From Leadership Theory to Practice

FROM LEADERSHIP THEORY TO PRACTICE A Game Plan for Success as a Leader Robert Palestini Rowman & Littlefield Education Lanham • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Education A Division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowmaneducation.com Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom Copyright © 2009 by Robert Palestini All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Palestini, Robert H. From leadership theory to practice : a game plan for success as a leader / Robert Palestini. p. cm. ISBN 978-1-60709-022-9 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-60709-023-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-60709-024-3 (electronic) 1. Leadership. 2. Football coaches—United States. I. Title. HD57.7.P3485 2004 658.4'092—dc22 2009002590 ϱ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Manufactured in the United States of America. To Judy, out of whose fertile mind came the idea for this book To Karen, Scott, Robbie, and Brendan, whose presence in my life is reinvigorating To Liz and Vi for willingly giving much needed technical support CONTENTS Foreword vii Preface ix 1 Contemporary Leadership Theory 1 2 Leading with Heart 21 3 Bill Belichick 45 4 Bobby Bowden 57 5 Bear Bryant 69 6 Tony Dungy 83 7 Joe Gibbs 97 8 Bill Parcells 109 9 Ara Parseghian 121 10 Joe Paterno 135 11 Don Shula 153 v vi CONTENTS 12 Bill Walsh 165 13 Leadership Lessons Learned 179 References 187 Appendix: The Heart Smart Organizational Diagnosis Model 191 FOREWORD I have known Bob Palestini for over fifteen years as a graduate dean and professor at Saint Joseph’s University, my alma mater, as well as a highly successful high school basketball coach in the ultracompeti- tive Philadelphia Catholic League. His expertise and research interest is educational leadership. His twelve books on leadership have been outstanding in their own way, but this endeavor relates his theories on leadership to daily coaching and makes for a very interesting and intriguing connection. Having just been the subject of a major motion picture, Invincible, which depicts my life story and how coaches impacted me both person- ally and professionally, I can relate to Dr. Palestini’s basic premise that the tenets of situational leadership theory and effective coaching go hand in hand, whether we are discussing business, educational, or social settings. In this book, the second in a series, Dr. Palestini demonstrates how the use of situational leadership theory by ten successful football coaches has contributed to their effectiveness and how these same leadership principles can be appropriately applied to anyone’s leadership behavior, be the individual a parent, a teacher, an administrator, or a CEO. Each of us in our daily lives is asked to assume a degree vii viii FOREWORD of leadership responsibility. Dr. Palestini gives us a road map to fol- low, with excellence being the result. His book has practical applica- tions that will allow each of us to develop and improve our leadership capabilities. —Vince Papale PREFACE This is a book about leadership. The conventional wisdom is that leaders are born, not made. I disagree! My experience and, more importantly, scholarly research indicate that leadership skills can be learned. Granted, some leaders will be superior to others because of genetics, but the basic leadership skills are learned behaviors and can be cultivated and enhanced. The first chapter of this book speaks to the so-called science of administration, while the second chapter deals with the art of administration and leadership. One needs to lead with both mind (science) and heart (art) to be truly effective. The effective building blocks of quality leadership are the skills of communication, motivation, organizational development, management, and creativity. Mastering the theory and practice in these areas of study will produce high-quality leadership ability and, in turn, produce successful leaders; doing so with “heart” will result in highly successful— what some authors have called heroic—leadership. I would also dispute another broadly held assumption about effective leadership and administration—namely, that nice guys (and gals) finish last. To be a successful administrator, the belief goes, one needs to be firm, direct, even autocratic. Once again, scholarly research in- dicates, as does my own experience, that no one singular leadership ix x PREFACE style is consistently effective in all situations and at all times. Empirical and experiential studies indicate that effective leaders vary their styles depending on the situation. This situational approach is the underlying theme of this book. In the concluding chapter, I argue that truly effective leaders use both their minds and their hearts in the leadership process, and in doing so, nice guys and gals do oftentimes finish first. Some thirty years ago, when I was coaching high school basketball, I attended a coaching clinic at which the main clinicians were Dean Smith, coach of North Carolina University, and Bobby Knight, then coach of Indiana University. Both coaches were successful then, and three decades later, they remain successful and, in one case at least, revered. In the morning session, Bobby Knight explained how fear is the most effective motivator in sports. If you want athletes to listen to you, and you want to be successful, you need to instill fear in them, Knight stated. In the afternoon session, Dean Smith explained how love is the most effective motivator in sports. If you want to win and be successful, you must engender love in the athletes. You can understand my sense of confusion by the end of that clinic. Here were two of the most successful men in sports giving contradictory advice. As a young and impressionable coach, these apparently mixed messages puzzled me. Over the intervening years, I have often thought about that clinic and tried to make sense of what I heard. After these many years, I have drawn two conclusions from this incident, both of which have had a significant impact on my philosophy of leadership and on this book. The first conclusion has to do with the situational nature of leadership. Knight and Smith impressed upon me the truism that there is no one singular leadership style that is effective at all times and in all situations. The second is that, despite the possible short-term success of fear- based leadership, the better style for ensuring long-term success is one that inspires love, trust, and respect. Just as athletes become robotic and apprehensive about making mistakes when fear is the only motivator, so do employees who are supervised by an autocratic manager. Initiative, creativity, and self-sufficiency are all stymied by the leader who instills fear in his or her subordinates. Thus, I arrived at my conclusion that PREFACE xi effective school administration and leadership, which is my field, and leadership in general begin with love, trust, and respect. In addition to an emphasis on the nature of leadership, this book focuses on placing theory into practice. We cannot underestimate the value and importance of theory. Without theory, we have no valid way of analyzing and correcting failed practice. Without a theoretical base, we oftentimes lead by trial and error, or by the proverbial “seat of our pants.” On the other hand, knowledge of theory without the ability to place it into reflective practice is neither of value nor characteristic of effective leadership. I suggest that leaders and aspiring leaders adopt one of the leadership theories described in this book and place it into reflective practice, modeled after the leadership behavior of some of the coaches highlighted here. This book uses the case study approach in order to facilitate placing theory into effective practice. Each chapter contains an extensive study of one of ten of the most successful football coaches of our times. We will analyze each case and see how these coaches were able to place leadership theory into effective practice. I believe that the lessons learned will prove invaluable to leaders and aspiring leaders, be they parents, teachers, school principals, or CEOs. I chose football coaches as my subjects because they are basically teachers, and as we shall see, the ability to teach one’s followers, thus fostering a learning organization, is a valuable asset if one wishes to be an effective leader. I also chose coaches over other leaders because their leadership behavior is more observable and more chronicled. This book also takes an organizational development approach to pro- ducing effective leadership. Picture yourself standing in the middle of a dense forest. Suppose you were asked to describe the characteristics of the forest: What types of trees are growing in the forest; how many acres of trees are there; where are the trees thriving; where are they not? Faced with this proposition, most people would not know where to start and would not be able to see the proverbial forest for the trees. Newly appointed executives and administrators often have this same feeling of confusion when faced with the prospect of assuming a leadership role in a complex organization like a school or a company. Where does one start? An effective way to start would be to systematically examine the xii PREFACE components that make up an organization.

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