From AudioFile
The celebrated college basketball coach explains his success in 26 lessons, each followed by the perspectives of former players who express their own views of Smith's insights and strategies. Smith is a humble genius with as firm a grip on leadership and human relationships as anyone in sports. But the broader value in this work lies in the wisdom of Gerald Bell, a leadership expert and business school professor. After each chapter, his business perspectives offer uncommonly wise summaries of how Smith's lessons can be used off the basketball court. While staying connected to the theme of each lesson, Dr. Bell offers original insights on personality and group dynamics, along with compelling examples of these principles in a variety of business settings. An unforgettable lesson for leaders in all walks of life. T.W. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
Smith won more games (875) than any other coach in college-basketball history. His teams at North Carolina were characterized by unselfishness, preparedness, and basketball intelligence. It's not surprising that Smith has a few cogent thoughts to offer on the matter of leadership. He begins by explaining what leadership means to him. Then former players comment on the concept as Smith applied it during their careers. Next, he tailors his lesson to a business application. Among the topics he explores are teamwork, winning, losing, planning for the future, building confidence, and setting goals. "Successful-coach-offers-business-advice" books are a publishing staple, but too often they consist of little more than commonsense platitudes mixed with some playing-field anecdotes. Smith breaks the pattern here, thanks in large part to his understanding that business isn't basketball, and direct correlations between sport and real life are often specious. It's apparent that Smith would have found success in virtually any field he'd chosen as his life's work. Readers will sit up and pay attention because the coach has something to say. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The most successful coach in college basketball history, and among the most beloved, offers his comprehensive program for building and maintaining winning teams in sports, business, and life.

For almost forty years, Dean Smith coached the University of North Carolina basketball team with unsurpassed success, both in victories won and in shaping the lives of the players he led. Well known are the Michael Jordans, Kenny Smiths, and George Karls, but overall more than 96 percent of Dean Smith's players earned their undergraduate degrees, and more than 33 percent earned graduate or professional degrees. Now, in The Carolina Way, Coach Smith fully explains his entire coaching philosophy and shows readers how to apply it to the leadership and team-building challenges in their own lives.

In his wry, sensible, wise way, Coach Smith takes us through every aspect of his program, illustrating his insights with vivid stories. Accompanying each major point is a "Player Perspective" from a former North Carolina basketball star and an in-depth "Business Perspective" developing some of the wider applications of Smith's precepts from Gerald D. Bell, a world-renowned leadership consultant and a professor at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School.

Each year Coach Smith gave his team the same three goals:

PLAY HARD: Insist on consistent effort. The final result is often outside your control. Create a system that demands effort, rewards it, and punishes its absence.

PLAY SMART: Execute properly. Understand and consistently execute the fundamentals. Reward their execution and punish their absence.

PLAY TOGETHER: Play unselfishly. Don't focus on individual statistics. Recruit unselfish players, reward unselfish play, and punish selfish play and showboating.

Coach Smith taught all his teams that if they kept their focus on these three goals, winning would take care of itself. And more times than any other coach in history, he was right.

FROM THE CRITICS

He's a better coach of basketball than anyone else. (John Wooden)

Author Bio&58;Dean Smith became head coach of the University of North Carolina's basketball team at age thirty, and in thirty-six years in that position, he established coaching records that will likely long remain unbroken. His 879 victories are the most by any coach in college basketball history. In 2000, an ESPN panel of experts named him one of the seven greatest coaches of the twentieth century in any sport. Smith also coached the 1976 U.S. Olympic basketball team, which won the gold medal. He is the author of A Coach's Life.

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