John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success: what is it and what does it propose?

John Wooden's pyramid of success provides guidelines for personal and professional development.

John Wooden's pyramid of success is a model in which he talks about the values necessary for us to achieve everything we set out to accomplish.. It was originally used for the sports world, with great success, which is why it was extended to the business field and even in personal life.

This model has been so famous because its creator, a coach of college basketball teams, achieved many victories on the court by applying his pyramid that, rather than telling us what we have to do to get what we want, it proposes the philosophy to follow if we want to be successful in our lives.

Today we are going to go deeper into this pyramid of success and what are the values that make it up, determinants of how successful a person will be with everything he/she sets out to achieve.

What is John Wooden's pyramid of success?

John Wooden's pyramid of success is a behavioral model created to improve the performance of basketball players. Over time, this pyramid has spread beyond the playing court, becoming not only a very useful model in other sports but also applied to other areas, especially business and personal life.. It is considered one of the best tools to achieve both individual and group goals.

It is named after its inventor, John Robert Wooden (1910-2010), a basketball team coach at the prestigious University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Under his direction, the university's team won 10 of the 12 titles it contested. Wooden did not go down in history for those triumphs, but for the philosophy behind the varsity basketball team's success, synthesized in the pyramid of success.

This model is not a simple guide of what to do to succeed, but rather a recommendation of what values to develop and internalize. a recommendation of what values to develop and internalize in our lives in order to achieve what we set out to achieve.. Therefore, it is not only applicable to the field of sports, but to many others, since it marked a way of understanding life and achieving goals, whatever they may be.

John Wooden conceived success as an iceberg, and we can see it in his model.

Parts and structure of the pyramid

In John Wooden's pyramid of success we usually speak of five levels, although if we group the values according to their degree of importance we can distinguish three main sectors: the base, the body and the vertex. Each of them encompasses fundamental values to be worked on if we wish to achieve any objective, be it sports, work, academic, social or vital.

The base of the pyramid

At the base of the pyramid of success, also known as level 5, we find 5 components that are considered to support the rest of the structure. These are:

1. Hard work

The path to success in anything is hard work.. It is necessary to invest effort in what we want to achieve. Hard work is a fundamental value, the first one that should be acquired and applied if we want to be successful. Constant work is a prerequisite to achieve everything we set out to achieve.

• Related article, "What is responsibility as a personality trait?"

2. Enthusiasm

The conviction and the desire to do what is done are fundamental aspects to succeed in whatever we have proposed. These two elements are components of what is called enthusiasm in John Wooden's success pyramid model.

3. Friendship

No matter how much we have achieved, there have always been other people who have helped us achieve them. Friendship is something that facilitates the achievement of any goal and purpose, even in the most formal environments such as the workplace.. Having friends increases enthusiasm, effort and perseverance towards the goal you want to achieve.

4. Loyalty

Loyalty should be, first, with oneself and, then, with other people and goals. Loyalty can be understood in this model as the consistency with what we want to achieve. coherence with what we want to achieve.

5. Cooperation

Cooperation is another aspect that serves as a basis for being successful in what one desires. It involves helping others and being helped. When each person becomes a powerful stimulus for others to be consistent and, in turn, gets more motivation and desire to continue what that person was doing, the ultimate goal is more likely to be achieved.

The body of the pyramid

The second major sector of John Wooden's pyramid of success is the body. Here we would find the values that help one's purpose to be sustained over time. Here we find the following 7 values, corresponding to levels 4 and 3 in most of the infographics on this pyramid:

6. Initiative

You have to have initiative, go for what you want and do not wait for it to come to you by magic.. You must make decisions and take an active role to move forward. Never be afraid of failure, but see it as an opportunity to learn and do better the next time. The one who does not try loses more than the one who tries and fails, because the second one takes something away in the form of learning and experiences.

7. Purpose or intention

Purpose refers to the planning necessary to achieve the goal. It would be the conscious and more or less meticulous roadmap that one must follow to achieve what one has set out to achieve.. This does not mean that it is immovable and inflexible, since the context can change and make it necessary to incorporate certain modifications to that roadmap.

8. Self-monitoring

Self-monitoring can be understood as make a constant effort to maintain equilibrium in difficult moments.. Along the way there will be ups and downs, but if you control yourself and avoid falling into the temptation of laziness, reluctance and surrender, you will achieve much of what you set out to do.

9. Alert

Alertness avoids falling into overconfidence. It is necessary to be aware of any change that may occur, especially when it alters our plans. Objectives are not achieved until they have actually been achieved.. By this we mean that no matter how close we are to it, even if we are only one step away, if we do not take it we will never be able to say that we have achieved what we had proposed.

10. Condition

It is necessary to prepare, learn, develop skills and palliate weaknesses. It is essential to keep ourselves in good physical, psychological and mental shape, regardless of the proposed goal..

For example, if soccer players want to win the next game, in addition to training, they must control their emotions on the day of the game and prepare themselves psychologically so that desperation and nerves do not play a dirty trick on the day they are on the field.

Another would be to pass university exams. You will have to study, but if you take care of your physical health, control your diet, play sports and learn to manage your emotions, you will have a better chance of succeeding in future evaluations.

11. Dexterity and skill

Every task essential to the achievement of our final goal must be practiced as if our life depended on it. Skill is the ally of success and, therefore, the tasks related to our objective should be repeated and practiced until they are done flawlessly, quickly and skillfully..

12. Team spirit or collaboration

Even if the goal we have set is an individual one, we will always need the help of others. We must think collectivelyWe must think collectively, have team spirit and understand that the best goals are those that benefit many other people.

The apex of the pyramid

All the values we have seen up to this point converge at the vertex, resulting in three traits that are fundamental to achieve everything we set out to do. It corresponds to level 2 of some infographics, and contains the following values:

13. Character

In John Wooden's pyramid of success, character is understood as the strength of maintaining all the values of the previous sectors, as well as cultivating and increasing them.. It is also the ability to be authentic in all situations.

14. Trust

Confidence is that each person must believe in his or her own abilities. If this is achieved, it will be a matter of time before the confidence of others is also achieved, and one should never fall into pedantry.

15. Competitiveness

Competitiveness can be understood as knowing how to compete, learning from the most difficult moments and responding with courage and tenacity to challenges. The more difficult the road, the sweeter the final success..

Success

Success is the last level of the pyramid, graphically represented as the top of the pyramid. For John Wooden, this success is summed up in the following sentence:

"Success is the peace of mind that comes as a natural result of the intimate satisfaction achieved in knowing that one did one's best to become the best one is capable of being."

This success can only be judged by oneself.Each person will know if he or she has achieved it or not and what feelings the fact of having achieved it awakens in him or her.

We can extract many things from John Wooden's pyramid of success. Among them, that you cannot reach your goal alone, that you will always need other people, no matter how individual the goal you have set out to achieve is. Cooperation with other people and team spirit are very high and useful values in the achievement of anything we have set out to do.

In addition, we must show enthusiasm all along the way, we must show enthusiasm all along the way, not lose sight of the original roadmap, have a strong character and trust in ourselves, these and many other values being the key to our success.These and many other values are the key to success. We should never be afraid to fail, because from failure we always learn something.