The Learning To Lead Show with Mark J. Cundiff

#36 Leadership, Perseverance, and the Miracle of J-Mac with Coach Jim Johnson

• Mark Cundiff

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Leadership, Perseverance, and the Miracle of J-Mac with Coach Jim Johnson

In this inspiring episode of The Learning to Lead Show, Mark Cundiff sits down with Coach Jim Johnson to explore powerful leadership lessons forged through adversity, trust, teamwork, and perseverance. Coach Johnson shares his journey as a high school basketball coach, the challenges of leading through a divided season, and the pivotal moment when vulnerability helped unite his team.

The conversation also highlights the unforgettable story of Jason “J-Mac” McElwain—an autistic team manager whose four miraculous minutes on senior night became one of the most inspiring moments in sports history. Along the way, Coach Johnson unpacks practical lessons on passion, mission, goal setting, servant leadership, team culture, trust, and personal growth.

This episode is a moving reminder that great leadership is not just about winning games—it is about believing in people, bringing teams together, and leaving every place better than you found it.

If this episode encouraged you, be sure to share it and leave a rating so more leaders can discover The Learning to Lead Show.



Connect with Coach Jim Johnson:

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🔎 About LeaderNotes

LeaderNotes is a quick-hit companion to each episode of The Learning to Lead Show. In just 5–10 minutes, Mark Cundiff recaps the top leadership insights, frameworks, and action steps from each interview, designed for busy, growth-minded leaders who want to review and apply the episode’s biggest takeaways on the go. It’s like the highlight reel + playbook—all in one.


Contact Mark at: mark@markjcundiff.com

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we were struggling. We had lost three of our last five games and we won in the opening round. And the host school is called Fairport. They were a really big school and they were really talented. They beat a team mark that we had barely beaten two weeks early. They beat 'em by 40 points. So the next day, because it was in Christmas break, we didn't have school. So we had a short practice. We call it a shoot around and normally at a shoot around, we'll bring out some basketballs and do some plays, and do some shooting drills and get ready for the game. I knew that wasn't gonna work, so I never brought a basketball out. I sat 'em in the bleachers and I looked them in their eyes and I shocked 'em. I said, guys, I don't wanna go to the game tonight. And they looked at me in disbelief. I said, unless we decide we're going to unite Fairport is gonna beat us by 50 points tonight. But the best thing I did, mark, and this is what I like to share with leaders, is I became vulnerable. I said, guys. I don't have the answers, but you do. You gotta be willing to open up and share how we can get this team back together and for the next hour. We never brought a basketball out. Alls we did was share each player sharing their ideas and they felt like they were being heard for probably the first time that season. 'cause we had been so divided and it really manifested. We played a great game that night. We didn't win, but we lost in overtime and it showed what we could do. That really got us some momentum. We won eight over next nine games going into the famous senior night.

Hello, welcome to the Learning to Lead Show. I'm your host, mark Cundiff, and I am so excited for you to hear my conversation with my guest today, coach Jim Johnson. That was just a brief clip of some of the content that you will hear today. Coach Johnson is the author of a book called A Coach and a Miracle Life, lessons from a Man Who Believed in an Autistic Boy, and you will hear more about that story and four minutes of basketball that forever changed his life and changed the community that they live in Coach Jim Johnson has over 30 years of experience developing, winning high school basketball teams, including 428 career victories. This success sets the stage for the unique credibility and power of Coach Jim Johnson's message. Many speakers talk about leadership, but it's a rare treat to find a speaker who has quite literally led thousands of people. And a moment that was later celebrated all over the world. Coach weighed Risk with the potential for great opportunity for an autistic student manager, Jason McElwain. Better known as JMac. This catapulted Jim the team and JMac down a path of inspiration and hope that one victory continues to reverberate into countless lives as audience after audience is touched by a wave of courage. And tenacity and witness what true leadership can accomplish. If you do nothing else that we talk about on this episode, you need to watch that four minutes of basketball that he will discuss during our conversation. It will truly touch you and move you when you see what happened during that critical four minutes. It is an inspiration. It will bring a tear to your eye. It is truly a Rudy type of moment in the game when JMac comes onto the floor on senior night and puts on a display that eventually won an ESPY over his idol, Kobe Bryant. Now buckle up. Get ready for a great conversation with my friend, coach Jim Johnson.

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Hello, coach Jim, welcome to the Learning to Lead Show. Hey, mark, great to see you. I'm looking forward to it. I have really enjoyed reading your book and watching some videos about some of the stories in your history. Why don't you give our audience just a Reader's Digest version of your leadership journey, how you got into the coaching profession and some milestones along the way. Yeah, it really started. Because my dad was a teacher and a coach, and he ended up being our high school basketball coach at the school I went to. So I fortunately played for my dad. I had three younger brothers and he actually went into administration. So I told him, I probably drew him. Drove him outta coaching. But he, I, it was a real honor. I played for him for three years and he was a real great role model for me. I guess like a lot of kids, I had ambitions. I, thought I was a really good player. I was decent, but I thought I was gonna play in the NBA, certainly didn't come close to happening. But I did go to college and I, wanted to be a teacher and coach and basketball was my number in love. I did coach other sports, but basketball was something I coached every year in my career for 35 years. And so that's, that was the journey. Just to give you a quick synopsis, so I got into teaching and coaching. I, my dream was to be a head basketball coach at a high school. And at 25, which is pretty young in my profession, I became a head coach. Thought I knew what I was doing. I did such a great job, mark. I led that team to 17 consecutive losses and I was in an interim position and they didn't renew my contract. So it was a pretty humbling start for me. Fortunately I got a mentor. The next year I had a junior college coach reach out to me and his name was Bill Van Gundy. And for your followers they've probably, if they follow basketball for the Van Gundy name 'cause both his sons have been head coaches in the NBA. But Coach Van Gundy really helped me get back on my feet. And from there I spent almost my whole rest of my career as a head coach in high school at three different high schools with the last 27 years in my hometown called Greece, which is the largest suburb of New York. That's a great history and it's always compelling to hear the story about how somebody comes along in your life and picks you up when you need it. Yes, that's quite a famous name, both on the coaching and the TV announcing circuit. Absolutely. Yep, for sure. We're going to talk about JMac and his story in just a second, but one of the things that was compelling to me in your chapter on perseverance in your book. You talk about how you almost didn't finish that season. You almost didn't get to those final four minutes of the season. Can you tell us a little bit about that journey and how that shaped you? Yeah. It was a very difficult season for me. I, at that point, that was in 2005, 2006. I was known as the coach that couldn't win the big one. We would have winning seasons. In multiple years between the two high schools in Greece, I coached it at we'd have a winning season. It was like nine or 10 straight years, but we always lose in the sectionals. But we did make the semi-finals like four or five times. Actually I had taken six teams to the semi-finals but never making it past that. And, but then that season Jason, senior year, we were gonna have a really good team. We had a lot returning from a team that was very good the year before. And we started out two and oh, and I thought, oh boy, this might be the year mark that I break through my barrier of losing to the semi-finals. And then adversity struck. Basically it was a situation where I had an assistant coach that some of the parents didn't agree with. He, they thought he was influencing 'cause they had two sons on the team and the older son was a great player and also just a wonderful young man. And I never heard anything but his younger son when I brought him up. Was a very good player, but wasn't as nice a person, and it really became jealousy and we basically had anarchy and it divided the team and it was a really difficult, I nearly resigned, thank God for my wife and my assistant coaches. My wife talked about my passion and my mission and kind of got me straightened out and my assistant coaches always told me, coach, you always talk about your quotes, and I know one of your quotes is. When the going gets tough, the tough get going, you gotta step up. So I did embrace that, but I tell you the next few weeks, it was a really difficult situation. But fortunately we had a heart to heart. And this is a good leadership lesson to think that I learned and I wanna share. And that is we were in a Christmas tournament. And we were struggling. We had lost three of our last five games and we won in the opening round. And the host school is called Fairport. They were a really big school and they were really talented. They beat a team mark that we had barely beaten two weeks early. They beat 'em by 40 points. So the next day, because it was in Christmas break, we didn't have school. So we had a short practice. We call it a shoot around and normally at a shoot around, we'll bring out some basketballs and do some plays, and do some shooting drills and get ready for the game. I knew that wasn't gonna work, so I never brought a basketball out. I sat 'em in the bleachers and I looked them in their eyes and I shocked 'em. I said, guys, I don't wanna go to the game tonight. And they looked at me in disbelief. I said, unless we decide we're going to unite Fairport is gonna beat us by 50 points tonight. But the best thing I did, mark, and this is what I like to share with leaders, is I became vulnerable. I said, guys. I don't have the answers, but you do. You gotta be willing to open up and share how we can get this team back together and for the next hour. We never brought a basketball out. Alls we did was share each player sharing their ideas and they felt like they were being heard for probably the first time that season. 'cause we had been so divided and it really manifested. We played a great game that night. We didn't win, but we lost in overtime and it showed what we could do. That really got us some momentum. We won eight over next nine games going into the famous senior night. Wow. That's really impressive. You showed the courage there to have the crucial conversations and there's a great book along that line and also crucial confrontations, and that wasn't the only time you did it. You also had some heart-to-heart meetings with the parents after that initial ambush that you went through and you also had another heart to heart with the team about. What the situation was and how to move forward. Can you walk us through that? 'cause that a lot of coaches would've just tried to maybe walk through it without having those hard conversations, but you realized there was a big elephant in the room and you were going to go and address it. Explain a little about how you thought through that. I think it was the big thing was, is that you're right there, there was an elephant there and it was really big. And something that I really learned if I was gonna be the leader, you have to step up and you have to address that elephant and you gotta address it with. The thing I learned so much from that season, I kid leaders now that you should be the CQA, this chief question asker and that therefore you should ask more questions and really get those two ears. 'cause you only have one mouth and be willing to listen. And that helped me so much that season because when we would address difficult issues, yes, I would share my ideas. But I really was, it was more important that I heard from them. In fact, I really changed the way I used to do a captain's meeting with my team captains every Monday during the season. But it was, when I first started doing it, it was all about my agenda. I would share what I thought we should do and all that. And Mark, that year really changed, and I came in after that. Every captain's meeting with basically just questions like, how's the team chemistry? How can I be a better coach for you this week? Is there anybody that's really being having some challenging issues, whether at home, at school, that we need to address? How can I best support you? And then I just listened and that helped me immensely. So I, the one thing I would encourage leaders is you can't ignore that elephant. You gotta address it. But it is really important. Your team members feel like they're being heard. Therefore, you gotta ask questions. One thing I want to jump into before we go too far is the story that made your school and so many famous in that little community, tell us a little bit about that final four minutes, what led up to the final four minutes and senior night. That miracle Year. Yeah. So the young man's name was Jason McKelway. Everybody calls him JMack, actually a name. I tagged him because I couldn't pronounce his last name. Unfortunately. He liked it and Jason tried out for our team three consecutive years. He tried out for our junior varsity and our. JV coach came to me and said, I really would like to keep this young man in the program because he's so passionate about basketball and he's a wheel over me guy. He puts the team first. And so he was the JV manager and I got to know him some because the JV and varsity for most of our games played back to back. So he was set on the bench for both games. But where I really started to get to know him much better was after his sophomore season, he started coming all our off season workouts and I pick him up his house and both of us were very passionate about basketball. So I was always asking him of what he knew, of what he liked about basketball but he was very small in stature. He is on the autism spectrum. He's got some learning disabilities, but I loved his heart. So he tried out his junior year, he didn't make the team. And I wanna share a quick little story to give you an idea how, what he was into it. So I asked him to be our team manager on the varsity and he quickly embraced the role. And the story was Mark, our first team meeting after the team had been chosen and Jason's our hour manager. I walk in and he immediately raises his hand. I said, yes, JMac. He says, coach, we know you've never won this section five championship. I said thanks Jason for the reminder. He said, but this year is gonna be different. I said, why is that? He says you give us a quote every day. So our slogan this year that we're gonna follow is we're gonna stay focused and help you win your first sectional champ. I said thank you Jason. His junior year, we had another great year, mark. We get to the semi-finals now at that time, my sixth time in my career, and we lose at the buzzer to our crosstown rival. So it was very devastating. But Jason was really my inspiration. I never had a player try out three years in a row that didn't make the team yet his perseverance. He came to everything again. So his senior, when he tried out, I brought him in the office and said, Jason, I got some. Good news and some bad news. He goes, coach, gimme the bad news first. I said unfortunately you're not quite good enough to make the team. And he was visibly disappointed. His head dropped down. I said, but I do have some good news. And he looked at me, he said, yeah, coach. I said, for senior night. And he goes, I'm a senior. I said, for senior night. I'm gonna give you a uniform and hopefully get you in the game. And I kid people that periodically you ask me about that uniform, and of course I define periodically. It's about every other day. He was pretty fired up about that uniform idea. And then we, I had already mentioned that, we ended up having a really trying season but then we got some momentum and senior night was on February 15th. We just had the 20 year anniversary not too long ago. And the crazy thing is. It was so nice to see Jason now embrace his parents. Be, when we honored all the seniors, it was a memory I'll always cherish well, going to the game I wanted to get him in, but I knew in fairness, I had to get all the other players and there were regular team members. And secondly, I thought if I could get him in with enough time so he could score a basket. That would be a memory he'd keep forever. I put him in with just over four minutes ago what I didn't know and what Jason didn't know. One of our parents, he was our unofficial photographer. He decided he makes all these pictures of Jason face and put 'em on paint sticks like placards, and we had a good student body following view. Look at the ESPN video. Jason walks on the floor with just over four minutes to go. The student body gives 'em a standing ovation, but they show all these placards. I had no idea. And it hit me so hard. Mark. I sat down and started to cry. It was so touching. So Jason's in his first game. First time he gets the ball, he has a shot, a three pointer in the right corner. And literally we had about 900 people, thousand. It was a fairly decent crowd for us, and you could see the whole crowd race. He lets it go. He misses by six feet. It's not even close. And I kid people I know you're not supposed to pray in the public schools all over a person of face. So I was praying. Second possession, we come down and he has a much shorter shot and it hits the backboard, it hits the rim, and it falls off. And the crowd groans. And I'm thinking, all right, we're getting closer. God's starting to listen. Third possession, he has another three pointer from the right wing. He lets it go. Magic. It goes into place erupts. I'm thinking God must be a basketball fan. Nelly's Jason scored. He's got a three pointer getting better than this, right? For the next three minutes, Jason's boy Hut Idol was the late great Kobe Bryant. In fact, Jason used to sign his name. Jason, j Mac, Kobe McKelway. That's how much you like Kobe. I'm gonna fast forward then I'll finish with two little parts of the story. Six months after that game, Jason's at the ESPY Awards. He's up for the greatest sports moment of the year. There's four finalists for the award, and I kid you not. One of the other finalists is Kobe Bryant. Kobe had scored 81 points for the Lakers that year, so he meets his idol and beats him out for the Espy. How does he do that? He didn't just make one three. He comes down, he makes another three, and then he makes a basket where his foot is on the line. That was his only two pointer. And I'll cut to the last two things with a minute to go. Tears are still rolling down my, my. Face. I'm sitting on the bench and I get a tap on my shoulder and I'm shocked. I look behind me. It's Jason's mother and she's bawling her eyes out and she whispers in my ear, coach, this is the best skiff you could have ever given me. I get so choked up, I start crying harder. Then this is how the game and Spencer port our opponent in the night. Now I want to give K kudos to their coach and their players that were really good, but they scored about 10 seconds to go. And our player that takes it out normally throws it to our point guard, but this time he throws it to Jmax. So JM Max dribbling down and I thought they were just gonna let him go in and make a short shot of Lay. Oh no. He like slows down. He is like playing for the clock. He pulls up two feet behind the arc, almost an NBA thread. I'm thinking, Jason, don't shoot from there. It's too far. He launches a rainbow. Swish. I look over and all I can think is I'm living the movie Rudy, because the whole gymnasium ran on the floor and our players put him up on their shoulders. He's got the game all over his head. At that point, I had no idea how many points he had, and our public adjust announcer comes out and says, the leading scorer for the G gr Athena tonight JMac with 20 points, including six three pointers. And I'll close by saying this, mark. I, one of the things I talk about is the essence of teamwork. And I mentioned, how difficult our chemistry was for that season, but the thing that touched my heart, the deepest of that was the fact of the four players on the floor with Jason. I never asked him to pass the ball to Jason. Yeah. Of their own hearts. They passed the ball to him every possession, although I do still kid. Jason, I'm still looking for your first assist. You didn't pass the ball once, but it was it was certainly a memorable day, but the greatest day I've ever had coaching and I've coached a lot of over 600 high school basketball games and yet that's one I'll cherish to my grave for sure. For our audience, we'll put that link in the show notes and if you don't do anything else that we ask on this show today, you need to watch that four minutes. And you think about that, that four minutes, he would've outscored Kobe if he'd have played the whole game. Yeah, exactly. 20 points in four minutes. That's pretty phenomenal clip. But that was an inspiring story. One of the things that. You talked about there about going on in your season and you started out with what I almost called, you were on the verge of having a toxic culture between Right. The envy and the strife with the parents and the playing time and all that. But you had this little golden nugget in the midst of you named JMac, who Yeah. Always had positivity, always believed you were going to win. Yeah. Can you maybe. Share with us how you think that was one of the key elements to you moving through that tough culture. It is. They have the famous line, ignorance is bliss. 'cause Jason, I don't think completely comprehended how difficult that season was because he just came in happy go lucky every day and he, he was always there early and late and he'd rebound for guys and they'd rebound for him. He would bring snacks for him after practice. He was just the ultimate team guy. That was a really something and leadership lesson that I really tried to assess because we kept losing, in that pro season tournament. And one of the things I. Picked up, really assessing and also learning how Jason, handled and being positive is, I said when we had that postseason tournament after his miracle game, that I was gonna be a different coach and how I was gonna be different was I was gonna be the rock when we hit adversity because you're gonna have close games in the postseason tournament. What I realized is I always felt I was a very good model, but during the postseason mark I had wanted to win so bad that I was putting so much pressure on myself. Who else do you think? I was putting a lot of pressure on our players, and I wasn't the same guy. So I said, no matter what happens, I'm gonna be. The rock. And it was interesting because I'll tell you quick about the postseason tournament. We have a buy in the first round, then we are in the quarter finals. We win pretty easily. So no test. The semis, my big test, we had never gotten through. We're ahead by 10. And halftime, I'm thinking, oh my gosh, we're probably gonna do it. We implode in the third quarter, probably a poor halftime speech. But this time I was different. I kept positive. Jay Mac kept inspiring him with us positively, and we rallied and we actually won the game. And so now we're going to the finals and in our area, we like sports, but we're not like a hotbed. So our championship game is at a, our big arena downtown, it's about 10,000. And normally for a championship game, we'll get three or four be, but because we were getting so much media attention 'cause of Jason's game, I walk in the arena for our championship game, there's 10,000 people, it's sold out. So we start the game. Down 13 to three in the finals. I'm like, okay, that pregame speech didn't work too well. But again, I stayed positive. The players fed off myself and Jay Mac. We ended up railing and we tied the game late in the last minute and then we scored with about 10 seconds to go to win the game. So it was pretty spectacular finish to that season. That's a great example of having a growth mindset in the midst of a very trying season and making a shift. That's one of the things I always admire about Tiger Woods. He could go out on the front nine and shoot a 40 like he did one year in the Masters. And he went on and won the masters from going away. And so you got to be able to say, next play or Next ball or whatever, yeah. You do a great job of interweaving j Mack's story into six principles in your book. Can you walk us through those principles and how you use them to motivate your team and then how you use them to. Speak to audiences and motivate other teams and corporations, right? So after that season I had started to speak some in the basketball world, but I became a big junkie. You and I have a lot of familiarity. You. And so some of the legends of personal growth, I was a big Zig Ziglar and Jim Rohn and Les Brown and Tony Robbins. And Brian Tracy. And the list goes on and on and I was a big, back then, there were cassette tapes. Now I listen to a lot of podcasts, so I was trying to think about how could I do, share a message? Of course the JMA game happens and now people start to reach out and so I developed a speech and I basically did it. 'Cause I coached for 10 more years and. And that I was speaking part-time and I did one speech. I wrote a book, as you guys mentioned. Then I, the speech was called Dreams Really Do Come True. And the first six chapters were the keys. And so the keys and maybe we can just talk about one 'cause I don't wanna but we're passion, mission, goal setting. Perseverance. Car diem, of course, seizes the day and being a team player. What I did is I really analyzed, 'cause I wanted to share Jason's story, but I wanted to give people takeaways to help improve their lives. Not only be inspired, but actually take some action. In that I talk about the importance of finding your passion like JMac did, and finding a way that you can use your passion. Like I wanted to play in the NBA, that didn't work, but I ended up being a coach in the sport. I loved, Jason ended up being our team manager, even though he. Couldn't make the team. So that's, I think, finding a way that you can have your passion, even if it's not the ultimate, or you're a professional player. There's other ways that you can get involved if if you love a particular sport, then mission, and this is something to help me a. Immensely, because I always share with leaders, the first person you gotta lead is yourself. So I really encourage people to get a personal mission statement, and I'm very clear. My personal mission statement is to be an outstanding role model that makes a positive difference in the world by helping others make their dreams come true. And so what I really encourage people when I talk is that they find. Their purpose in life. They have famous, why will you put on this earth then goal setting, there's so much out there. I do a goal setting workshop as well, but the one thing I used to always encourage our players is when you think it ink it, and of course that means write it down, get clarity and then develop a plan. There's a lot about goal setting, so we won't delve any deeper in that. And then the. Perseverance, which, we've talked some and Jason was the essence to that of perseverance. But the fact that never give up mindset, you're gonna find a way no matter what is really a powerful thing. And we, we've learned a lot of lessons from people that have been successful. This struggled and found a way. And then carpi diem is of course means seize the day. You get ready to seize the day when you're willing to put in the work in the unseen hours. And what people didn't realize, yes, Jason hadn't played, but he come to practice every day, stay late. He would shoot in his driveway, go to the local Y, so he was ready, and certainly I didn't, no one expected him to score 20 points. But the fact that he had put a lot of time in that people didn't know helped him seize that day. And then the last one being a team player, and I wanna finish with this little story. How about this Mark? He has this magical game now. He becomes basically a national celebrity people, he's, and yet he's now gotta go back and be our team manager again, because you gotta play in six games. Really, the cool thing is after that season he, we still got interviewed a lot and I'll never forget, often they interview or ask him, Hey Jason, what was the best thing about your senior season? Of course they're expecting him to talk about his game and he'd say, oh, winning the Section five championship. There's nothing better than that. And that's, to me is the old essence of team being a team great teammate. Wow. And I think he also sets the bar high as far as. Passion because you and I know you have coaching so many years, but I remember when I was in my playing days in high school and so forth and then watching my kids play and watching some of the athletes, there are some athletes that are just gifted that, yeah, God has just blessed them with height and talent. Yeah. But they don't perform like you would think they would. When you think about if they had the passion inside them that a JMac has with that talent they would be unstoppable. What would you say to us about that as far as in our own personal leadership journey? About marrying that passion with the competencies and the skills that we've been blessed with? I heard a story on Kobe Bryant. I think it makes a lot of sense is, that a friend of mine saw him train at four 30 in the morning and he said it was amazing 'cause he. Doing such fundamentally basic things. And the guy asked him, Kobe, you're doing things that sixth graders work on. He says, to be the best, you gotta be great at the basics, and you can never get bored with the basics. So that's where I think that passion comes in, because in greatness, in leadership, whether you're building a big business or building a great team, in athletics. Is that if you don't have that fire, that you're willing to put time in the unseen hours. Like I had such fire, like I remember one time we played on a Friday night and one of my rules was Mark. I would never watch film of a team until we played the game and the next we were playing. The next day. So we played, we got home at 10 o'clock and we were playing the next day at four o'clock. So there wasn't a lot of time. And now we had a little shoot around and short practice, but I got up really early and I watched two hours a game, film and put together and because that was my drive, my passion I didn't never wanted to be unprepared. On the other side of that is leadership is you gotta take one day at a time. And yes, you do have to plan for the future, but if you don't attack each day giving your best, and then it, I always tell people, life accumulates either each day is what you're doing is gonna help you or hinder you. That's awesome. The other key aspect I've heard you speak on is trust. And to me that's to me, foundational. Yeah. To be a great leader. Tell us what you've learned about how important trust is and how to build it, and then how quickly it can be dissipated. Oh, absolutely. So trust is something I have a leadership keynote and I talk about seven keys, and one of my keys is building trust. And so one of the things I have a little bit different perspective on after I told you that my first varsity position, which was a disaster, we won one game and they let me go, but my next three, we had a winning season either by the second or first season. But what I realized is. I had to build relationships and to build relationships. You have build trust. So my little interesting angle is I encourage when I give presentations is to leaders is I say, do you have a plan? How you're gonna build trust. And then I share I could share our three keys, just a as a example. So when we took over our programs, I took over three programs and talked to my staff about our three keys was number one, we had to align our words and actions. So if we said we're gonna practice at six o'clock in the morning, old Coach Johnson had to be there much earlier than six o'clock in the morning. 'cause I'm setting the pace. Number two is telling each other the truth. And one where I talk to leaders about that is. Is when you tell the truth. That's both an art and science. For example, getting to know your people. There were some players I could call out in the middle of practice and get on them and would help everybody. There were other players, they could not handle that. So then it was why it's an art and science. 'cause sometimes I'd have to do that one-on-one 'cause I got to know those people and they felt confident because I knew how I could handle their situation best. But you still gotta tell each other the truth. And then the third one. Is catch people doing the right thing. Too many times as a leader, we come in and a lot of times you come in as a leader, you're taking over something was negative and so people are beaten down. They're used to the negative. So you gotta be someone that flips that switch and you gotta find ways to be positive. And I always encourage leaders to be positive by sharing nice. Lars, but make them specific. So instead of saying, nice job, Johnny, he likes that. But if I say, Johnny, that was outstanding how you dove on the floor for that loose ball, that's what championship players do on championship teams. Now he understands the specificity of what I want out of our players. Okay? So the more that you can praise with specific praise, the more powerful it is. That is really good. I love your three step approach there on that building trust. Then you also talk about servant leadership. What have you learned about being a servant leader? So that was something that came to probably the second half of my career. It was a term that I was not really familiar with and it started to get bigger. And so I started to study it some and the first thing in defining servant leadership is, to me, it was flipping the old pyramid where the leadership pyramid was the leader was on top of the pyramid, and all the team members were below serving the leader. And so the concept is, I flipped that pyramid now, Mike. Thinking is how do I serve, in my case, my players or your employees, whatever it happens to be, so you can help them. And the essence to me of servant leadership is that when you teach your team members how to lead themselves so they can be more effective, and then be leaders of our team and be leaders in the world. Because I think the best leaders are people that teach others how to lead. That, in coaching trees where there's some coaches, they've had great success and people that work with them end up having really good success because they've taught 'em how to be leaders. That's an excellent. Take on servant leadership. I've never heard it explained exactly like you did. That's a great perspective. You also use another term in some of your talks about leave a profit. Yeah. And I've never heard that detailed in a leadership talk. Can you tell us what means by leaving a profit? So leave a prophet because one of the things I talk about is having a leadership philosophy, and that was my leadership philosophy, and that was picked up through my all listening things and something clicked for me. And so it's not something that is new. But what I would tell our players, we're gonna leave a profit everywhere we are. And then they say, what does that mean? I said, that means everything we touch, we're gonna make better, not worse. A simple illustration when we would go on the road and we'd be in an opponent's locker room to get the change to get ready for the game. If I walked in and I saw a piece of trash on the floor. I picked it up. Now that was not something that, I didn't put it there, but what I was trying to teach our players is everything where we go, we make it better. Or in other words, we turn everything we touch to gold, not garbage. I love that. That's a great way to teach those young men to change the way they handle their life and that they leave things better than when they came in contact with it. If I'm. Out there leading a team and I'm having a struggle. Maybe it's, we've got some toxicity and maybe we've got some communication issues. How would you coach me to build a team culture to build a positive team culture? What would be some steps that you would coach me through? There's a few things that I would immediately start. So the first of all, you have to have clarity of your bigger purpose. So the mission, the team mission, and we should have clarity that we, so everybody knows the mission, a bigger purpose than each individual, including the leader. Okay. Or the founder of the company, whatever. So there's gotta be a bigger purpose that everybody's in. You gotta be consistently, I kid leaders, you gotta be the CRO, the chief reminding officer. So you gotta live the mission, share the message. Next is, you gotta be very clear on what the core values. So that's something you should be discussing. You can put it up on the wall, but here's the key in the clear core values. Whether you have three values, five values. 10 values. I've seen multiple different situations, but having clarity of what is the behavior that fits and aligns with that core value. Alright, so that if we say respect all people, then we, as a leader, I have to define what does it mean to respect all people. And then I've gotta live it. I gotta model it, teach it encourage it. And correct it. Next thing is that I kid people I talked at an education conference and I kidded the educators. The three Rs in leadership are not reading, arithmetic, and writing. It's relationships. So what I would talk to you is that you've gotta go in and you gotta build relationships To do that, you gotta, do one-on-one meetings and you've gotta really get to know your people really asking questions. Get to know them and build that. You show that you care because I think the first thing is to correct. You gotta connect. So you gotta show that you care. And then. If you're gonna have a great, in our case, a basketball program, it's gotta be challenging. So our players knew that we cared about them deeply, but we also knew it was not easy to play. We had very high standards. We practice at six o'clock in the morning. We did things that most teams didn't do. All right. But it started to build some momentum because we started to see some results. But. Connecting is so important. Like a little thing I did for my last two stops in my last 27 years as a head coach is I would write out in my calendar now. It would be much more efficient just to put it in your phone, but back then it wasn't that way. Every single player. We had five teams, so we had two middle school teams and three high school teams. Every single player had their birthday in my calendar and I would send them a personal birthday card, just, and I'd have seventh graders and I barely knew they'd come up. Hey coach, thanks so much for the birthday card, but you're starting to build that culture. The last thing I'll say about culture. Is, it happens every day. So what you tolerate is the bottom line. So if you ignore, we talked about the famous elephant in the room, then your culture's gonna start to leak in a wrong way. You're, you wanna stay positive and you wanna praise. But you also gotta be able to, they have to be very clear, like real simple example, being on time was a non-negotiable. We only had a few of those, but, so if they were late, there was a consequence and it was dealt like I had a player towards the end of my career that ended up playing. I never thought he'd be this good, but he ended up playing two years in the NBA, so he was pretty good. His sophomore year, he was still our best player, although we had a very good team. We're in the sectional, semi-finals and we have morning free throws. Okay. If you come late to free throws and you're a starter, you don't start. Anthony didn't start 'cause he came late and our seniors were not that happy 'cause they wanted. In to win the game. We ended up fortunately winning it anyways. But those are the things that, you gotta have some things that are clarity in building that culture and everybody's gotta know the boundaries and you've gotta make sure that you hold them accountable to those. One thing I want to highlight, I love your specificity around whether it's positive reinforcement or calling out the values that you want, tying that to behaviors. So many leaders don't take that extra step and tie it to the actual behaviors they want to see, and that's so important, right? Yeah. Te tell us maybe about a few behaviors, a few leadership things that you didn't know when you started out that if you were to go back to young coach that. You would tell him to help him start out a little better. Yeah, so taking me back, I know the first thing would've been immediately the two things that immediately jump out. Number one is I would've done a better job of leading myself, so I would've got more clarity of my why, my personal mission. Because that I didn't have a foundation when I was young. I was bouncing from wall to wall and so that's something I really encourage leaders is the clarity of who you are. What you stand for in that. The second thing is being a constant learner and where I was so into basketball, mark, so I was always trying to figure out, how can I teach 'em better skills or run this play? And that's important. I think you, you have to have competence in the area that you're trying to be an expert. In my case, trying to teach the game of basketball. But what I realized after my first failure as a head coach is not only I had a real competence in the skill or the game of basketball, I had to have really high competence on how to be a leader. And that's when I really started, like 26, 27, I started becoming. I just couldn't get enough about leadership because to me leadership is the difference. Great teams usually have great leadership and those seemed to align. So as I became a better leader, it was very fascinating, mark. My teams became much better. That's awesome. Yeah. You bridged into one of the other questions that I had there was you won so many titles, you appeared on national media and we, me and you have had a conversation and one of the things I'm impressed at what I see on LinkedIn, the books you're reading, the podcast you're consuming. Tell us a little bit about where that hunger to continue to grow comes from. It is just something, I did read car Carol Drs book mindset and that kinda reinforced to me the importance of having that growth mindset. And I, because to me as a leader. There's a couple stages. One is the stage that you're gonna get your, in my case, your team to be really competitive and could be for a championship. But the next stage is how do you consistently do that? And that was something I'm really proud. I mentioned it took me a long time, but I, my last 23 years, we never had a losing season. My last 11 years, mark, we made the finals of our sectional tournament eight times. And so one of the things that I believe helped me. And my staff is we continue to grow. We were trying to build consistent systems. But always looking to tweak them. And one of the things I believe leaders need to do is understand their talent. Because for, in my situation, players changed, 'cause they graduated left school. So we had new players and what I, one of my jobs is I had to, yes, I had a system. That I was comfortable with, but I'd be willing to do some things outside the system. I'll give you one quick example. A couple years I had this point guard that no one could guard. He literally could go by anybody. I changed my man to man offense because he was so good. Now, when he graduated, I tried it the next year and I realized very quickly I don't have him anymore. And we changed. We went back to some of the other things we used to do. So I think those are some of the things that you gotta be constantly tweaking. And the only way that you can continue to do that in a positive way is you gotta keep growing yourself. One of the things I encourage people is to have an intentional personal growth plan. And I feed my mind almost 90 minutes every single day between my junkie on listening to podcasts. I'm an avid reader. I try to read a book a week. And I also have a idea journal where I write down ideas that I learned because the key is to be really successful, you gotta be a idea gatherer. But here's the big step, an idea implementer. 'cause all you're doing is gathering ideas, but you don't ever implement 'em, then you're not gonna change. So those are the things you gotta really think about as you gather ideas, how can you use them to make you better? And whatever team you or organization you're leading. I love that as one of my favorite podcasts heroes. Craig, Rochelle says, he says, if the leader gets better, everybody gets better. Yeah. When the leader's getting better, you're elevating the team. And so yeah, if you're not growing, the team's not growing. Yeah I'm a big Craig Relle fan myself. I've actually attended the Global leadership summit, which he's the Key always does the opening keynote, so yeah he's a special guy, for sure. That'll bridge me right into the question I'd like to ask everybody. Who are some of your favorite authors and podcasters and those type of things? Share some of your people that feed you. Yeah, it would be the book that changed my life was Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Dr. Steven Covey. I actually got a chance to speak to Franklin Covey, but it was a year after Dr. Covey had passed, so I didn't get a chance to meet him, but it was a real honor to speak that for that organization and why that book was he. That book he talked about personal mission. In that point in my life, mark, I didn't even know what a personal mission statement was, so he really got me thinking. And then I really analyzed, and I not only read the book a few times, but I also listened to audio programs on it a number of times. I've read a lot of Patrick Lencioni's books. I listen to his podcast now. Big John Maxwell. I've read a lot of his books and listened to his podcast. A couple of the guys just specifically with podcasts we've had Ryan Hawk on the Learning Leader Show on our podcast a couple times. I've read a couple of his books and then two others that podcast is, I really enjoy the Ed Millet Show. He was in California. I think he's in Florida now, but he, he was a big guy in the financial services that did extremely well, and he's big into personal growth. He's a big time speaker now, and the other guy is the School of Greatness by Lewis Howes. I listen to a lot of that and, but I'm a really a junkie on podcasts. I listen to a lot of different ones. I listen to Simon Sinek and I've read some of his books and all it starts with why is another one. It reinforced about, what you should be all about. I really appreciate your time. As we wind up today, do you have maybe one parting shot you'd like to leave our audience with? Yeah, I do and it has to do with leadership, but one of the things I really wanna encourage people and just in general is, if we're gonna unite and keep working, not unite your community. Unite your team, unite our country, unite the world is, I think we gotta be kinder each other and it starts with respecting all people. And then let's focus each day on trying to spread a little kindness. It could be a big kindness whether. You raise money for an organization that's really great, but even simple things like saying hello to somebody and giving eye contact, opening a door for somebody just doing something, buy a meal for somebody. There's so many little acts of kindness that can help unite us. And I really, I encourage people, let's be kinder to each other. I can't think of a better way to stop. I know you and I could sit here and talk about books and podcasts. Yeah, we can for hours. But we'll wrap it up today with that and remind everybody to go out and do that, to go out and be kind to somebody today. Thank you for your time, coach. My pleasure, mark. I enjoyed it immensely.

Wow, what an inspiring conversation from Coach Jim Johnson. If the story about Jay Mac did not bring you close to tears or two tears, then I don't know what else will you need to go and look at the link in the show notes and watch that. Four minutes of basketball, even if you're not a basketball fan. It will truly inspire and put a smile on your face today. That concludes this episode of The Learning to Lead Show. I know you've got a lot of great content from Coach Johnson. Make sure that you download this episodes. Leader notes because we're going to have clear outline of the key principles and frameworks that he detailed in this conversation. Also, we'll give you links to the books and the podcast that he mentioned, and also you'll get some key action steps that you can take to implement what you have learned. As he said in there, don't just collect ideas. Go out and implement the things that you've learned. If you got great value out of today's show, make sure that you share this with someone that you care about, because I know that it can be an encouragement and that it can inspire them to take their leadership to the next level. We also would ask that on your favorite podcast app, if you would just go in and give us a rating that helps spread the word about the Learning to Lead show so that more people can find us and more people can hear the content that we're putting out there. Our goal is to encourage leaders, equip leaders, and inspire leaders to take their leadership skills, abilities, and effectiveness to the next level. Now, make sure that you go out this week and that you learn. That you grow and that you lead taking your organization to the next level.