John Beilein on Building Relationships (Part 3)

I think we go out of our way to show how much we value what they bring to this University. Cuz what they bring to this University brings to our basketball program. And I don’t, and once again we do not care if it’s a guy that’s working in maintenance to the president. We wanna have this attitude of gratitude around them, that they’re all part of this thing. And when our men’s basketball team went to the championship game, I mean, I wanted everybody to feel they were part of this, as much as we could. And so as a result now you can influence others cuz they’re looking at it and they’re saying hey, they identify with you.

As soon as they can identify with us, but if it’s us against the world again, if we do not, if we demean them, thinking they’re not important, then you’re gonna have issues. So I learned that, a lot of the things that I’ve learned are from Teacher Education 101 at Wheeling Jesuit in 1974 or 75. It’s that your classroom of young men and women. You have fellow teachers and you have principals. And you have the maintenance guy and you have the guy that cuts the grass on the baseball diamond. They’re all important to making this happen. You have officials. Right?

Officials, press, the press are a huge, every place that it seems I’ve gone they’ve said, ih, you’re not gonna like that guy or that guy’s gonna be hard on you, I’ve yet to find that guy. Because you go to them in the meeting and you say, I value what you are talking about, you’re all part of this. And when you get them to identify with what you’re doing I think you can reduce a lot of the problems you may have going down the road.