Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

So, are great teachers born or made? Can anyone be a Collins, Esquith, or DeLay? It starts with the growth mindset—about yourself and about children. Not just lip service to the idea that all children can learn, but a deep desire to reach in and ignite the mind of every child. Michael Lewis, in The New York Times, tells of a coach who did this for him. “I had a new taste for … extra work … and it didn’t take long to figure out how much better my life could be if I applied this new zeal acquired on a baseball field to the rest of it. It was as if this baseball coach had reached inside me, found a rusty switch marked Turn On Before Attempting to Use and flipped it.”

Coaches are teachers, too, but their students’ successes and failures are played out in front of crowds, published in the newspapers, and written into the record books. Their jobs rest on producing winners. Let’s look closely at three legendary coaches to see their mindsets in action.

COACHES: WINNING THROUGH MINDSET

Everyone who knows me well laughs when I say someone is complicated. “What do you think of so-and-so?” “Oh, he’s complicated.” It’s usually not a compliment. It means that so-and-so may be capable of great charm, warmth, and generosity, but there’s an undercurrent of ego that can erupt at any time. You never really know when you can trust him.

The fixed mindset makes people complicated. It makes them worried about their fixed traits and creates the need to document them, sometimes at your expense. And it makes them judgmental.

The Fixed-Mindset Coach in Action

Bobby Knight, the famous and controversial college basketball coach, is complicated. He could be unbelievably kind. One time he passed up an important and lucrative opportunity to be a sportscaster, because a former player of his had been in a bad accident. Knight rushed to his side and saw him through the ordeal.

He could be extremely gracious. After the basketball team he coached won the Olympic gold medal, he insisted that the team pay homage first and foremost to Coach Henry Iba. Iba had never been given proper respect for his Olympic accomplishments, and in whatever way he could, Knight wanted to make up for it. He had the team carry Coach Iba around the floor on their shoulders.

Knight cared greatly about his players’ academic records. He wanted them to get an education, and he had a firm rule against missing classes or tutoring sessions.

But he could also be cruel, and this cruelty came from the fixed mindset. John Feinstein, author of Season on the Brink, a book about Knight and his team, tells us: “Knight was incapable of accepting failure. Every defeat was personal; his team lost, a team he had selected and coached.… Failure on any level all but destroyed him, especially failure in coaching because it was coaching that gave him his identity, made him special, set him apart.” A loss made him a failure, obliterated his identity. So when he was your coach—when your wins and losses measured him—he was mercilessly judgmental. His demeaning of players who let him down was, hopefully, without parallel.

In Daryl Thomas, Feinstein says, “Knight saw a player of huge potential. Thomas had what coaches call a ‘million dollar body.’ ” He was big and strong, but also fast. He could shoot the ball with his left hand or his right hand. Knight couldn’t live with the thought that Thomas and his million-dollar body weren’t bringing the team success:

“You know what you are Daryl? You are the worst f_____ pussy I’ve ever seen play basketball at this school. The absolute worst pussy ever. You have more goddam ability than 95 percent of the players we’ve had here but you are a pussy from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet. An absolute f_____ pussy. That’s my assessment of you after three years.”

To make a similar point, Knight once put a Tampax in a player’s locker.

Thomas was a sensitive guy. An assistant coach had given this advice: When he’s calling you an asshole, don’t listen. But whn he starts telling you why you’re an asshole, listen. That way, you’ll get better. Thomas couldn’t follow that advice. He heard everything, and, after the tirade, he broke down right there on the basketball court.

The ax of judgment came down on players who had the audacity to lose a game. Often Knight did not let the guilty parties ride back home with the rest of the team. They were no longer worthy of respectful treatment. One time, after his team reached the semifinals of a national tournament (but not the national tournament), he was asked by an interviewer what he liked best about the team. “What I like best about this team right now,” Knight answered, “is the fact that I only have to watch it play one more time.”