Dan Hurley is the head men’s basketball coach at the University of Connecticut. He won back-to-back NCAA championships in 2023 and 2024. He tells his story and shares his leadership philosophies in his new book Never Stop: Life, Leadership, and What It Takes to Be Great, written with Ian O’Connor. Read my review of the book here.
Here are 20 of Hurley’s leadership lessons from the book:
- Teaching them to be disciplined, to grow their minds as students while also growing their games, to build great relationships and be passionate about life. That’s me caring about them.
- I wanted to teach as much as I could, as quickly as I could, mature them and get them ready for the big, bad world.
- It was always also about giving them the mental toughness they need to be successful.
- I try to be a role model for my players—in every way. I walk it before I ever talk it. That’s a big reason why I get the buy-in.
In the organization that I worked at, there were three “Obligations of Leadership” for all of our leaders. They were: drive results, build a high performing work environment and develop people. I believe that’s a good summation of what the obligations of each leader should be. However, the achievement of each of these obligations was not rewarded equally. What I tended to see was that those who drove results were rewarded and recognized at a higher level than those who built a high performing work environment or those who excelled at developing others. And as important as those latter things are, organizations pay leaders to drive results and move their organizations forward. In our series on leadership attributes, we now look at the importance of leaders driving results. A leader who is results driven excels in many leadership attributes and competencies. Briefly, here are 10 of them: 
Our Father in Heaven,
Project Hail Mary, rated PG-13
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