Banishing Fear – Pete Carroll Pursues an Unusual Leadership Style

By: Jaye Scholl

Editor of Marshall Magazine
Marshall School of Business
University of Southern California

Imagine that you are about to give a speech, or take an important exam or play a top-ranked
college football team for the National Title. Now, imagine that instead of raw fear and self doubt, you
feel so prepared and so confident that there is no nervousness. An energy flows through you, creating
excitement and anticipation. You feel so free of fear that you cannot wait to speak, take the test, or
compete on the gridiron.
That feeling explains why the University of Southern California’s football team could not wait to
play Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl in January 2005, according to its coach, Pete Carroll.
“Our guys love to compete. Competing is what makes us better. It’s the most fun that we could
have,” says Carroll.
Carroll’s success in coaching the USC Trojans to back-to-back championship games in just four
years shares little with the autocratic coaching methods of say, a Vince Lombardi, a George Allen or a
Woody Hayes. Instead of coercion, intimidation or fear, Carroll uses positive psychology, discipline and
hard work to prepare his players and his coaches, and then more positive psychology, discipline and more
hard work to get them to the point where, as Carroll puts it, “they feel they are worthy and have the right
to be supremely successful.”
Carroll says he has been “incubating” his ideas for 30 years, processing the experiences he gained
as head coach for the New York Jets for one season and the New England Patriots for three and assistant
positions with the Minnesota Vikings, the Jets, the San Francisco 49ers and at the University of Arkansas,
and Ohio State.
“When I got here, I was way more ready than people realized,” he says.
Carroll is talking in his office on the second floor of USC’s Heritage Hall, an imposing building of
red brick, concrete and glass. On the first floor, USC athletic trophies and awards fill a large, square
room that is protected from the sun’s ultraviolet rays by tinted, floor-to-ceiling windows. Six pedestals
display the Heisman Trophies won by USC Trojans, two of them by quarterbacks on Carroll’s teams,
Carson Palmer in 2002 and Matt Leinart in 2004.
In contrast to the cool, museum-like space below, Carroll’s office has the comfortable, informal
interior of a fraternity house, with large overstuffed leather chairs and a couch. A white and blue surf
board leans against a corner wall and a golf club lies on a coffee table. Carroll’s dark wood desk has an
abandoned look, as if it isn’t visited by its owner for long stretches.
Like others with a talent for directing people, Carroll’s leadership skills are both readily apparent,
yet difficult to decode. It’s hard to know how much to ascribe to nature, how much to nurture. What is
clear is that Carroll has what the news and entertainment industry calls a high “Q score,” – an immense
likeability factor. At 54, with youthful good looks, he always appears energetic and “up.”
The energy and optimism appear to flow naturally, but in fact, Carroll is always conscious of his
supply of positive energy. If he feels the needle moving toward half-empty, Carroll says he “cranks it
up,” psychologically refueling himself out of concern that by his appearing sluggish or down could have a
negative effect on others. Why Carroll feels a responsibility to invigorate, not dampen, the human spirit
gets to the core of his leadership style.
His projection of vitality and optimism, his reluctance to criticize, his view that losing one’s
temper is a sign of weakness – all draw on the work of psychologist Abraham Maslow, the field of
positive psychology and a new academic discipline called Positive Organizational Scholarship.
 In contrast to traditional psychology, which studies mental illness, positive psychology studies
mental health. It begins from the premise that people are good and seeks to explain why exemplary
people are the way they are. Positive Organizational Scholarship, which was originated by scholars at
U.S. business schools including USC Marshall School of Business, takes positive psychology one step
further and looks at goodness in organizations that are typified by appreciation, collaboration,
virtuousness, vitality and meaningfulness.
The University of Michigan is the center of POS, as it is called, but the discipline is making
inroads into USC as well. Christine Porath, an associate professor of management and organization at
USC Marshall, has been an early and influential contributor of POS.
Carroll is unusual in that he is both a follower of positive psychology and an embodiment of it, an
“Exhibit A” for people who want to see it in action. As one POS scholar writes, it is one thing not to be a
depressed person, but quite another to be a person who leaps out of bed in the morning with a twinkle in
the eye and a smile. POS has a term, “positive deviant,” to describe people like Carroll whose behavior is
a conscious effort to deviate from the norm to improve the human condition.
“Pete has a joyful, fun approach to life which makes him a delight to work for and to be around,”
says Lou Tice, the president of The Pacific Institute, a center in Seattle, Washington that uses cognitive
psychology to teach organizations and individuals how to change their core beliefs to enable them to
reach new levels of purposefulness. The Institute also advocates the principle of POS.
Tice has been a close friend of Carroll’s since 1994 when Carroll was the head coach of the New
York Jets and was looking for a program to motivate his players and coaches. Carroll chose the Institute’s
“Investment in Excellence” course, which he attended with his coaches at Tice’s ranch in Eastern
Washington. It was also Tice whom Carroll called to help him launch “A Better L.A.,” an organization
trying to reduce gang violence in Los Angeles.
This fall, The Pacific Institute is publishing a book that Tice and Carroll wrote together called
Leadership is a Performance Art. Warren Bennis, the internationally renowned expert on leadership and
the director of the USC Leadership Institute, wrote the book’s foreword. Worth noting is that Bennis’s
friend and mentor was Abraham Maslow. Each spring, Bennis invites the football coach to lecture at a
leadership class that Bennis co-teaches with USC President Stephen Sample.
“When I think about the six characteristics of terrific leaders, there isn’t one that’s missing from
Pete Carroll’s quiver,” Bennis observes. The six time-tested characteristics of leadership that Bennis has
identified are the ability to:

• create a sense of mission

• engage an adaptive and agile social architecture
• build an adaptive and agile social architecture
• generate and sustain trust
• develop leaders
• get results

The third trait requires a sense of hardiness, and Bennis cites Carroll’s first season, which began in
a demoralizing 2-5 record, as evidence of Carroll’s resilience. As Bennis put it, Carroll projects “the
sense that everything is going to work out.” USC won the last five of the six games that season. Home
games at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, with a capacity for 92,000 avid Trojan fans, are nearly
sold out.
Carroll’s interest in the intersection between sports and psychology was sparked in high school.
An athlete since childhood, Carroll attended the University of the Pacific in Stockton, CA in the 1970s,
where he was becoming an academic specialty. He also met his wife, Glenna, there. She played varsity
volleyball and not surprising, all three of the Carroll’s children are athletes. His oldest, Brennan, is an
assistant football coach for the Trojans.
 Carroll remained at Pacific to get his master’s degree in applied sports psychology and wrote his
thesis on Maslow, one of the fathers of positive psychology. Maslow, who died in 1970, theorized that
people are motivated by unsatisfied needs, stacked in layers to form a pyramid. At the bottom is the basic
need for food, water, sleep and all the bodily functions. With those needs met, people can move to a
higher stage, subsequently meeting their needs for a safe environment, then love and a sense of
community and finally, esteem.
Only at that point can people achieve what Maslow called “self-actualization,” a point where a
person can maximize his potential. People who reach this stage are free to seek peace, knowledge, a
oneness with God or self-fulfillment, which is why, psychologists suggest, it is typically middle to upper-
class students – people whose lower needs have been met – who join the Peace Corps or an environmental
cause or a monastery.
Carroll wrote his thesis under the guidance of Glen Albaugh, a former faculty member and now a
sports psychologist who has consulted with 27 professional golfers on the PGA Tour. Carroll also found
inspiration in Tim Gallwey’s best-seller The Inner Game of Tennis, one of the first sports books to
address ways of ridding yourself of paralyzing fear and self-doubt.
The combination of Carroll’s coaching success and his optimistic demeanor often leads people to
seek his advice. Carroll says one of the two most common questions he gets is whether he thinks a
company could be run with the same approach. Could he, in fact, do it?
“I would love the thought of taking something over and seeing if I could do it. I don’t have the
expertise, but I would love to see the principles put in place,” Carroll says. But behind each principle lie a
“million factors that contribute to your makeup,” cautions Carroll, a requirement, in effect that you have a
clear sense of who you are. Unadorned, Carroll’s principles of leadership are:

• Have your own belief systems in order before leading others.

• Allow people to perform in the absence of fear.
• Place people in positions where they can excel.
• Relentlessly pursue the competitive edge.

Having your own belief systems in order lets a leader give others a clear vision of his or her goals.
Performing in the absence of fear frees people to be successful. Placing people in positions where they
can excel prevents paralyzing self-doubt. The fourth principle, relentlessly pursuing the competitive edge,
means practicing and preparing so much that winning is not in doubt.
“Look, there are a lot of ways to lead,” Carroll, summing up. “But tough guys, leaders who are
oppressive, never get the best out of people. When people work for you to avoid getting yelled at, it’s not
effective.”
The other question he says he is asked most often is, “Do you wish you were back in the NFL?”
Carroll’s answer: “No.”
Carroll has a clear sense of who he is.