Leading From the Middle: Bob Starkey on Hard Conversations, the Process & Why Failure Is Your Best Friend

What does it take to lead when you’re not the one in charge? In the debut episode of Lessons From The Sidelines, Coach Greg Brown sits down with Bob Starkey — associate head coach for LSU women’s basketball and one of the most respected lifelong assistants in the game — for a candid conversation about leading from the middle.Over four-plus decades alongside Hall of Famers like Dale Brown, Sue Gunter, and Kim Mulkey, Bob has built a career on a rare idea: that the best leaders aren’t always the ones with their name on the door. He and Greg get into the hard conversations most leaders avoid, why he attaches his emotions to the process instead of the result, how he builds a staff the way he’d recruit a team, and the difference between coaching a team and running a program.