Geno Auriemma’s 5 Tips for Effective Leadership

Luigi “Geno” Auriemma has had one of the most astounding coaching careers in women’s college basketball history. Born in Montella, Italy, Geno started off playing soccer. When his family moved to Norristown, Pennsylvania, he fell in love with baseball, which he played throughout high school. In his sophomore year of high school, he decided to join the basketball team as well.

His high school basketball coach, Buddy Gardler, made a lasting impression on Geno. While in college at West Chester University, Geno balanced his classes with coaching a high school girls’ basketball team in Wyncote, Pennsylvania, before serving as an assistant coach and later a head coach for women’s college basketball teams.

With more than thirty years of experience providing constructive feedback and building trust among his players, Geno has learned to build a winning team.

Leadership is the art or practice of motivating a group of people to achieve a common goal. Leadership derives from social influence rather than strict hierarchy or seniority. Anyone with the right skills can become a leader regardless of their position in a company or organization.

Good leaders often possess various “leadership qualities,” such as creativity, motivation, vision, and empathy. However, the most successful leaders can adapt to the needs of different situations, employing their diverse set of leadership skills to achieve their goals.

Leadership skills refer to the ability to build and organize a team and drive them to finish or achieve a shared goal. If you want to succeed at your job, whether in management or not, developing effective leadership skills can show your employer that you’re talented, motivated, and deserving of a promotion.

Developing leadership skills starts with practicing them in your personal and work life. Leadership development isn’t easy—it can be challenging to determine the most important skills to learn.

An individual could have many different leadership abilities in their skill set, but a good team leader knows their strengths and weaknesses. Here are some of the soft skills and qualities an effective leader might possess:

1. 1. Adaptability: Processes, jobs, and team organizational structures change all the time. Adapting to those changes is one of many leadership qualities that can help you thrive in a work environment.
2. 2. Communication skills: Effective communication is critical in a great leader since managers need to explain processes and instructions clearly to their direct reports. They must be good communicators and able to practice active listening.
   
3. 3. Decision-making: The best leaders can come to and make a decision; it should be one of their core competencies. Effective leadership is about making the call when you have to make tough decisions.
4. 4. Delegating: A leader with experience knows that delegating tasks to their direct reports instead of taking them on themselves can work to everyone’s advantage. Implementing proper delegation skills among team members can also build confidence in employees.
5. 5. Emotional intelligence: Emotional intelligence helps an effective leader properly manage their feelings and speak to their coworkers and direct reports with empathy and pathos. Learn how to develop your emotional intelligence.

Over three decades, Geno Auriemma has coached his teams to more than 1,100 wins. Here, the prolific coach shares tips for effective leadership:

1. 1. Establish a common goal. A good leader can galvanize a team by stating a common goal, but first, you must admit that there’s a problem. “Give them a strategy for how we’re gonna attack this problem. That’s my job as a leader,” Geno says. “If I don’t do that, then people are gonna take it upon themselves to try to figure it out.”
2. 2. Tell it like it is. Being honest and direct is an effective method. “My leadership style would be described as, ‘I know what I want. I know what I have to do. I know how to help you.’ And when I don’t know, I tell you, ‘I don’t know.’ I don’t pretend,” Geno explains. “I don’t lie to my players and give them a bullshit answer. That’s just not gonna happen.”
3. 3. Address the fear and refocus. “When my great players come outta high school, everybody knows they’re great. They have all the accolades. They show up on campus and a month or two into the season, they are gonna break down completely,” he says. At this point, Geno knows that he must address their fears before they become debilitating, so he sits them down for a one-on-one talk. “The first thing I ask them is, ‘What are you really afraid of right now?’ And it always comes down to this fear of, ‘I’m not gonna be able to live up to who I think I am...or what other people’s expectations are for me. And I’m scared to death.’ Those doubts and those fears start to creep in, and I try to help ‘em with that,” he adds.
4. 4. Focus on desire over fear. Geno explains that certain motivations lead to more success than others. “Fear of failure is a motivator, but not as great a motivator as the desire for success,” he adds. “So when somebody says, ‘I hate to lose,’ great, you need a little bit of that. The flip side, ‘Coach, I wanna win really bad, man.’ All right, now we got somethin.”
5. 5. Give appreciation. Your team contributes to your success, so as a leader, you should acknowledge that. “It’s important that your team and direct reports know you appreciate their work—don’t assume they already know,” Geno says. “Every time somethin’ happens that you know wouldn’t have happened without them—even if they only had that much to do with it and it might’ve happened anyway—you let them know, ‘Hey, couldn’t have happened without you.’ That goes forever in their gratitude and their willingness to want to do even more.”

Get the MasterClass Annual Membership for exclusive access to video lessons taught by business luminaries, including Geno Auriemma, Robin Roberts, Chris Voss, Sara Blakely, Daniel Pink, Bob Iger, Howard Schultz, Anna Wintour, and more.