a mission statement up, but you ask the people on the leadership team and most of them don't even know what it is. Okay. So if you don't know what it is, it's hard to live it. So as a CRO, you've got to be living it and sharing it consistently.
And for example, like when I took over my first program that we able to get things going, it was a small school. And when I met with all the players, I heard about what should our mission be? Well, they had only won two games a year before. So their mission to me was coach, we want to win more games.
I said, but like same thing in business, you know, you got to make a profit to live. But what I found in all my study of businesses, you know, athletic teams, if your mission is not bigger than just winning games or making a profit, you usually don't last. So what we developed in our case was we wanted to develop winners on and off the court.
And as a leader, goodness, Chief Reminding Officer, is I've got to consistently live that and share. And define to them. What does it mean to win on the court? What does it mean to win off the court? And as a leader, you got to lead by example. And you also got to be doing consistently sharing the message.
And, you know, a lot of things I've heard this a lot. I think there's a lot of truth. Another thing, leaders, I think that are effective is they're the chief storytellers. They have great stories to get people to buy into the mission.
Mike Goldman: And very often what I see on the business side is vision, mission, whatever words you want to put around it. They're not terribly inspiring. And very often their words that were put together seemingly by a legal staff or, you know, their words that were put together, you know, and it's shareholder value and blah, blah, blah.
And most of the people in the organization, I don't give a rip about that stuff. But something like, you know, we're building, you know, winners on and off the court. I mean, businesses could do the same thing, make it something that actually matters to people and is inspiring to people, not just we're going to make the shareholders a few extra pennies.
Jim Johnson: Right. It's a great point. Well said.
Mike Goldman: So, all right. So number one, you said there were seven. Number one was vision.
Jim Johnson: So number two is building trust and in building trust, you know, when I do a presentation on leadership or like I'm doing one on team culture, I'll ask them, is trust important? And Mike, you probably can guess, and your listeners can guess that everybody raises their hand, you know.
Mike Goldman: Of course.
Jim Johnson: Trust is okay. But then I kind of shock them.
And I challenged them. I said, well, how many of you are intentional about building a trust plan? And I kind of like, they kind of look at me a little. What do you mean? I said, well, if you're going to build trust, you got to have a plan on how you're going to implement that. So I share our three point because as I mentioned, my first head coaching job, it was a disaster.
But then I took over three other programs that were all losing. We're able to turn around and that's what we really try to focus. And when I talk to my staff. I said, these are the three things we're going to focus in on building trust one, you have to align your words and actions. You have to be consistent.
If we say we're going to practice at six o'clock in the morning. I got to be there before six. I got to be enthusiastic, you know, whatever you stand for. That's got to be consistent. And you know what hurts leaders is when they say one thing. And do something else. It cracks the trust code. Number two is I think you got to build your relationships and tell each other the truth.
Now, I think there is one caveat. I think there are times where you can call someone out in front of everybody because they, you know, they can handle it. And it's a great example. But also as a leader, there are times where you shouldn't do that. That should be a one on one meeting and sharing, you know, what you like or dislike and, you know, how we can correct that.
And then the third thing, because I took over four programs about losing, and three of them we did well. Is I think, you know, this is old Ken Blanchard, the one minute manager, but you got to focus on catching people doing right. And by doing that, you have to be specific with your price. Let me illustrate.
If I say to you, nice job, Mike. You know, you'll probably get a smile and you'll say, but then it was like, okay, what did I do to have a nice job? But if I said, Mike, that was awesome. How you dove on the floor for that loose ball. That's what championship players do on championship teams. What do you think I've done now?
They, have a lot of clarity. We're trying to build a championship program here and dive in another four for loose ball is something you're going to be priced for. So, you know, those are the things that is you come in a leader and those were our foundation pieces. But I think you can't do enough with, with really focusing on how building trust.
And the last thing I'll say about trust is remember this. And I think everybody's agreed with this, that it usually takes time to build trust. But you can destroy it with one really bad decision and choice. And I'll give you a quick illustration. One of the things I did, because living my mission, my last 23 years, I shared with all our players and parents at our players parents meeting, after all our teams were chosen, that I would not drink alcohol during the season.
Now that was a choice I made, I didn't have to do that. Now, if I say that, and two weeks later in the season, I get pulled over for DWI, what do you think that would have done to that trust account?
Mike Goldman: Yeah, gone.
Jim Johnson: Gone. And probably never get it back with that team if, you know, probably would have taken years. Now fortunately, I didn't make that choice.
But think about all the times you see leaders make those types of bad choices. You know, in my world, Bob Huggins just lost his job because of, you know, a drinking and driving incident was a major factor in that. So, I think that that's something as you're building trust, you've got to be lining those words and actions consistently.
Mike Goldman: So number one is vision. Number two is trust. number three?
Jim Johnson: Third is called creating the edge and creating the edge. I know, Mike, you're an very avid reader and so am I. And I believe as a leader, you have to be consistently finding ways to get better yourself so you can improve your team. And to do that, a couple examples, like one of the things there are so many things you do to create it, but a couple of the would be one is I taught our players how to goal set.
And so we would come over to my house. We did a team goal setting with the famous think it ink it. I used to give my team a quote every day. And one of my goal quotes is you know, that when you want something, another one I always talk about is you can't hit a target you don't have, so that's why we want clarity, and I would teach them about, you know, and I would get their input about what our team goals, we put them in writing, and then I believe this is a huge key as a leader.
You got to help your people set their individual goals, but you got to have those one on one meetings so that you know what their individual goals and how they can fit their role to help meet the team goals. Because if you have one person just work on the side just on individual goals in a business or a team sport, you're going to run into trouble.
And so that's where you as a leader, you got to make sure that you're helping them in that alignment. And another thing.
I just did a talk to a business about team culture is I think you've got a another thing in creating an edge is consistently recognize your people, which goes back to a little bit of what we talked about, but I give them some ideas like one is
getting clarity, because relationships are so important on do you know your people on your team, their important dates? Like, illustration, got this from a business book. Every single player in our program, I had five teams under my direction, two middle school, three high school, received a birthday card personally signed by me.
Not just because I felt I needed to know that a little bit about each person and I would get a seventh grader to come down in our visit office and say, coach, thanks so much for the birthday cards. You think he was attracted to our program. So I think, you know, recognize it with adults. I think it's even more important to get, you know, not only birthdays, but anniversaries or if they have children, children's birthdays, you know, the more that you can get to know and build that relationship, I think is really powerful.
Another idea that I just started, the last year or two, is I send out personal videos to people. Because we all know now how big social media and videos are big, right? But when's the last time you received a video personalized from somebody? You know, so that's a little way that you can say, I care about you and you know, I've done that with people that are friends of mine.
There's their birthdays. I've done it with just a check in. Hey, Mike, how are things going? I haven't talked to you in a while. Just want to check in. Let's let's find a day on the calendar to catch up. Or like I saw, you know, talk about Facebook or one of my friends in another state. I saw he went in for surgery.
Mike Goldman: So I sent him a video next day. Hey Darren, I hope your surgery went well. I'm thinking about you keeping my prayers, you know, that's pretty powerful stuff. You know. Love it, but back to the goal setting. I heard something really interesting. It's probably four or five years ago.
Jim Johnson: Yeah.
Mike Goldman: But I grew up in New York I was a big Knick fan you talk about Jeff Van Gundy.
Jim Johnson: Yeah.
Mike Goldman: When you grow up in New York City you're not as much as of a college ball fan because you got all the professional teams right here but my daughter went to the University of Maryland.
Jim Johnson: Okay.
Mike Goldman: Which became a big 10 (all) school. So of a sudden I became a big, a big Terps fan, a big Maryland Terrapins fans.
Jim Johnson: Right. Right.
Mike Goldman: And they're pretty good in basketball.
Jim Johnson: Yeah.
Mike Goldman: And, I read a story about them a few years ago where the coach did something I thought was amazing, where he didn't just have each of the players set individual goals for themselves.
He did that. But what he did was he then pair each of the players had kind of a buddy. And when you opened your locker, you saw in your locker was whoever you were paired up with was their goals. So, their part of their role is not only to reach their own goals, but they had to know their partner's goals and hold them accountable for it, coach them on it, help them achieve it.
So that I thought was such an interesting idea to the whole. You know, we is more important, you know we instead me, to really drive that home. So I love that
idea.
Jim Johnson: That's a great idea. I think, you know, one of the things I've heard for years, I just started about a year ago. I have a young guy that, we do an accountability call every week. And I know with you, you know, in your coaching, you know, you're working with CEOs and leaders that, you know, having that accountability coach or partner, I think is really powerful.
So I love that idea. I wish I had known that, Mike, years ago, because I would have implemented that with my team. So.
Mike Goldman: Life's not over yet. You may have another team.
Jim Johnson: Yes, yeah, that's right.
Mike Goldman: So, number one was vision. Number two is trust. Number three was creating the edge. What's number four.
Jim Johnson: Four is effective communication. And with that, you know, the two things is that I do encourage leaders, because, we, most people, including myself, was scared to death. Especially early in my career in public speaking, but I think as a leader, I've seen really good leaders that are good public speakers, but I think it does enhance because, you know, we talked a little bit about being the chief storyteller.
So I think the ability to public speak is a really positive trait that I and the great thing about this as much as many people are scared of it. It's a learn skill. And you can get better. I remember my first couple presentations, hey you know, I thought it was good. I was pretty bad. But now I feel like I'm pretty good because I've got a lot of training.
I've practiced a lot. And but it's so true. It's a skill. But I say this with the fact that it is a powerful thing to be a good public speaker, but the best thing as far as effective communication. And this is something I think I attribute to why I don't think I was nearly as successful, early in my career is because I was not a very good listener.
And I really started to take pride. And I'll give you an illustration. You know, you work a lot of leadership teams. Well, my leadership team was I had two, one would be my staff. And my other was my varsity team captains, and we had a leadership meeting with my team captains every week.
And when I started that, I would always come in with an agenda, it was organized, but it was all about me.
Probably my last seven or eight years, Mike, I came in, and yes, I might have an agenda item that we got to cover, but it was pretty much all about them. I would come in, I'd say, hey guys, how's the team chemistry? How can I coach you better this week, is there anybody hurting on the team that we should give some special extra attention to?
And I just start, you know, I'd always come in with five or six questions. First one was always about team chemistry, and they felt like they had real ownership of the team. Because now they were sharing, they were the leaders, you know and that was a really powerful change. So I highly recommend, leaders that you become a great questioner, but when you ask questions, then be willing to be open to receive the answers.
Mike Goldman: I agree wholeheartedly that's such an important skill that leaders don't have. In fact, one of the things I keep drilling home to the leadership teams I work with is that they need to be better coaches. That's the word I used.
Jim Johnson: Yeah.
Mike Goldman: They need to be better coaches because I believe a coach in business terms, a coach is someone who doesn't necessarily know all the answers, but they know the questions to ask
it's why I can call myself a coach and work with the marketing firm and the software company and the construction firm. And how can I do that? I'm not an expert on no, but I'm pretty good at knowing the right questions to ask.
So I love that idea. And I absolutely know that it's something that is crazy lacking in leaders today, especially because here's, I think it's lacking, not so much because it's hard to figure out the right questions.
I don't know that is a skill, but I don't think the hard part. The hard part is it is so much easier and quicker, or so they think easier and quicker just to give the answers.
And we know, yeah, short term that's quicker, long term, uh, uh, so I love that.
Jim Johnson: 100% with it. Yep. Absolutely.
Mike Goldman: All right, so we've got number one, vision, number two, trust, number three, creating the edge, number four, effective communication, what's number five?
Jim Johnson: Five is one that I think, people take for granted because it's so obvious, but I think in all my observation of leaders, boy, there's a lot that aren't doing well and that's leading by example. And one of the things that we used to really talk to our players all about this, one of my assistants coach shared this and I thought it was so powerful and I shared it all the time is you are always on stage as a leader.
If you don't think people are watching what you say and do, you are wrong. You are always on stage and what you do. And I'll give you an illustration, Mike, as a story. So I mentioned that we kept losing in our sectional tournament. We ended up winning in the first time, Jason's magical year when he had his magical game.
But you know what I did, I was studying and like, why do we keep losing it? And you know what I realized? That I was not doing a good job with key number five during the postseason in the regular season and the offseason. I was someone that was consistent. I was keep cool under pressure. I can handle adversity. In the postseason
I just wanted so badly to win the championship that I was a different person when we had adversity. I handled very poorly. Well, who do you think that affected? Our players, because they're, you know, a reflection of how I handle adversity. So I made a pact after that unbelievable game and we had all this media attention that I was going to be a different coach during the postseason.
And the big thing is I did is no matter what happened in any of those postseason games, I was going to be the rock for them. Well, we had a by. We won our first game pretty easily, so there was no test for coach. Semi finals, my big stumbling block, six times taking teams there. We are up 10 at halftime. We lose the entire lead.
We're losing in the fourth quarter. The old coach would have lost it, and we probably lost that game. The coach that now realized how important leading by example is. I kept my cool. I stayed positive with them. Our players responded. And we won the game. We went to the section five championship in the finals.
Mike, my first championship game, we have all this media attention. We have a sold out arena of 10, 000 people. We're down 13 to three after four minutes. And I'm like the old coach would've lost it. The coach that knows how important leading by example. I stayed cool. We ended up railing and we won the game in the last 10 seconds of the game.
So, you know, and that just a great lesson. And because of the understanding that it, you know, my first 19 years, we never made the finals. In my last 11 years, we made the finals eight times and won six. And that's why I just, I really want to emphasize as simple as the statement is, you got to be a model for your people.
Mike Goldman: And I think where that comes through for leaders, and I'm going to talk specifically to the CEOs, to the owners is it's very easy. I mean, absolutely grace under pressure being a rock under pressure. Yes, that's part of it. The other part of it that I see is when we talk about company culture and when we talk about non negotiable core values, these non negotiable behaviors for an organization.
I talk to CEOs who want to delegate that to their head of HR and they're like, yeah, I know this culture stuff's important, but I've got to go. This is who I am. And what I tell them is look. You can't, delegate culture to anyone if you are not a model of your core values.
If you're not living it every day, then throw away the posters or the plaques or whatever you're putting your vision, mission, all that stuff, throw it away. You have to be the model, and when those leaders are not the model and they try to delegate it to someone else, the culture becomes a joke, and that's really dangerous. So, I love that. What's number six?
Jim Johnson: Number six is what I call leaving a profit. And simply that is developing your leadership philosophy. And what I used to share with our players, our philosophy, leaving a profit simply means that everything that we touch, we're going to turn to gold, not garbage. In other words, everything we touch, we're going to make better, not worse.
It's a simple philosophy. Again, leading by example, though, I'll give you a quick illustration. Well, we would travel to our opponent's school to play in a way game. We would use one of the opponent's locker rooms and we'd walk in and I usually would walk in, you know, with the players and if I saw a piece of trash on the floor, what do you think I did?
Mike Goldman: Pick it up.
Jim Johnson: I picked it up and threw it out. Now, I didn't put it there, but what was I teaching my guys? That everything we touch, we're going to make better, not worse. And I think as a leader, you got to be really cognizant again by leading by example, but the little things that you do, you said it so well, are you living your core values every day?
You know, if respect is one of our core values, for example, and yet we go to a restaurant together and I call the waiter a jerk in front of everybody and get into a big argument am I living the core values? Probably not. And so I think that's really important is you develop that philosophy is this something you're going to live and teach to your people each day.
Mike Goldman: You talked earlier about, Pat Lencioni, an author that we both, you know, like reading. And if you haven't read any of his stuff, read it. It's easy. You could read it on a flight. They're stories. And, he was talking, and I forget which book it was, or it may have even been in a keynote I saw him do.
And if you've never seen him speak live, he's not only really smart, he could be a standup comic. He's great. But he was talking about the importance of getting people out of the normal environment when you're interviewing them for a job and back to leaving a profit and respect what you're saying is, he gave an example of going out to dinner with the person he was interviewing and he would purposely tell the waiter, he'd like call them before, tell the waiter to screw up the guy's order.
Jim Johnson: Yeah.
Mike Goldman: To see how the person would react. Would they be gracious and handle it well, or would they show total disrespect for the server? Which would tell you something about who that person really is, regardless of what they said on an interview.
Jim Johnson: Exactly. That's...
Mike Goldman: So I love that.
Jim Johnson: Very well said. Great illustration for sure.
Mike Goldman: All right. And what's the final one? What's number 7?
Jim Johnson: Final one is servant leadership, which is something that, you know, we hear a lot about but you know, with all my study and research is I believe servant leadership and first of all, defining it for me is that the traditional leadership pyramid was the leaders on top and all the everybody works for the leaders. In the servant leadership model
you're flipping the pyramid. And now the leaders has a service mindset that they are serving the people that they worked with. And the other piece that I think is so essential and servant leadership is the ability to teach your people how they can lead themselves and lead others. And I think the greatest thing you could say is a gift.
And it's something certainly I would not have been thinking about in my first half of my career is, how can I develop leaders that are better than me? Cause that's a hard thing to swallow, right? But when you do that and you know, I'm proud to say like, I've been out of coaching now for seven years and my JV coach, he was with me for 15 years.
He took over and, he's made the finals four times in seven years. Remember Mike, I mentioned I didn't make a final my first 19 years and he has not won one, so I feel bad. In fact, I had lunch with him today and I said, but Mike, it took me 19 years to get to the one final. You've been there four times in seven years, but I'm really proud of the fact that, you know, we spent a lot of time together and he's become this really effective leader. It's really cool to see.
Mike Goldman: Love it. He needs to get J Mac back on the
Jim Johnson: Yes, a gameplay exactly. Exactly.
Mike Goldman: Back on the bench.
Jim Johnson: It might be the missing key for sure.
Mike Goldman: Well, coach, this was great. Super inspiring story. You're inspiring. J Mac's inspiring. So I love it. Where should people go? And this will all be in the show notes, but where should people go if they want to buy your book, find out more about you, get you to come speak to their organization, where would they find you?
Yeah. So I'll just say, coachjimjohnson.com that way. I wouldn't forget it. That's my website and we do have a free monthly newsletter. We do a free weekly blog that you can sign up. I also do a video series on YouTube And Mike, we'll get you on here one of these days.
We have a podcast called the Limitless Leadership Lounge where our focus is to help young and emerging leaders. And we just completed our second year. So, check us out on that as well. I think you'll enjoy that.
Love it. I accept. I'd love, let's definitely talk about it. Well, as I always say, if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team and coach, thanks so much for getting us there today. I appreciate it.
Jim Johnson: My pleasure. It was great to be with you, Mike.
Mike Goldman: Thanks.