The servant leadership of John Wooden.

The purpose of this case study was to discover to what extent, if any, Coach John Wooden's leadership style demonstrates servant leadership.

Hammermeister, Baldwin, Chase, and Westre (2007) state that many authors are calling for new models of leadership in sports settings and conclude that athletes being coached by a servant-leader had an increase in motivation, had higher mental acuity, and were more satisfied with their sports experience.

Similar to coaches, leaders of business and nonprofit organizations are searching for new skills and better ways to lead.

Spears (1998) indicates that there is a shift in this new century from a traditional autocratic and hierarchical style of leadership to more of a leadership style that promotes teamwork and community; includes others in decision making; and has clear ethical and caring characteristics with a goal of improving the personal growth of workers.

This study utilized a qualitative methodology to examine and decode the historical data concerning John Wooden's leadership style to determine whether his style is consistent with the 10 servant leadership characteristics for this study, which are based upon the 10 tenets of servant leadership, as framed and defined by Robert Greenleaf (1977).

The study involved an exhaustive search of both primary sources written by John Wooden and secondary sources written about him.

These sources were color coded, segregated, and analyzed into the 10 characteristics of servant leadership themes to document the leadership style of John Wooden.

Based upon the analysis of numerous primary and secondary leadership literature sources, with a focus on the richness and quality of the information in addressing each research question, the evidence demonstrated that John Wooden's leadership style is consistent with 9 of 10 (90%) characteristics of servant leadership that were defined for this study.

There was a limitation in available literature to demonstrate conclusively that John Wooden's leadership style is consistent with 1 of the 10 characteristics, healing.

Most notably, the findings showed that John Wooden has a strong affinity towards the growth of people, which is also one of the servant leadership characteristics defined for this study.