Bill Walsh Quotes - Page 2

Your attitude will unlock the mystery of success you seek!

Your enthusiasm becomes their enthusiasm; your lukewarm presentation becomes their lukewarm interest in what you're offering.

Innovation involves anticipation. It is having a broad base of knowledge on your subject and an ability to see where the end game is headed. Use all your knowledge to get their first. Set the trend and make the competition counter you

The [best] coaches... know that the job is to win... know that they must be decisive, that they must phase people through their organizations, and at the same time they are sensitive to the feelings, loyalties, and emotions that people have toward one another. If you don't have these feelings, I do not know how you can lead anyone. I have spent many sleepless nights trying to figure out how I was going to phase out certain players for whom I had strong feelings, but that was my job. I wasn't hired to do anything but win.

One of the common traits of outstanding performers-coaches, athletes, managers, sales representatives, executives, and others who face a daily up/down, win/lose accounting system-is that a rejection, that is, defeat, is quickly forgotten, replaced eagerly by pursuit of a new order, client, or opponent.

If you see players who hate practice, their coach isn't doing a very good job.

There is another side [to ego] that can wreck a team or an organization. That is being distracted by your own importance. It can come from your insecurity in working with others. It can be the need to draw attention to yourself in the public arena. It can be a feeling that others are a threat to your own territory. These are all negative manifestations of ego, and if you are not alert to them, you get diverted and your work becomes diffused. Ego in these cases makes people insensitive to how they work with others and it ends up interfering with the real goal of any group efforts.

The absolute bottom line in coaching is organization and preparing for practice.

Victory is produced by and belongs to all.

Flying by the seat of your pants precedes crashing by the seat of your pants.

Calculated risks are part of what you do, but the idea that something completely crazy will work just because it's completely crazy is completely crazy.

As the leader, part of the job is to be visible and willing to communicate with everyone

Strong leaders don't plead with individuals to perform.

To a winner, complacency and overconfidence can be destructive. To losers, desperation and despondency are just as harmful.

We have a lot of players in their first year. Some of them are also in their last year.

"Extra effort," in whatever form it takes (mental, physical, emotional), cannot be sustained without eventual damage and diminishing returns. There has to be a very acute awareness on your part as to the level of exertion and the toll it's taking on those you lead.

Act like a VIP and become a VIP

Consistent motivation usually comes from a consuming desire to be able to perform at your best under pressure, namely, the pressure produced by tough competition. If a player needed me to light a fire under him by turning the other team into a demon, he was lacking something I couldn't give him.

We all know gifs are pronounced "jifs," right? Their creator says so, damn it!

A burro is an ass. A burrow is a hole in the ground. As a journalist you are expected to know the difference.

A harsh reality of newspaper editing is that the deadlines don't allow for the polish that you expect in books or even magazines

Everybody isn't everybody.

There is a weird phenomenon where technology seems to be getting dumber in some ways as it gets smarter.

By instinct we-leaders-want to run hard all the time; by intellect we know this is not possible. Reconciling those two positions in the context of leadership is an ongoing challenge.

If I have any talent, it's in the artistic end of football. The variation of movement of 11 players and the orchestration of that facet of football is beautiful to me.