Video: Wisdom from Coach Nolan Richardson

A clip of former Arkansas Basketball Coach Nolan Richardson’s Hall-of-Fame induction speech re-surfaced on social media last week — and it provides some valuable leadership lessons for us all.

Richardson shared a story about driving with the radio on while listening to a college basketball game between Indiana State and New Mexico State, two teams he’d never seen. Richardson explained how being from El Paso and playing at Texas Western, he always had a reason to root against nearby New Mexico State. During the game, Richardson said, the announcer kept describing this incredible player, named Bird. Every time down the court, this Bird did something to make the announcer speak glowingly of his talent, and Richardson kept imagining what he saw as the miles passed. The entire broadcast was a Bird love fest, and Indiana State won easily. By the end of the game, Richardson said to himself: “Damn, that brother can play.”

The next morning, Richardson, ever the curious coach, dove headfirst into the paper to read about the game and learn more about this Bird. When he saw Larry Bird's picture, he was not what he had imagined. Like all of us at times, Richardson had visualized something in his mind that proved to be false. He violated the first rule of collecting information: “Never begin with the end in mind.”

This story is not about race or perceptions, but rather how we must always untrain our minds when we begin any new project. We cannot allow our heads to be cluttered with data points from the past as they often lead us to develop the wrong ideas. We always need to recycle our minds, cleanse our initial thoughts and behave in more open-minded fashion. When we actively search for reasons that our initial thoughts might be incorrect, we then work until we have found the right answers, which are often not the answers we thought all along.

Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway fame has followed this practice his entire life.

“Part of the reason I've been a little more successful than most people is I'm good at destroying my own best-loved ideas... I'm pleased when I can destroy an idea that I've worked very hard on over a long time,” he once said. “And most people aren't. I know how much power and wealth is in it, so I like it. Plus, that's enlightenment. Power, wealth and enlightenment."

What we visualize or believe to be true might not always be correct. Coach Richardson provided an invaluable lesson of this to us all.