Valorie Kondos Field Asks Foster Mobley What the Wise Man Taught Him About Leading

Step Wise · Oct 28, 2026 · 22m · transcript

Fifteen years ago, Foster Mobley looked at the 277,000 leadership books already in print and decided not to write number 277,001. He wrote an allegory instead: a 114-mile walk with a grizzled wise man who keeps stopping to ask better questions. Readers loved it. Some loved it so much they got genuinely angry when they learned the wise man wasn't real. Valorie Kondos Field was one of them.

So it's fitting that Miss Val, the UCLA Athletics Hall of Famer who coached her teams to seven national titles, is the one holding the questions this time. In her living room in Pacific Grove, California…