We're all coaches

I've Got Your Back: Coaching Top Performers from Center Court to the Corner Office
by Brad Gilbert, James Kaplan

Like its bestselling predecessors Success Is a Choice by Rick Pitino, Winning Every Day by Lou Holtz, and The Winner Within by Pat Riley, I've Got Your Back will help you take your game from good to great - no matter what field you compete in.

Brad Gilbert was the fourth highest ranked tennis player in the world in 1989. He won twenty major tournaments and dominated many players who had more natural talent. But it turns out that Gilbert's true calling wasn't playing tennis - it was coaching. After retiring as a player, he took over the floundering career of Andre Agassi. Under Gilbert's tutelage, Agassi regained his poise, cleared his head, and clawed his way back to number one, winning two Grand Slam tournaments in short order.Was Agassi a fluke? Well, Gilbert's next client was twenty-year-old Andy Roddick - a kid with immense talent who never seemed to survive past the semifinals of a Grand Slam event. After working with Gilbert for just ninety days, Roddick won the U.S. Open, the first Grand Slam of his career. And the first person he ran to embrace wasn't his parents or his Hollywood girlfriend, but Brad Gilbert, the man who had transformed his career.

Now Gilbert has compiled his best advice about dealing with intense pressure, frustrating distractions, and competitors who try to psych you out. I've Got Your Back is the answer to the mental challenges we all face in our work. It will appeal to the millions of executives and would-be executives who follow Grand Slam tennis - and who are already impressed by the triumphs of Brad Gilbert.

On the face of it, you'd be hard pressed to think of two guys more different than Brad Gilbert and me. I talk about stocks on CNBC; Brad flies around the world coaching Andy Roddick. But the first thing you need to know about Mr. Gilbert is that he is a man of many parts, and an important side of him is that he's a dedicated investor in the stock market. Which is what - indirectly - led to our first meeting.

Back in the fall of 1997, when Brad was still coaching Andre Agassi, Andre hit a bit of a rough patch in his game. So rough was this patch that his ranking fell to an unbelievable 141 in the world. Andre wasn't too worried, though. He had his genius for tennis, and he had Brad. So when Cliff Drysdale interviewed Andre after a tournament and asked him if his ranking was going to return to its former heights, Andre looked into the camera and smiled that smile of his. "Like Joe Kernen would say, if I were a stock, you should buy me," Andre said.

Now, to this day I don't know whether Andre Agassi was a dedicated viewer of my show or Brad Gilbert somehow put him up to making that remark, but I was pretty tickled, let me tell you. Soon afterward, I went out to dinner with Andre, at Campagnola, on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Halfway through the meal, in walked Brad Gilbert along with his wife, Kim. They make a pretty nice entrance, Brad and Kim. Kim is a tall, very pretty blond lady, and while I don't think anyone would call Brad pretty, he does have a certain athletic presence. Of course they spotted our table instantly. Brad saw me and smiled. "Hey, Super Joe!" he called.

The beginning of a beautiful friendship.

From that first night, I liked Brad for his easygoing, slightly off-the-wall style, the way he had of hitting the nail on the head with whatever he said, even if the way he said it seemed sideways at first. He appeared shy, but you discovered in a minute that his convictions about everything - sports, politics, finance, food, human behavior - were strong and deeply held. His knowledge was deep on many fronts. His powerful positive energy and his quiet, humorous way of connecting when he talked with you made me understand why he was a great coach.

I've Got Your Back fills out the picture. Who knew that Brad was not just a great tennis mind, but in a very real way, an important management guru? This is a book that can and should be read two different ways: as a source of delight for tennis fans eager to learn how Brad helped two great players, Agassi and Roddick, achieve their potential and as a source of enlightenment for anyone who wants to help the people he or she works with reach their highest potential.

Like many important leaders, Brad started out - in his days as a top-ranked tennis professional - as a bit of a diva. But when he made the move to coaching, he quickly came to the knowledge held by the Level 5 Leaders in Jim Collins's Good to Great: that personal humility in the service of a greater cause (the success of the team) is the most effective style of all.

When Brad started working with Andre Agassi, he'd never coached before, and so maybe a certain amount of humility came easy in those early days. He started thinking hard about what his own college coach, Tom Chivington - "Chiv" - had done and how he had done it. What he realized right away was that Chiv had taught in the best way possible: by example.

Brad's coach was that rarest of creatures: a strong but humble man, a natural Level 5 leader. Chiv had a quiet voice, enormous positive conviction, and when he traveled with Brad on the pro tour, the simple desire to do whatever it took to make Brad comfortable and at ease with himself, to put him in the frame of mind to win. This meant everything from getting laundry done to booking practice courts to scouting opponents. Chiv worked hard and cheerfully because he loved his work. He never raised his voice. He was an inspiration, commanding respect by acting respectfully.

So Brad set about adapting his own personal style - not merely copying Chiv's. He emphasized his best points (enthusiasm, engagement, awareness) and toned down his emotionalism and negativity. He extended his amazing powers of tennis observation to life off the court, learning important lessons about courtesy and humility from Agassi. Coach and player's respect for each other grew throughout their relationship and past it.

Then Brad took the lessons he'd learned to his work with Andy Roddick, and the relationship flowered. Each continues to learn from the other - and I know Brad is touched, amused, and inspired by Andy's youthful enthusiasm. The flexibility to adapt to a new style was one of the foundations Brad brought along from his earlier work. You can see the results on the sports pages.

Many of the images we have of coaches are negative: They're tough; they yell; they humiliate. Brad Gilbert, who is strong without being callous, is a very different kind of coach. One of his biggest points of pride is his ability to pay attention - whether scouting opponents or listening to a player. I would humbly suggest that anyone who pays attention to the multiple lessons in this book will feel inspired and gain the power to become inspiring.

We're all coaches.

— Joe Kernen of CNBC's Squawk Box

Mr. Gilbert to Serve

A winning strategy takes guts, determination, and confidence that you can beat the other guy. How did humility get into it?

"Hey, boss. I got breakfast."

— B.G.

Midtown Manhattan, August of 2003, and I'm on my way to buy Andy Roddick breakfast. Andy's back at the hotel, sleeping in: He's got a big day of practice ahead out at Flushing Meadows. Though he's just days away from turning twenty-one, this is his fourth U.S. Open, and it isn't overstating the case to say that the eyes of the tennis world are upon him. Since I started coaching him in June, at the Queen's tournament in London, Andy has gone on a blistering run, winning twenty-seven hard-court matches against one loss, and taking three hard-court titles in July and August, at Indianapolis, Montreal, and Cincinnati. He's number 4 in the world going into the Open. Suddenly he can't walk three steps without someone shoving a microphone in his face and asking if he's the Future of American Tennis. No pressure! My job is not just to prepare him for the tournament but to keep him on an even keel. Which means making him as comfortable as possible. Which, at this moment, means buying him breakfast.

There's a little deli on the East Side that makes bacon and eggs on a bagel just the way he likes it. A lot of people like the way these guys make breakfast - there's a line behind the counter that begins as soon as you walk in the door. I wait my turn. I'm wearing my Reebok warm-ups against the slight chill of the morning; my trademark black shades are propped up on top of my head. I've just turned forty-two years old, and there are a couple of strands of gray in my wiry black hair. I haven't shaved yet this morning, so I'm even woollier than normal.

My turn comes up, and one of the guys behind the counter nods to me. He recognizes me from yesterday morning. It doesn't matter to him that I used to be the number-4 tennis player in the world, or that I'm coaching the hottest kid on the pro tour. What matters to him is that I want two bagels, one with bacon and eggs, one with plain scrambled. To him I'm just a middle-aged guy in tennis clothes ordering breakfast.

That's fine with me. I enjoy the piece of fame I have in the tennis world; outside of that world I get recognized a little bit, but not a lot. I like people, I like to talk, and I don't need for someone to be in awe of me to have a good conversation. The counter man hands me my bag. I pay for the food, leave a couple of bucks in the tip cup, and head up the block to Starbucks. Andy wants an iced caramel macchiato to go with his bagel.

After I score the coffee, I flip out my cell phone and call up to his room. "Hey, boss, I got breakfast," I say. "You ready? Excellent. I'll be up in a minute. See you, dude."

Now, I know what a few of you are thinking. Here's Brad Gilbert, made a few bucks over thirteen and a half years on the pro tour. Had a pretty good record against people like Jimmy Connors, Boris Becker, Andre Agassi, Michael Chang, and Pete Sampras. Coached Agassi for eight years, to five Grand Slam titles and a thirty-week number-1 run in 1995. What is he doing going out to buy breakfast for a 21-year-old kid?

And what am I doing calling a kid young enough to be my son boss? Have I fallen on hard times?

The answer to that last question is no. And as for the first two, I'll give you the beginning of an answer by filling in one bit of description I left out earlier. As I'm walking around Midtown Manhattan getting Andy Roddick his bagel and coffee, I'm smiling. I couldn't be happier. I love my job, and I want to tell you why.

Enthusiasm can't be faked. It must be found.

Copyright © 2005 Brad Gilbert, James Kaplan. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced without permission.

About the Author

Brad Gilbert is the author of the tennis classic Winning Ugly, which has sold more than 125,000 copies. Before he became a coach, he played professional tennis from 1982 to 1995, winning twenty pro titles.

James Kaplan is the co-author, with John McEnroe, of the #1 New York Times bestseller You Cannot Be Serious.