Step 1: Boil the myriad traits that make Bill Self a winner who works in the highest stratosphere of his chosen profession, that of college basketball coach, down to three and rank them in order. Write them on a piece of paper, fold it in half and store it in a location you will remember.

Step 2: Boil the myriad traits that make Josh Jackson a winner who works in the highest stratosphere of his chosen art form, that of college basketball player, down to three and rank them in order. Write them on a piece of paper, fold it in half and store it in a location you will remember.

Step 3: After finishing Steps 1 and 2, retrieve the two folded pieces of paper.

Step 4: Read the rest of this column.

My unfolded piece of paper on which Self’s three winning traits are ranked in order reads: Intelligence, aggressiveness, charisma.

Self’s intelligence starts with his ability to focus on his surroundings, absorb everything useful that he sees, hears, reads, senses in any way and then call on the precisely right piece of knowledge, sometimes without thinking, other times by first sorting through the possibilities, at just the right moment. In recruiting, his intelligence enables him to read the people around recruits and recruits themselves. His people speed-reading skills enable him to push the proper emotional button, often pride, in the athletes he coaches in such a way as to ultimately bring out the best in them, even if it means they become worse basketball players before they become better than anyone at first imagined them capable of becoming.

Self’s aggressiveness takes many forms, not the least being his stubbornness. He knows he knows more than the players he coaches about how to make them better, so he never retreats from them as he sees players fighting him, even if it’s subconscious resistance on the part of the athlete. He coaches his players hard because he firmly believes that doing so will make them come around to his way of doing things, which is to do them with consistent unselfishness, aggressiveness, toughness. He intelligently and aggressively reaches into the minds of his players and twists them with the goal of making their minds equate the gains of the team with the gratification of their egos. It’s an impossible task to execute to perfection, so he never stops twisting toward that end.

The coach’s aggressiveness never rests.

He remains in attack mode against more than the team from the other bench. He attacks losing traits of players, never letting one go unmentioned. He consistently attacks any sign of selfishness, softness, laziness. He never stops. He believes that if he stays true to his principles, his players eventually will grow weary of trying to do it their way and will cave to his will. He believes it because he sees it happen over and over again.

That’s why it took someone not around him every day to make a joke of Self riding a referee so hard at the end of the first half of a blowout victory against Nebraska. Cornhuskers coach Tim Miles laughed at the idea of Self expressing such outrage at an official when so far ahead in the game.

Few accustomed to seeing Self coach every possession as if a ticket to the Final Four depended on it thought anything of him getting so worked up during a game going so well for his team. Self’s in the habit of valuing every possession with the same desire for everyone to do their jobs well, be it his players or the referees.

Charisma enables Self to win friends and influence people on his team, in the stands, in jobs at every level of the university he represents.

Charisma is what enables him to coach his players so hard at times without them turning against him or tuning him out. His humor and ability to make compliments stay with his players every bit as deeply as his criticisms do inspires them to follow him. He makes it impossible for people not to like him, even if at times he makes them wish they were anywhere but on the receiving end of his voice and irrepressible will.

Self’s intelligence and charisma bubble to the surface during press conferences. His ability to closely approximate the time, score and situation of pretty much every possession of a basketball game reveals a peek inside a mind that constantly takes mental photographs and recalls them on command. His charisma enables him to field questions without embarrassing the person asking, even when one of the questions came from someone wondering if Self ever put Wilt Chamberlain in touch with Andrew Wiggins to give him advice.

The gap between Self’s personal charm and competitive nastiness is rare.

Now that I’ve revealed what I believe to be the blend that makes Self a winner, I’ll unfold the paper on which I wrote the Jackson amalgam of winning traits, ranked in order: Intelligence, aggressiveness, charisma.

Jackson’s ability to store everything he reads, hears, sees and senses in any way and apply it in such a way that he excels in just about every aspect of the game of basketball speaks to a sponge-of-a-mind never at rest.

He processes what he sees so swiftly that the right pass is being caught or dropped at an instant that for most passers it just now would be seen by players with lesser vision. Once, he received a pass in the short left corner and hot-potatoed a perfect lob to Udoka Azubuike on the right block. Jackson knew he was going to make that pass, saw the dunk in his mind, before his hand touched the ball. Azubuike didn’t know it was even a possibility and wasn’t able to react to it in time. The box score showed nothing but a turnover for Jackson on one of his more remarkable plays made in a Kansas uniform.

Put Jackson just about anywhere on the court in any situation and he’ll figure out how to make a winning play. He picks apart zones from the high post with smart passes. His back to the basket as he stands on the block, he throws a soft hook over his left shoulder off the glass for an easy bucket against a shorter defender. He drives angles efficiently from either side of the lane or from either corner.

Defensively, he simultaneously reads the basketball and moving bodies and positions himself in a way to give himself a chance to help off his man to stop a penetration, block a shot, deflect a pass. He figures out when opponents might let their guard down and pounces by stepping into a passing lane for a steal.

Jackson’s intelligence also allows him to know there is plenty he doesn’t know. Rare is the teenager who is able to block out the worship that comes his way so that he can stay laser-focused on becoming better at what spawned the worship in the first place. Jackson clearly has mastered that because he arrived at Kansas so sophisticated and fearless in the ways of making winning plays and so open to being shown a better way. His youth means he doesn’t always make smart plays and sometimes his shot selection can be questioned, but his intelligence ensures he’ll learn from mistakes.

Jackson’s aggressiveness doesn’t come equipped with an off switch. He approaches every possession as a battle to be won. He plays with a constant sense of urgency, engaged offensively, defensively and in transition in both directions at an extremely high rate.

He is as relentless in the art of making himself a pest invading the space of his man by making him pick up his dribble, hurry a shot, rush a pass or become so distracted they take an extra step and draw a whistle. Jackson plays as if he believes he eventually will break the spirit of his competitor and he often accomplishes that.

He can trash-talk an opponent with the best, but does so without accompanying body language that calls attention to it. He doesn’t do it in look-at-me fashion that welcomes the audience into the conversation, rather in listen-to-me-and-watch-me-do-to-you-what-I-just-told-you-I-would-do-to-you fashion. The message is directed to and intended for an audience of one.

Jackson’s charisma makes teammates want to follow him. Nothing about the way he walks or talks hints at him having been told he’s special, better than the rest, spoiled.

At press conferences, he treats all comers with respect and responds to each question as if being graded on is answers for originality, insight, spontaneity and friendly presentation, a tough balancing act he executes seemingly without effort. Clearly, treating people well has become a habit for him.

The way he appears to treat people outside of the realm of competition in no way resembles the possession-by-possession nastiness he brings to the court, possession-by-equally-valued possession.

In so many ways, Jackson is to college basketball players what Self is to college basketball coaches, the complete package, an intelligent, aggressive, charismatic winning machine.

Step 5: Compare your unfolded pieces of paper and see how many winning traits that you identified for Self also appeared on the paper listing Jackson’s winning traits in order.