Book Review- LET THEM LEAD: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America’s Worst High School Hockey Team


How do you turn the worst team in sports into one of the best within a few seasons?

This book chronicles the journey of coach John Bacon who took the head coaching job of his alta mater the Ann Arbor Huron High School River Rats in 2000 amidst the 0-22-3 record, the worst in America. In only three years, he turned around this team to achieve a 17-4-5, the best in school history and in the top echelon of sports. This is done with the similar cast of players that have underachieved thus far. The book talks through the lessons Bacon utilized to bring the best in his team and taught them lessons they can use later in life.

What are some of those lessons?

  1. Set high expectation: People want to achieve something great and aiming high means you’re serious.
  2. Make it hard to be part of the team to make it special: This is quite counter-intuitive at first but I love this principle. Making things hard instill pride and togetherness in the group. We see this same principle among the elite special forces and any top sports teams.
  3. Helpful to have middle managers that team initially trust to speed up the process: Turnaround process is hard. Make sure you identify someone in the rank who knows the players/employees and can communicate your message in a more trustworthy and personal manner.
  4. Let the team set their own goals and how to achieve them: Having people set their own goals give them the autonomy to challenge for better and people usually take on that challenge and run with it. Done well, they will step up and exceed your expectation.
  5. Make things fair, keep the discipline but allow for exception: Fairness of the rule and discipline create clear expectation of excellence. However, some flexibility should be reserved for specific deserved cases.
  6. Know that the ultimate goal is more than the wins and the losses: Life is more than the immediate results. Showing the team things that can be gleaned can help bond them together.
  7. Care and trust the team to make them trust you: Creating that trust is so important and it starts with the leader taking time and effort to show they care and trust the team first.
  8. It takes everyone to build and maintain the culture: Build the right culture demands that everyone in the organization contribute in their capacity, not just selected group.

An underdog story is always fun to root for but it is fascinating to glean the lessons from such achievement. If a team can be turned around in such a short time so drastically, there are ways to replicate that in almost all situation and this teaches me some things I’ll remember to implement.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/55959497