Geno Auriemma’s Tips on How to Be a Leader

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, but after his family moved to Norristown, Pennsylvania, when he was seven years old, 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 going on to serve as an assistant coach and later a head coach for women’s college basketball teams.

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

To be a leader, you need a great degree of self-awareness, wisdom, and competence, as well as the ability to relate to people of all different backgrounds. As a leader, you’re responsible for overseeing all your team members, engaging in problem-solving, and inspiring people to do their best at all times. Good leaders provide guidance when necessary and empower individual performance when possible.

Strong leadership reaps powerful rewards for both you and the team you oversee. Consider these three benefits of leading well:

1. 1. Greater clarity: Leaders provide their teams with clear expectations, allowing them to excel in both the short and long terms. If you can see the big picture and break it down into smaller goals for your team to achieve, you’re well on your way to embodying effective leadership.
2. 2. Improved morale: A leader’s No. 1 priority is the well-being and success of the group of people they lead. Great leadership fosters increased employee engagement and improves morale.
3. 3. Increased productivity: The hard work of leadership is all about empowering each contributor to lead on their own, too. If you lead well, your team members will perform well and take on a visionary, diligent attitude to the work in front of them.

Effective leadership requires you to embody certain key attributes. Cultivate these three qualities if you plan to take on a leadership position:

1. 1. Confidence: Leaders need the competency and confidence required to take action. Great leadership revolves around wise and bold decision-making. It takes a great deal of faith in oneself, grounded in past experience and insight, to make these sorts of calls.
2. 2. Humility: In any leadership role, temper any confidence with a sense of humility. Incorporate a sense of relatability and humility into your leadership style. Self-awareness helps you become more approachable and human to your team. Look for opportunities to help others often.
3. 3. Wisdom: True leaders have vast knowledge about their field of expertise, the emotional intelligence necessary to guide people well, and the wisdom to know how to apply these things in high-pressure scenarios. Accruing experiences is perhaps the most effective way to obtain such wisdom.

It takes a lot of effort to develop a well-rounded leadership skill set. Here’s some of basketball coach Geno Auriemma’s best advice about becoming a great leader:

• Always do your best. Great leaders always do everything they can to perform to their best ability. “Getting beat means you did all the things you needed to do, they just did it better,” Geno says. “Losing means you did not hold up your end.” Give your all every chance you get to truly become a successful leader.
• Be ready to fail occasionally. The ability to learn from your mistakes is one of the most important leadership qualities. “So can you learn to be a leader?” Geno asks. “Absolutely, if you're willing to put yourself out there and be the one that is responsible for failing.” Strong leaders handle failure with wisdom and grace.
• Control what is controllable. Effective leaders know what is and isn’t in their power. “None of us has any control over things that are uncontrollable,” Geno adds. “So it's our job, as coaches, to make sure that we focus on those things that, absolutely, we have total control over.” Control what you can about your work environment but recognize the need to adapt to uncontrollable factors, too.
• Find opportunities to lead. There are always new challenges on the horizon to help you become a better leader. “You can learn to be a leader,” Geno says. “Just don't shy away from opportunities to lead.” Remain open-minded and eager to find opportunities to lead in unique ways.
• Set an example. Act as a role model to your direct reports and team members. “Your positivity, your attitude, how you handle defeat, obstacles, setbacks, whatever you want to call them,” Geno says, “how you handle that is gonna determine how much confidence [your team has] in you.” Good managers and leaders only require their teams to do the same things they do.
• Spend more time listening than talking. The best leaders are good listeners. “One of the biggest attributes that resilient leaders have is the ability to listen,” Geno says. “Listen more than you talk.” Building trust with your team requires you to utilize good communication skills like these.
• Take risks. Challenge the status quo and do things differently. Geno says if you’re a leader, “you're willing to stick your neck out there.” He continues, “You're willing to take that chance without knowing what's gonna happen, and you're okay with it.” Taking risks requires wisdom and confidence but can pay off in a big way for your organization.

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