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LAUREL — Great leaders aren’t born, they’re built — and it starts with understanding your “why,” former University of Nebraska Cornhusker volleyball coach John Cook told a Laurel audience Sunday night.
Cook, who guided the Cornhusker women’s volleyball to four national titles and 14 conference championships during his 25-year tenure, shared coaching insights and life lessons with area residents during a 75-minute presentation.
He spoke about motivation, teamwork, leadership and building a strong culture — lessons, he said, that apply far beyond volleyball.
Before beginning his talk, Cook said he had been in Laurel once before, when he was recruiting Laurel-Concord-Coleridge standout Emily Schroeder for the Husker program.
He also noted a longtime connection to Laurel native Steve Erwin.
“We did cowboy stuff together. He took me to Alaska salmon fishing with him. We became very good friends,” Cook said. He added that he is currently working with Erwin’s daughter on fundraising efforts for a new UNL rodeo facility on East Campus.
Cook said he had three goals for the evening. First, he hoped to share something people would remember long after they left. He also wanted to discuss teamwork, leadership and culture, along with “how to become better at what you do, whatever that might be.”
Using a PowerPoint presentation, Cook outlined confidence-building and motivational techniques he has used throughout his career.
He said visual tools such as the Powerpoint presentation have become increasingly important when working with younger generations.
“For this generation of young kids — 18- to 22-year-olds — they don’t know how to listen anymore, so we’ve got to make everything visual,” he said. “They’re on their phones all day. That’s all they know is visual.”
Over the years, Cook said, he learned a great deal about working with young people. The most important lesson was changing his own approach. Early in his career, he relied on an intense, hard-nosed style. In 2014, he shifted to what he calls “coaching with love.”
Since making that change, Nebraska has won two national championships and made seven Final Four appearances. Still, Cook stressed that success never comes without a lot of hard work and perseverance.
He told the audience that achievement begins with identifying one’s “why” — the reason behind personal goals. It was an exercise he regularly led with his volleyball players.
Cook shared how he discovered his own “why.”
As a young man, he struggled academically and had difficulty qualifying for college. A teacher took him under her wing, tutoring him for months to improve his writing, grammar and spelling so he could pass an English exam and enroll in college.
“That’s when I figured out what my ‘why’ would be,” he said. “To make a difference in kids’ lives — an impact. Because I have no idea where I would have ended up without the opportunity to go to college and play sports. I knew I wanted to teach and coach to do that.”
Cook also shared several sayings he uses to emphasize success principles. He told the audience the human body has three important “bones” to keep strong: a backbone, a wishbone and a funny bone.
He reminded players to “stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be.”
Cook closed by encouraging people to dream big.
“We dreamed so big two years ago at Memorial Stadium, we broke the world record (for attendance at a women’s sporting event). Anything is possible.”
