Sideline CEO

August 15, 2023
Coaches set out the reasons for their achievements. As a popular face of ESPN and a respected sports journalist, Smith, author of Never Settle, has the prestige and connections to line up interviews with 20 championship coaches, from Nick Saban to Doc Rivers. The author examines their methods to draw out the common factors and then apply the lessons to broad leadership challenges. He organizes the discussions around themes such as building trust, effective communication, delegation, and developing the right culture. Effective leadership often involves painful choices, and the right decisions might not be popular. See it through and wear the consequences, say the coaches; someone has to, and there is no place for excuses. The same is true with off-field crises, and it is often here where years of team character building pay off. Coaches must also apply ruthless self-evaluation, recognizing that what worked yesterday might not work today--and likely won't work tomorrow. This can be a difficult process, especially for coaches who have built their success on a signature style. The comments of the coaches are interesting enough, but the problem is that Smith doesn't balance their insights with sufficient analysis. At least 70% of the book is interview material, and there is a good amount of repetition, which makes the text feel like a collection of disparate pieces rather than a cohesive whole. Although Smith brackets each chapter with summaries, it's unclear how the leadership lessons of the coaches could be transferred to other fields. He obviously put a great deal of time and energy into compiling the interviews, but this one is for hardcore sports fans. Other contributors include Roy Williams, Kim Mulkey, Frank Beamer, John Calipari, Lane Kiffin, Nancy Lieberman, Mack Brown, Joe Gibbs, and Tom Izzo, and Tim Tebow provides the foreword. A wealth of expertise in a mixed-bag package.

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