2001 Henry Kravis Outstanding Leadership Award

Legendary basketball coach John Wooden received this year's Henry Kravis Outstanding Leadership Award in a ceremony held at Claremont McKenna College's Athenaeum on February 27, 2001. The theme of the evening was "A Celebration of Leadership and Mentoring". 

Wooden played basketball at Purdue, and coached first at Indiana State (1946-1948) and most memorably at UCLA (1948-1975), where he set numerous records, including winning ten NCAA championship titles and garnering the most consecutive basketball victories (88 between 1971 and 1974) in U.S. college sports history. After Wooden, college basketball was never the same. The banquet award ceremony honored those achievements and more. Coach Wooden taught not only basketball, but life.

John Wooden retired from coaching more than a quarter of a century ago. Yet veneration for his achievements and leadership has not dimmed. Tickets on this undergraduate campus sold out in 20 minutes, and Wooden found himself addressing an overflow crowd.

Ronald Riggio, Director of the Kravis Leadership Institute, commended Wooden on his commitment to leadership and the significant impact that a coach can have on leadership development in his players. John Wooden's definition of success is "peace of mind...in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming."

Riggio drew a comparison between scholarly research on leadership and the building blocks that Wooden has popularized in his rendering of the "Pyramid of Success." Building on the cornerstone of industriousness and enthusiasm are elements such as self-control, alertness, skill, confidence and competitive greatness, all of which are found to be important foundations of leadership in the academic literature.

John Wooden is an orator in the grand old tradition. Seated comfortably on the stage in a tapestried armchair, he discussed his philosophy of success in eloquent terms. Recalling his graduation from primary school, he recited the words of a creed from a card that his father had given him on that occasion -- "Make each day your masterpiece."

Later in life, dissatisfied by the use of grades or percentages as the only metrics available to measure his student athletes, Wooden developed his own methods of judging success whether in basketball or in life: assessments of initiative, intentness, loyalty, patience and the other elements on his pyramid.

Looking around at the rapt audience one could see that they were completely drawn in by the reflections, humor, recitations of verse, and spirit of integrity of this year's recipient of the Kravis Award for Outstanding Leadership.