Communication Basics: My Most Famous Mentor

My Most Famous Mentor

It is hard to choose any one person from those who have mentored me, but my most famous mentor is former UCLA Bruins Head Coach, John Wooden.  I think he chose to mentor me because of my “famous” landlords in the LA area, Rod and Marge Rood.

Rod had been a personal friend of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower.   Rod signed the papers in France for the 1984 Olympics to come to LA.   Marge is personal friends with people like Vin Scully.  These two UCLA alumni were incredibly generous people.  So I want everyone to understand they gave me unimaginable open doors.  It was like that magical closet in that movie.  I hope I have been grateful enough for all that they gave me. 

Coach Wooden was a very generous man himself.    He answered me two major questions as a coach.  The first was this: “What are the fundamentals of basketball?”  The second was this: “Should I be coaching or should I be doing something else with my career?”  I know personally why his former players all look up to him. 

His answer to the first question was his “Pyramid of Success”.  It consists of 15 building blocks of success.  I have been privileged now to take those 15 blocks and then add his favorite four letter word – love – to create an action packed diamond from it.  The diamond pictures better the advantage of the traction of action that should increase everyone’s mental health.  

His answer to my second question was his life story of coming from Indiana.  He wanted to pursue baseball, but coming out of Indiana he naturally became a basketball coach.  I guess that is why coming from Wisconsin and the land of Vince Lombardi, I naturally chose football over all the rest. 

 I hope you will take time to benefit especially from Coach Wooden's "Pyramid of Success".  I'll wait and see if my "Diamond of Action Success" will advance his brilliance to yet another level.

Take care.

Sincerely,

Jon

Communication Basics: My Common Sense Foundation and My Path to It

The foundation for my communication basics is in common sense that is not very technical, but my journey has taken me through some of the technical materials and I just want to share some of that journey that might provoke discussion among the specialist and the experts.  The main thing is to follow the common sense argument.  But before it developed, I learned quite a bit from the following teachers (only 2 -3 I never met or talked directly to) at higher levels of learning.

In the 80s, there was first John S. Piper, Tom Steller, William A. Smalley, Lois Malcolm, Donald N. Larson, and James Hurd.  Later came B. Wayne Johnson, Claude Bowen, Dale Carnegie, Paul J. Meyer, and Peter F. Drucker.

In the 90s, it was Drucker (again), Daniel P. Fuller, Robert "Bobby" Clinton, Eugene A. Nida, Rick Warren, and Wooden.  Later came David Schierenbeck, Robert Stein, Gary A. Smith, Thomas A. Schreiner, David Clark, and James Brooks.

In the 2000s, it was David Sulack, Galen Call, Rick Thoman, Roger Lutz, Millard Erickson, and Nils Friberg.  Later it was Dwight Perry, Roger Buck, Tom Collins, Darrell Amacker , Steve Pedersen ,and Walter Kaiser.

Since 2010, it was Kaiser (again), Arnold Klukas, Allen P. Ross, Garwood Anderson, Stephen Peay, and Thomas L. Holtzen.  The later remains to be seen the future.  It will likely include Hopp, etc.

In 2010, I first began to use materials directly addressing the issue of emotions.  Before that time, I was mostly familiar with Dan Goleman's book, Emotional Intelligence.  In 2010, I began using the emotion wheel developed by Plutchik and even tried to develop my own emotional charts based on my logic tool that I learned over a period from the early 80s and began to use very frequently from 2004 forward.

Here is how I viewed the emotions in 2010:

[intentionally left out until after my book is published later in 2014]

Here is how I would chart them today:

[intentionally left out until after my book is published later in 2014]


It is in late 2013, that I realized the common sense level support for my ideas.  It was November 18th, 2013 to be more exact.  The idea is that the greatest words are in one sense the least when it comes to foundational support and that the least words are the greatest whose very high frequency we take for granted makes them the real basis especially for the logic of language, but also for the emotions.

 For the emotions a great example is that of anger and our use of the words "let" and the words "not ... let".  For any one of the emotions there are basic words like these that show the great importance of addressing not only the logic of the brain, but also its emotion.

So the next time someone says that this is all so simple, or why didn't I see it sooner, they need to consider sometimes you travel through the complex and high level to reach the simple and low level.  I only hope that from this point forward more can find the simple and low level road first.  I took the high road, but taking the low road first is the best way to learn.  The other route nearly killed me a few times!  Take care.

Sincerely,

Jon