Book Review-Let Them Lead By John U. Bacon

I don't know who got me interested in this book, but I was drawn in through the sports aspect of it.  The author of this book coached hockey at the Huron High School in Ann Arbor MI, he was an alum. He is also a well-known business book writer. Which gave me pause because I am not generally a fan of that genre. Nothing against John U Bacon but I am wary of  leadership books written as if leadership can be taught by taking short cuts,  recipes and formulas. I am of the belief that just reciting superficial recipes and formulas is not just inadequate, but it is defrauding the readers as they seek wisdom from the business book genre. 

I had never read any of John U.  Bacon’s other books so I didn't know what to expect, but the title intrigued me as I also believe that the best course to take as a coach is to train my players to take charge, to train them to be leaders. I jumped into this book despite my own misgivings. I hoped  to gain some insight into the mind of the author through  reading the stories and hoping to harvest ideas for my own coaching.  

He first got my attention when he quoted one of my favorite bands, Yes, in the very beginning of the book, I know, it doesn't take much. But as I read, I started to be drawn into the narrative. His descriptions of his teams, their travails ,and how he managed to get these players to buy into his program were familiar and I sympathized, as I had similar experiences in coaching. His emphasis on having achievable vision, convincing his players to buy into that vision, and coaxing them into playing the leading role in creating their own legacy is a philosophy I share. As the title suggests, the main theme in this book is to convince the reader that the leadership and motivation to achieve a vision resides with the players, the people who have the most skin in the game. As I read, I began to understand where the author is coming from. And my admiration for him grew overtime as I started to delve deeper into book. He laid out his lessons succinctly by letting the reader know the main points that he wished to convey at the beginning and end of each chapter. He did so without commenting on how hard it was going to be nor by answering the question of “How does one achieve these lessons?” This kind of presentation bothered me a bit, as that is exactly the reason for my antipathy towards the business genre. But I was somewhat placated by the narrative and the vividness of the stories that he told. While I am still not completely convinced that this is the best way to communicate the lessons, it is the most entertaining way to do so, especially in this case. This is the generally accepted structure of the business book, lay out what needs to be said, illustrate the points with anecdotes, and then expect the readers to piece together what needs to be done without having been shown how. What helped the author is that he is a very good storyteller; that is more than half the battle: convincing your audience by giving them a great story.

The book is separated into three parts: First, second, and third year; each with its own tagline: Changing the Culture, Building Trust, and Giving Control. Each part is again split into a number of chapters, each chapter dealing with a particular lesson which falls under the theme of the parts.

What made the lessons palpable and memorable was the narrative, and the fact that  he was able to get the players as well as his assistant coaches’ perspectives to flesh out his stories and make the stories whole. I appreciated that effort because prevented the key component, the stories, to becoming a soliloquy from him, one that had become rose colored through the years. Those statements by the players and assistant coaches were powerful testamentsbecause they weren't just statements from young kids, they are statements from grown men who had lived a life beyond their teen years, players who had time to think and appreciate their experience from the  perspective of having hindsight.

The haplessness of the team that he inherited is laid out in full in the beginning of the book. They were winless for a couple seasons, they had little tradition, they had little school pride; in fact  the players resorted to gallows humor to obscure their own embarrassment. The first two parts of the book describes the drastic steps the author took to start the transformation.   He had only two rules: work hard and support your teammates, they are the only two rules he needed. Even though they are simple, the power of those two rules can be applied in any situation; they were simple but all encompassing.

The third part of the book is where he makes the case for the title of the book. The first two parts sets the stage for him and his coaching staff. Part three would not be successful unless they were successful in parts 1 and 2. There is a connecting theme in all three parts of the book.

There are many things to like about this book:  the unwavering commitment to a vision and to a set of principles, the stories that the author chose to illustrate his points are very well thought out and brilliantly written. It seemed that just about every vignette from every chapter brought me to tears because these snapshots of the team’s journey together emphasized the pertinent lessons as well as tore at my deeply help beliefs. Through his description of the players and their interaction, the reader can sense that there's a love that he has for his players as seen through his eyes and told through his voice that is more than just a coach-player relationship.

One of the lessons late in the book was: all the credit goes to the other people. He told a famous story about Herb Brooks, during the 1980 Olympics when USA team beat the Russians. Brooks made sure he left the celebration to the players because the moment belonged to the players and went back to the locker room to weep his own happy tears. This perfectly illustrated the point that the feats are accomplished by those who had the most skin in the game and it is best for the coach to stand in the darkness of backstage, no loess joyous but out of the limelight.

This book was remarkable, I truly enjoyed it.  It has been my habit to take notes in the nonfiction books that I am working on so that I can come back  I can condense my notes into a cogent review because I can use it for my own coaching. I chose not to do this when I started reading this book because I just wanted something to read to inspire me, to motivate me, and to make me excited about coaching; and I was sure that since the author’s philosophy seemed to be so in tune with mine, that what I could learn would not be enough for me to note. My own hubris in not taking notes was a bad mistake. I am now having to go back through the book to mark those pearls of wisdom.

I believe that this is a book that needs to be read for all coaches in all sports at all levels.

The part of the book that I most enjoyed was when he talked about his former players and the pride with which he recited their accomplishments after that seasons that they played for him. He recounts them like they were his own children, which really is why we all coach.

John U. Bacon had an idea, and that idea was that it is best to let the players lead themselves because that is when true leadership reveals itself, it teaches the young what being a leader involves, and it is a selfless act of altruism. He also speaks of the hardships and difficulties that his approach entails, that the work is not easy, but worthy of the effort. In the end, I learned from John U. Bacon, despite my bias against business books, mainly because he tells a great story and he does not sugar coat the arduousness of the journey.

Mentors-John Uyemura

John Uyemura and I met under the most awkward of circumstances. He was an associate professor at Georgia Tech when I was a graduate Teaching Assistant

I taught an electric motors lab section that met late in the afternoon/early evening, when most of the people in the building had left for the day. I brought in a radio to while away the time in the lab and to keep the students entertained. The students in my section loved it and I got to be the cool TA. John barged into the lab one afternoon with a full head of steam and reading me the riot act for playing the radio too loud and disturbing his late lecture, that was how we met. It was an inauspicious start to our friendship.

John had a reputation as being one of the most intense and hard-core professors at the electrical engineering department. He was the hotshot young professor, specializing in burgeoning area of integrated circuit design and manufacturing, and was instrumental in getting the chip fabrication lab funded and built when the ECE department put in the facility.

He was so intense and demanding that he was both feared and admired by students because he was a relentless perfectionist. Praise from John Uyemura was a badge of honor amongst both the undergrads and gradual students. John was also responsible for and taught some of his very popular classes on a Tuesday/Thursday cycle. These classes lasted an hour and a half per session and counted for three credit hours, those classes were so cutting edge  that they were some of the earliest classes tapped for inclusion in the continuing education program and were taught in studio-like lecture halls because they were being recorded.  The hour and a half class had a built-in break in the middle of the lectures so that people can regroup and refocus because they didn’t think the audience could sit for an hour and a half in front of a monitor. One problem for John was that he was a chain smoker, which meant that he was in complete misery while he lectured because they wouldn't allow anyone to smoke in the auditorium. He would lecture for 45 minutes, take advantage of the break to go outside the building to light up a cigarette. According to one of his gradual students, he would inhale half the cigarette in one breath.

Some of my friends were his gradual students, both masters and PhD level; they loved him because he was intense, very active as an advisor, diligent in  pushing his graduate students very hard while also maintaining a mentoring relationship with them.

I was leery of him after that initial meeting, and I made it a point to stay away from him. It wasn’t until after I became a PhD student that we became friends. John used to be one of the sponsors of EPAR, the Extended Period of Attitude Readjustment. It was a regular and famous gathering of professors and students, mostly gradual students with some brave undergraduate souls who crashed the party. It always took place at a local drinking establishment near the Georgia Tech campus at the end of each academic quarter, right before finals. A select group of professors would chip in on a pot and pay for free beers and pizzas until the money ran out. The time and location of the EPAR is usually passed by word of mouth. Most gradual students lived for EPAR: free beer and pizza, what’s not to love, and a chance to hobnob with professors was a great attraction. The scuttlebutt network amongst the gradual students came alive as the date approached. It was also a test of the undergraduate student’s courage and gumption because no official invitation was ever extended, so they had to be in the know to find out the particulars of the party. If I remember correctly, the key faculty members were Professors Gaylord, Uyemura, Sayle, Verriest, and a rotating cast of others. This was where John and I got to know each other better. We slowly became friendly.

I appreciated the fact that John was a bibliophile par excellence, while I was just on my initial forays into my tsundoku habit. He was of Japanese ancestry, and  I am Chinese, so we had a lot to talk about, comparing our experiences, and more importantly, sharing our list of favorite Asian restaurants in Atlanta. This was during the 1980s and 1990s when the Asian diaspora was settling into Atlanta. There were a lot of Asian restaurants opening so we would share notes on Japanese sushi places, Vietnamese pho places, Chinese dim sum places, and Korean noodle places. We  talked about music, we talked about politics, and we talked anything and everything under the sun. Sometimes we would talk in the hallways, sometimes in his book lined office.  

As I was getting ready to graduate after too many years as a gradual student, John would counsel me about the various job interviews that I would have. One day he grab me in the hallway and  I went into his office. He asked, in extreme seriousness:  What do you think you're doing? I asked:  What do you mean? He asked again:  What do you think you're doing running around the country?  I said that I was interviewing for jobs. What  kind of jobs? Academic jobs I said,  I want to be a professor. He looked me square in the eyes and said in as serious a tone as possible: do you know what a professor does in the United States? I said: I see what you guys do;  I'm surrounded by it. He replies: you don't know what I do. Do you know what tenure entails? I repeated the standard story told to young faculty members:  you are evaluated by three sets of activities: teaching, research, and service. He said: teaching doesn't count in the tenure process. He said: “ If you think that being a professor means you teach, and  if you want to be a teacher then being a professor is the wrong thing to do, especially in a Tier 1 research institution like Georgia Tech”. He continues: “ I do all the crap work of writing proposals, where a 10% hit rate is considered great; I get none of the fun or satisfaction of doing the research. He said, “I spend all of my time writing proposals trying to get funding for my graduate students to have all the fun and satisfaction of doing the research”. “I spend the rest of my time serving on interminable committees for the university or the department. I raely teach, I use my research grants to buy my way out of teaching because I just don't have time to teach like I want to teach. When I do teach, I put my all into the class, but those days are rare now.”

His plain talk sobered me up and opened my eyes to what was happening around me. Confirmation bias had blinded me to the kind of ethos that surrounded me.  I understood  that research was important but did not understand how skewed the process was towards bringing in funding. This conversation took place after I had interviewed for a faculty job in the Naval Postgraduate School, whose department head was one of John’s grad school friends at Cal Berkeley. The interview did not go well, partially because I was very naïve in my conversation with the faculty there. While teaching was more important at the NPS than at a research university, my myopia about the reality of being a faculty member was passed on to John and  that was the impetus for the plain talk.

My plans changed after talking to John,  I had a really hard think over a period of weeks, and I started to apply for industry jobs. I figured that if I was going to do anything,  I didn't want to be working on writing proposals for others to do research in my stead.

After I did my defense, I went to John's office, and I thanked him. I was scheduled to report to an  industry job the following month. I shook his hand and I thanked him for being my friend, for all of his wise counsel, for all the conversations that made me appreciate my time in gradual school, but I didn't tell him what I really wanted to tell him, which was that he changed my life because he cared enough to open up my eyes. I wanted to thank him for being friend enough to let me have it, for caring enough to give me that tough talk, for pointing out to me that I was headed in the wrong direction, that I was probably going to be miserable in the fantasy situation that I was convinced was perfect for me at that time.

Unfortunately, I won’t have the chance to truly thank him, for John suddenly passed away after I had graduated. The news of his passing struck me as a lightning bolt to the heart. I couldn’t sleep that night, knowing that I had never thanked him properly for doing me the greatest favor that a friend can do for a friend. I lament that I would never get to talk and laugh with my friend, and most importantly, the world and I lost a truly great human being.

One last anecdote about John. I had mentioned that he was a chain smoker of long standing. One day, he just quit cold turkey. He never gave any signs that he was considering that choice for his health. We all found out why he quit in the manner that he quit, when he excitedly told us that he was going to be a father for the first time, and he did it all for the baby and for his wife. That is the kind of guy he was.

I still miss not talking to him, all these many years later.