other than the ordinary. This is when we all live, play, coach, and compete in alignment with our hearts, the place where we do our very best to be the best we can be. It is a sacred space of greater meaning, higher performance, and value to all of our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs and all that we aspire to be.
WU SHI LEADERSHIP
Ancient Chinese Taoist warriors were not interested in war, violence, and fighting to overcome others. They were heroic in nature, a culture of enlightened and awakened warriors possessing heart-felt traits and virtues. According to these great spirits, the power of these virtues was greater than the power of arms, the power one exerts over another in an authoritative way. Such evolved, cultivated, and civilized leaders were considered brave, compassionate, courageous athletes of iron will and indomitable spirit. They engaged in battles against fear, frustration, failure, and self-doubt while fighting for inner peace, strength, honor, majesty, love, gratefulness, trust, and respect. These battles were fought with intangible weapons of the heart such as fearlessness, courage, patience, persistence, integrity, tenacity, and fortitude. All obstacles were perceived as opportunities to learn, grow, and become more aware of possibilities rather than disabilities. In Chinese, this heart-felt spirit is referred to as Wu Shi, the Warrior Spirit. It is a sacred spirit much in alignment with the notion of the spirituality of coaching and sports.
For practical purposes, I will define Wu Shi or the Warrior Spirit as a dance between striving to win, yet not needing to win to be successful. It’s a sacred space, one where you as a coach embrace athletes as partners in a mentoring dance of give and take, learning from each other what needs to be known in order to advance and go the distance in sports and life (see introduction for more). The Warrior Spirit helps you to sacrifice and give to others, inspire them to push past the breaking point, become comfortable with being uncomfortable, know when less is more, soft is strong, accept responsibility, remain accountable, be willing to suffer, lose, be vulnerable, and fail if that’s what it takes to ultimately win the battle before the war begins. The Warrior Spirit, this “dancing heart of coaching” is all about being mindful, self-aware, enthusiastic, passionate, spiritually and emotionally alive, while providing safe environments that help to cultivate peak capacities and potentialities through the use and application of strong warrior heart-based virtues and behaviors.
The Taoist warrior leader relied heavily upon the wisdom of the Tao Te Ching. Let me give you a glimpse of how this all ties in with the spirituality, heart, and the love of coaching.
Basically, there is no need to go to a Taoist temple high in the mountains of China to be such a warrior leader. All you need to be is a good human being. Spiritual warriorship is not about mastering others but about mastering yourself. And there is no path to such mastery: mastery is the path, an everyday practice of being kind, genuine, respectful, aware, vulnerable, balanced, humble, courageous, iron-willed, fearless, and intense yet calm. Traditionally, for such warrior leaders, war was a way of life. For the “new” warrior, life is a war, a battle of the inner struggles over self-doubt, fear, frustration, fatigue, and uncertainty. Armed with weapons of the heart, the warrior sees the bigger picture, thinks outside-the-box, trusts intuition, learns from failure, has pure intentions, acts with integrity, has passion, and love, and takes the higher road to do the right thing.
Very simply, as I state in the introduction to this book, with an increase of love, compassion, and spirituality in our coaching, athletes become happy, trust and respect deepen, and results and outcomes are significantly enhanced. When we develop Wu Shi (Warrior Spirit) relationships, those we lead are happy and work longer and stronger; when they work longer and stronger, results and outcomes usually improve.
The question we might ask is: how can you bring your full, complete, loving, human self to your coaching and use sports as a micro-cosmic classroom for personal, emotional, and spiritual growth for athletes and yourself in the arena of performance and in the bigger game of life? The answer, as we will discover, lies within the give and take dancing heart of Wu Shi leadership.
FIRMNESS YET FAIRNESS
With all the talk about kindness, caring, love, and heart, you may wonder if there’s a place for being tough with your athletes, for raising your voice, for establishing strict boundaries, for using disciplinary measures. Absolutely, you can do all of this. In fact, if you really love your athletes, if you really care for them, to do anything less than this when appropriate would demonstrate a lack of caring. You are being kind when you enforce boundaries and refuse to tolerate a violation of team culture. Dancing heart coaches are very fair yet firm and these two items are not mutually exclusive.
He was one of the most fearless and highly respected chiefs in the New York City Fire Department during his day. People under his command said how brave he was, leading dozens of men, half his age, into the belly of a raging fire. He led by example and guided others to places they needed to be. They listened to him because he was firm yet always fair. I learned my first lessons on leadership from this remarkable leader—he was my Dad.
The I Ching, the ancient Chinese book of change and transformation, validates what my dad intuitively knew to be correct. This Tao classic states that “it is necessary that a leader have firmness with fairness and an encouraging attitude toward others.” Being strict yet impartial helps a leader to be admired, honored, and obeyed.
To be firm, you need to establish certain clear and understood boundaries, what will and will not be tolerated. The boundaries create a sense of security for your athletes. Knowing the parameters of behavior makes for clean, predictable, and familiar circumstances. Yet within these firm boundaries, there needs to be an element of fairness—treating others as they deserve to be treaded, with kindness and respect.
Coach John Wooden, of the UCLA basketball team, where he won 10 national championships, knows that being fair doesn’t mean treating everyone alike. That’s because everyone does not earn the same treatment. In his book Wooden, he explains that fairness is giving to others what they earn. He also points out that being fair at all times is not possible. He encourages making a sincere effort; others will recognize that about you, whether it’s your kids, employees, or athletes. Wooden was respected by his athletes, and they competed and played with heart because he treated them firmly yet fairly.
To be fair in your leadership, you must refrain from making arbitrary decisions. For example, the star athlete is not given less of a punishment for wrongdoing than the athlete who hardly plays. Going outside the team boundaries—curfews, promptness, alcohol tolerance—calls for consistent consequences, regardless of one’s role on the team. This is fair. And remember that with consistency of enforcement, there is order; inconsistent leadership leads to disorder. Along these lines, Sun-Tzu reminds us that if you show favor or indulge others, you are not coaching them well. That is not coaching with heart.
BEING THE FIVE SENSES
My work, at times, has not made sense. I have not made sense, as well. You want to be sure that your coaching style makes sense. Here are my Big 5, the five senses that make sense in order to be a sensible leader and coach…and sensitive as well.
1. A Sense of Humor. Hold yourself lightly. If you take yourself too seriously, you are in deep trouble. Your calling is serious business but not you. You are a silly, sometimes crazy, yet a great human and by definition you screw up, you fail, your athletes and followers fail, the Dali Lama fails…we are all human and this is how it is. You are not your title, your position, your degrees, your possessions, or your status. At your core, you are
