Quotes from Reach for the Summit: The Definite Dozen System for Succeeding at Whatever You Do by Pat Summitt w/ Sally Jenkins
- Respect Yourself and Others
- Take Full Responsibility
- Develop and Demonstrate Loyalty
- Learn to Be a Great Communicator
- Discipline Yourself So No One Else Has To
- Make Hard Work Your Passion
- Don’t Just Work Hard, Work Smart
- Put the Team Before Yourself
- Make Winning an Attitude
- Be a Competitor
- Change Is a Must
- Handle Success Like You Handle Failure
1. Respect Yourself and Others
“Any realistic formula must include five things: people, system, communication, work ethic, and discipline…I’ve always believed you win with people. You cannot succeed at any level without talented people around you.”
“Respect is essential to building group cohesion. People who do not respect others will not make good team members, and they probably lack self-esteem themselves. You don’t have to like each other. But you do have to respect your colleagues’ opinions and decisions, because your personal success depends on commitment to the overall plan and doing your part to make it work.”
“The foremost thing we require from our players, before anything else, is that they make good eye contact. To me, eye contact is a sign of both self-respect and mutual respect – it demonstrates that you are confident enough to look at the person who is speaking and that you will give her your full attention.”
“Our leaders are our floor coaches, they are the players I am most dependent on and hardest on. They are also the players I frequently think the most of, and they are often the players I become closest to in the end. I can’t wear a uniform and go out there on the floor, so I need them to be an extension of me. Abby’s most critical responsibility as a leader was to back me up, no matter what. If she wasn’t going to respect our game plan, no one else was.”
“My dad and my brothers wouldn’t do any work around the house, whether it was make their beds, or work in the garden, or mow the lawn. They just worked the farm, that was it. But my mother did the cooking and the ironing and the cleaning, and the milking, and worked the garden, and worked in the store, and in the dry cleaners. When my dad got into the house-building business, my mother was the one who painted the houses and laid the carpets. Looking back on it, I don’t think anyone in the family worked as hard as my mother or got less credit for it.”
“Sports, it struck me, could be a vital avenue to self-worth for women. It was for me. That shows you what a game can do: It can teach you to explore and broaden your capabilities…unfettered play affords the experience of excellence, both physically and mentally. It is too critical for personal development to deny it to half the population.”
“Dressing appropriately for a role can help you play it better…I care about clothes and other external things because they help form a perception, but I also care about them because I want to know that things are right, whether we’re talking about my shoes or my grammar. My quest for self-improvement has never really ended.”
“Hard work breeds self-respect.”
“Self-respect can be hard won. I know. It’s an ongoing process. Take it from me – someone who still wears a retainer at night. But once you attain it, it will bear you up through almost anything, whether you’re dealing with a difficult parent, teasing from others, self-doubt, or ordinary work tensions. In critical situations, we all ask ourselves the same silent questions: “Do I deserve to succeed?” Under pressure, uncertainty can creep into the subconscious of even the most outwardly confident person – including me. A crafty little sucker sits in your head and whispers in your ear. If you haven’t developed self-respect and mutual respect with those around you, the whisper is, “Deep down you know you don’t deserve it.”
“So the next time you ask yourself, “Do I deserve to succeed?” make sure the answer is yes.”
2. Take Full Responsibility
“To be successful, you must accept full responsibility. For everything. Headaches, problems, crises. Even when it doesn’t seem fair. And here’s part two: The more successful you are, the most responsibility you must assume. Responsibility never ends. It’s not a step. Or just a chapter. You don’t finish it and then move on to something more fun or interesting. Responsibility is a constant state of being.”
“It’s a staggering responsibility to have the care and feeding of other people’s children for four years. Oftentimes I feel like my heart is on an elevator; it’s either lodged in my throat or dropping into my shoes, on their account. So I’m not exaggerating when I tell you they become like daughters to me.”
“When you sit in the big chair, you must make tough, unpopular decisions, because you are responsible for the group and the greater good. It’s the absolute worst part of having authority. I’m not going to lie to you about that. If you don’t have the stomach for unpleasant tasks, for firing people, fighting battles, or breaking bad news – and doing it forthrightly – you shouldn’t be in that position. In a management job, every knock on your door represents a potential problem. Every single one. As a manager you are responsible.”
“One hundred percent of the players who have remained at Tennessee for four years have received their degrees.
The statistic I’m almost as proud of, though, is that twenty-four of our former players or staffers have become coaches at the collegiate and high school level. Twelve of them are collegiate head coaches. I’ll tell you why I’m proud of that. Because what it says is that Tennessee doesn’t just produce great players. We turn out people who are capable of assuming that kind of responsibility.”
“We don’t start out responsible, none of us do. It’s something that must be taught, and it can be self-taught too. How do you learn it? There’s just one way. By taking on responsibility and forcing yourself to cope with it.”
“In order to grow, you must accept new responsibilities, no matter how uncertain you may feel or how unprepared you are to deal with them. Unless, of course, you want to do the same thing day after day, for the rest of your life. If comfort is what you’re seeking, then don’t aspire. Ambition is uncomfortable by definition.”
“The best way to handle responsibility is to break it down into smaller parts. Take care of one small thing at a time.”
“Sometimes I wish they would just tell you: “Coach, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.””
“The smaller and more clearly articulated someone’s job is, the easier it is to fulfill. The most complicated plan of action becomes simple if you break it down properly.
But the key is to make people accountable for their piece of the puzzle. The only effective way to teach responsibility to younger people is by making them accountable for the small things, day in and day out. A lot of people like to say “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” But I do, I sweat the small stuff. Like my father with that hay, I sweat the small things, and I make our players accountable for them, too, because they are habit-forming.”
“…you don’t just take shots for yourself. You take them for the whole team. That’s the kind of responsibility we try to instill.”
“When players have input into establishing their own rules, suddenly the rules are “ours” and not mine. And they’ll be responsible to each other, rather than solely to me…when it’s theirs, they feel more accountable for its success or failure, and they do whatever it takes to help it succeed.
I’d much prefer that the team be accountable to each other than to me. It’s a far more powerful method of team-building.”
“Responsibility equals accountability equals ownership. And a sense of ownership is the most powerful weapon a team or organization can have.”
“At Tennessee we increase our players’ responsibilities to each other slowly, incrementally, over four years. By the time our players are seniors, we assign them mentoring roles; they each have the personal charge of an incoming freshman. They are responsible for seeing that their freshman gets to class and eats lunch. They are responsible for calling in the evening to see if she has any questions or problems.”
“Accountability is essential to personal growth, as well as team growth. How can you improve if you’re never wrong? If you don’t admit a mistake and take responsibility for it, you’re bound to make the same one again.”
3. Develop and Demonstrate Loyalty
“The single most common reason organizations self-destruct is disloyalty, especially when they are made up of young people who have a tendency to talk behind each other’s backs.”
“…sports psychologist, Dr. Nina Elliott, we held a team meeting in which all of the players and coaches brought in pictures of their families. We sat together and showed our pictures and talked about our parents and brothers and sisters, and described how we grew up . Some of us cried. At the end of that meeting we all knew each other a lot better. We had created a support group.”
“I insist on being just “Pat” to our players and staff. I like the way it sounds when you hear it. It sounds like you can come into my office and talk to me. You might not be comfortable talking to Coach, or Head Coach, or Mrs. Summit. I wouldn’t confide in someone I called “Coach.” But I would in “Pat.”