Ken Niumatalolo: Returning With Honour

Welcome to the Great Coaches: Leadership & Life newsletter.

Every month, we publish two new podcast episodes featuring an interview with a Great Coach from across the world of sports. Our interviews delve deep into the careers and leadership of our guests, seeking new insights to help us all lead our teams, communities and families better.

We also frequently share additional content and insight from our interviews across our social media platforms, including LinkedIn, Youtube, and TikTok. You can learn more about The Great Coaches, follow our channels and explore our website from our new Linktree page.

Learning To Serve With Ken Niumatalolo

This week’s podcast episode features an interview with Ken Niumatalolo, who reveals that his leadership is firmly rooted in a number of philosophies centred around servitude, honour, and love.

As any coach or leader will know, it can be difficult enough to keep a team aligned on common goals and missions when they’re all together in one place — the idea of keeping them aligned when they’re apart is almost incredible.

Yet, this is something that Ken has factored into his coaching style. Through his philosophy of “returning with honour“, Ken has crafted a phrase that he can use to keep his team focused both home and away and he discusses this in further detail during our interview.

Another philosophy that has shaped his coaching is that of servitude — Ken strongly believes that before you can learn how to lead, you must first learn how to serve. He credits this belief in part to his apprenticeship as a coach, and also to his Polynesian cultural heritage. It’s a fantastic insight into the transactional nature of leadership and relationship-building, and servitude is certainly a skill that many of us could seek to further develop in our own work, family and personal lives.

Finally, I hope that you’ll take some inspiration from Ken’s words on the roles that love and open emotion play in his approach to communication and motivation. These are areas that often come up as sticking-points for leaders of all ages and backgrounds, and Ken’s words certainly give us all something to think about.

You can catch the full episode now, available wherever you get your podcasts!

Listen Now: Apple | Spotify

This Week’s Guest

Ken Niumatalolo is an American college football coach and former player.

Ken played college football at the University of Hawaii as a quarterback, playing in Hawaii’s first Aloha Bowl appearance in 1989. He then stayed on at Hawaii after graduation, working as an assistant.

In 1995, Ken left Hawaii to take up an offensive coordinator position at the Naval Academy. Here his career progressed, and by 2007 he had become the head coach. Ken would go on to lead Navy for 15 years, accumulating the most wins of any coach in the program’s history.

Along the way, he received 6 Commander-In-Chief trophies, 4 Bowl Game trophies, and 3 AAC West Division titles.

Upon leaving Navy in 2023, Ken spent a season working as the Director of Leadership at UCLA before taking on the head coaching position at San Jose State.

On Scouting For B+ Candidates

In each issue of the Great Coaches newsletter we share a different short lesson on leadership, inspired by the insights and ideas shared by our podcast guests.

This time, our clip is taken from our recent episode ‘On Joe Mazzulla’, which we released last Friday (more info below!). In this snippet, frequent Great Coaches guest and Anglia Ruskin University senior lecturer Dr David Turner shares his research on the ‘B+ Hypothesis’ and why the best person for the job may not always be who you’d expect.

As a leader or coach, you may be in a position to recruit for other management positions within your organisation or team. Alternatively, you might be responsible for deciding who to select for roles such as team leader or project manager. When doing so, it’s common to look for ‘A+’ candidates — people with the top grades, stellar track records, and extensive lists of achievements. But, is the top candidate always the right one?

As Dr David Turner explains in this clip, there are occasions when the right candidate for a role may be someone who isn’t quite in the ‘top-tier’. Understanding how to best navigate a crisis or overcome adversity are skills that are developed through experience, and this experience can help those in a leadership capacity to better guide and support those around them who are also facing challenges or struggles. Someone with a track record of nothing but success may not be the right person to lead a team in the midst of defeat.

At the end of the clip, Dr Turner shares a reflective question that he often asks coaches during his public talks: what adversity have you experienced in your developmental journey that might help you better support people in theirs?

How would you answer this question? And, as a leader today, would you consider a leadership candidate who has had similar experiences?

If you’re looking to further develop your own leadership skills and ability, then make sure to head over to our website. For an annual cost of just $4.50 USD, Great Coaches members can access more than 1,800 clips, 30 special lessons, and more great content designed to help them become better, more effective leaders.

Special Episode: On Joe Mazzulla

Last week we published a special episode of the Great Coaches podcast, focussed on the career and leadership of American basketball coach Joe Mazzulla.

Joe Mazzulla is the latest in a series of Great Coaches examined by Anglia Ruskin University senior lecturer (and frequent TGCP guest) Dr David Turner, who joined us to share his findings and insights into the character and coaching of the Boston Celtics head coach.

This was a really great discussion built upon Dr Turner’s extensive research into leadership and coaching, and I hope you’ll take the time to listen to it if you haven’t already.

Listen Now: Apple | Spotify

Driving High Performing Teams

If our latest podcast episodes with Ken Niumatalolo and Dr David Turner aren’t enough to keep you occupied this weekend, then I recommend listening to this episode of the Experts In Sport podcast from Loughborough University.

High performing teams are a topic that we’ve really delved into here at The Great Coaches, and it’s one that appeals to a lot of you as well. In this episode, you’ll hear Loughborough University’s Martin Foster and John Steele sit down to discuss a number of the factors that influence successful team leadership, as well as some ideas for self-reflection and shaping your own personal leadership model.

It’s a great listen and just under 40 minutes long, so ideal for listening to on your commute or during a quick lunch break.

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