Winner Within: A Life Plan for Team Players FROM THE PUBLISHER
Not only is Pat Riley one of pro basketball's winningest coaches, but his speeches before hundreds of corporations, from ARCO to AT&T to Toyota, have earned him the title of "America's Greatest Motivational Speaker." The Winner Within is his formula for success. It is a book about winning, leadership, mastery, change, and personal growth, based on understanding and controlling the shifting dynamics of a team - any team, whether it is a small company or a giant corporation, a family, a city, or a group of athletes. How does a struggling team form a covenant to work together instead of separately? How does a successful team battle complacency? How does any team overcome the thunderbolts that strike out of the blue? Drawing upon the great teachers and his own experiences in and out of sports, interweaving them with dozens of parallels and stories from business and society, Riley shows how to ride the cycles of team change, balance role players and stars, build solid foundations, break through self-imposed barriers, create change within continuity, and nurture cooperation within competition. "All of my contacts and experiences have proved to me, over and over again, that the complex inner rhythms of teamwork - flows of ambition, power, cooperation, and emotion - are the keys to making dreams come true," says Riley, and in The Winner Within, he provides the tools, insights, and plan of action to help master those rhythms. It is a book of universal power and scope - a new classic of the literature.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
In the 1940s, mathematician John von Neumann developed ``game theories'' utilizing models taken from games of strategies and chance. In the 1980s, basketball coach Riley ( Showtime ) called on these ideas and others to craft his own theories about motivation, selfishness, teamwork, complacency, winning and ``choking'' that have lead to NBA championships and ``Coach of the Decade'' honors. Here he outlines his theories, and recounts his successes and infrequent failures with the Lakers and the Knicks in a superb, candid study. Yet Riley also maintains that his concepts work in large and small businesses. He provides vivid examples of how the ``winner within'' each of us can adapt his ideas to all types of team play, whether in the sports arena, in daily life, or in the marketplace. This book should have wide appeal among sports fans, coaches and people looking for realistic managerial practices useful to non-experts. (Sept.)
Library Journal
Riley, the coach of the New York Knicks and the author of Show Time ( LJ 8/88), combines popular trends in business management, including team-building, with highlights from his two-decade association with professional basketball to produce a readable and inspirational guide for any coach, manager, and team member. Riley provides glimpses of the role played by the emotional side of basketball in winning and losing. He interweaves these experiences, mainly from playoff and championship games, with sound management principles and examples from the business world to illustrate his team-building leadership philosophy. Along the way, he tells some wonderful basketball stories. This book will appeal to a wide audience. Recommended for all public and secondary school libraries. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/93.-- Andrea C. Dragon, Coll. of St. Elizabeth, Convent Station, N.J.
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