76 Leadership Quotes From Kentucky Head Coach John Calipari and NFL Analyst Michael Lombardi

There are few things as fascinating to me as when incredibly successful people from different industries get together and discuss leadership.  Some examples are when Bill Gates and Warren Buffet were interviewed together which I discussed at a recent public speaking event.  Or Andy Stanley and Jim Collins from Catalyst.  These are rare occurrences but when it happens you learn the common journey all leaders have and how similar our hopes, dreams, goals and issues are.

Recently, Kentucky Wildcats head basketball coach John Calipari and former NFL executive Michael Lombardi sat down with Ryan Hawk for a live interview as part of the 2019 NCAA Final Four NABCA and Athletic Director University.  Ryan was kind enough to put this time together on his The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk podcast.

Much of the content came from Coach Cal’s and Lombardi’s incredible books Players First: Coaching from the Inside Out and Gridiron Genius: A Master Class in Winning Championships and Building Dynasties in the NFL.  I also highly recommend another one of Coach Cal’s books Success Is the Only Option: The Art of Coaching Extreme Talent.  Anyone wanting to be a great leader should have these three books in their library.  They are classics!!!

The following are 76 Leadership Quotes From Kentucky Head Coach John Calipari and NFL Analyst Michael Lombardi I captured from the interview:

1. I love reading stuff where I can take it and give it to my players. – JC
2. The more curious you are the more curious your players will be. – JC
3. If you care about the kids and your really care, you’ll always have a job. – Larry Brown
4. We’re afraid to coach.  Correcting in real time is so important. – JC
5. They want you to keep it real until you keep it real with them.  They’d rather you keep it real with someone else. – JC
6. If you’re about what’s good for this kids, whatever is good for them is not going to be a negative for you. – JC
7. It’s about them first.  It’s about us second.  If you want them to be servant leaders, they have to see it in you. – JC
8. Marines fight for marines.  (New England) Patriots fight for Patriots. Wildcats fight for Wildcats.  – ML
9. One question you ask every coaches in every coaching interview is, “Who assigns the jersey numbers?” – ML
10. Whoever is wearing that jersey number is responsible for the history of the culture of the program and he’s got to understand it.  You buy their loyalty to the program. – ML
11. We don’t get every player we recruit. – JC
12. If the relationship starts with a lie it never recovers. – JC
13. Whatever you do here is earned. – JC
14. If you want them to be great teammates it starts in recruiting. – JC
15. In terms of culture, what starts is when you meet them for the first time and their families.  If you oversell and underdeliver it’s hard to have a culture. – JC
16. Pat Riley gave me one of the greatest compliments about what we do.  He said, “Your players are some of the best teammates in the NBA.” – JC
17. If you want to shoot 25 balls per game you’re not coming to Kentucky.  We’re trying to feed seven families, not two. – JC
18. He’s (Coach Cal) the second greatest culture builder in sports, other than Coach Norman Dale in Hoosiers. – ML
19. The Laws of Threes – Whenever you take over a team you have three groups of people.  The people in Group 1 will do anything you want them to do.  The people in Group 2 are undecided.  The people in Group 3 are usually the most talented but they value the name on the back more than the name on the front and you can’t really make them happy.  ..  As a leader you instinctively think if you win the guy over in Group 3 you will win the team.  The reality of it is he loses the team.  If you focus on the people in Group 1 you will win everyone from Group 2 over.  Jimmy Chitwood was in Group 3 and Coach Dale told him to go shoot on your own. – ML
20. There are four areas of leadership.  Management of Self. Management of the Plan. Command of the Meeting which you explain the plan.  Command of Trust.  The players have to trust what you say.  If you make one mistake to a player, if you lie to a player as an executive or coach, you lost the player.  Players only trust people who will be honest with them. – ML
21. You can have a bad deal with good people.  Stuff happens.  But you can never have a good deal with bad people. – JC
22. The reason I’ve had success – I’ve had the best staffs. – JC
23. I’ve only had two secretaries in my whole career.- JC
24. Bad people don’t add enough to what they’re going to take. – JC
25. Your staff has to be each other’s PR machine. Each guy on the staff has got to promote the other guy. – JC
26. Everybody recruits every kid. – JC
27. A great coach is really a great leader. There’s four areas of leadership – Command of the Room… You have a plan, here it is, you come in and present your plan to the team.  Command of the Message.  You can explain your plan really clearly.  Command of Self which means you’re able to criticism for yourself and discipline yourself to understand when you’re wrong.  Command of Trust which means you’re consistent.  You can be a jerk but you have to be a consistent jerk. – ML
28. Guys who were good in three of those four areas were successful.  Guys who were good in two of those areas had one good year, one bad year and ended up failing. – ML
29. In Cleveland, we thought the best way to build a staff was to develop a staff… We wanted to develop talent from within, not talent from without. – ML
30. If you train people the way you want them to be, you don’t have to retrain them.  It’s hard to retrain coaches. – ML
31. “I hire people who I know love me.  I’ll teach ’em the rest.” – Bill Parcells
32. All great coaches are alike. – ML
33. Al Davis used to say this all the time, “When you talk to the media, you’re not talking to the media.  You’re talking to three people – players, the organization, and the owner and everybody else is really irrelevant.” – ML
34. You utilize the media as your message to the team, you create the culture. – ML
35. One thing I do with my staff is before each game I want each of them to give me a short scouting report. – JC
36. We do not give scouting reports to my players because they do not have to worry about the other team.  I do. Let’s worry about us.  If you worry about us I will teach you what you need to know. – JC
37. Our guys have a hard enough time knowing our stuff than knowing our stuff and their stuff. – JC
38. I want guys (on my staff) who want to be in the gym and love the game. How do I get our guys to love the grind if my guys don’t want to be in there. – JC
39. I want guys (on my staff) who are there to develop players. The recruiting is how you survive. – JC
40. I don’t need a bunch of head coaches. – JC
41. The guy that can really help develop the most, a guy that can really connect the most, is the most valuable guy on my staff. – JC
42. Al Davis used to say all the time, “Make the coaches think they’re high school coaches.” – ML
43. I don’t ask for something unless I really need it. – JC
44. The money these kids can make, the family, you’ve got to respect that.  This is their chance. – JC
45. I would love coaching 4-year guys.  Man, do I miss that. – JC
46. I just recruit the best guys I can get.  If they’re bigs they’re bigs.  If they’re guards they’re guards. – JC
47. They’ve got to be able to share.  They’ve got to understand the grind of this. – JC
48. Teambuilding is the hardest thing… We’ve got to take what they (colleges) give us. – ML
49. Don’t make big time decisions when you’re still emotional. – JC
50. This man (George Raveling) reads more than any human being alive. – ML
51. Coach Raveling owns the I Have A Dream speech from Martin Luther King. – ML
52. When you’re a coach or athletic director is hard to renew your intellectual power. – ML
53. You should take an hour a day to read because the job’s going to change and you’re going to need some way to adjust to the change. – ML
54. When I evaluate a player I want to know how does he look when things aren’t going well, when he’s at his worst?  – JC
55. Coaching when it’s going well, it’s easy.  Give me four games in a row when you lose. – JC
56. You have issues?  People have their own issues.  They aren’t worried about you. – JC
57. Ask an AD, how can I make myself better? – JC
58. When you get fired, make amends with the people who fired you.  The next job you’re trying to get, they’re calling them. – JC
59. I don’t know why I’m at Kentucky.  I don’t deserve to be at Kentucky. – JC
60. If you don’t figure out why you got the (new coaching) job and take 100 days to go backwards and walk in his (previous coach) shoes and figure the mistakes that went along the way cause they only way you’re going to correct them is to learn them. – ML
61. Some of the best things we did in Cleveland which is not the Patriot Way is the mistakes we made. – ML
62. There’s two kind of jobs:  Jobs you can grow from and jobs you can make a difference in. – ML
63. In New England they do an autopsy after every single game – why the won, why they lost.  If you don’t do that you can’t get any better. – ML
64. Every obstacle you can use to your advantage and learn from it and you’ll become a better person.  The guys that’s perfect he’s never had any challenges in his life. We’re all going to make mistakes.  It’s the mistakes we grow from is what makes us better. – ML
65. I will not coach if I’m cheating these kids. – JC
66. My leverage has always been the job I’ve done. – JC
67. This whole thing we do is about relationships.  The whole thing is relationships.  Recruiting it’s relationships. – JC
68. It was so impressive, the greatest coach of all-time Bill Belichick was admiring Cal coaching. – ML
69. If I have the best players we’re going to win a national title. – JC
70. When you’re coaching freshman you start losing them in February because their high school season is over. – JC
71. Why would we ever as a society diminish education? – JC
72. The commonalities among the most successful coaches: Curious minds — They don’t have a single playbook…  The sport moves.  They are about other people.  It’s hard to follow that general up the hill when it’s all about himself… Wired and driven to work.  They love the grind.  They love practice more than the games…  They’re smart. – JC
73. Divergent in thought. – ML
74. The Patriots don’t measure anything by what they’ve won.  It’s always the next year. – ML
75. The greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do it more. – ML
76. The great coaches just care about doing more.  They don’t care about the corner suite.  They don’t care about how much money they make.  They just care about the game. – ML

Out of 76 quotes, what are two or three things you learned which will make you a better leader?

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