Monthly Archives: August 2010

3 Techniques of Good Coaches

Coaching philosophy, Coaching strategy, Team roles

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We all want to be good at what we do…that’s the base level, right? Good, then great, then excellent. I talked about excellent here, but wanted to step back and write about the basics of being a good coach. Besides knowing your stuff and being a good teacher of skills, there are some less concrete places where good coaches excel. In this article from the current issue of Psychology Today called “Dear Leaders: Mastering the art of being in charge”, they talk about those less tangible aspects of leadership. While its focus was bosses in a corporate environment, I was able to pull out some “good boss” tips that can most certainly be “good coach” tips as well.

Good Boss Tip #1: They know themselves and their situation. “Being in power is a deterrent to self-awareness”, making it more difficult to “ascertain the impact their behaviors and policies have on their employees.”
Good Coaching translation: Whether the adjective before your name is “assistant”, or “head”, or “volunteer”…you’re still a coach. I’ve met too many coaches who think that they are friends with their teams…you can’t be their friend when you determine their scholarship money or their playing time. Please listen: your team members are not your friends and they don’t all love you. As coaches, we need a friendly relationship with our teams (or maybe just our captains) in order to get the real scoop as to what is going on with the team. If your captains say that the 6 am practices are killing them because they are all taking 8 pm classes that don’t get out until 10 o’clock at night, that’s something to take under consideration. You may not change your policy, but they’ve got to believe that you heard them and that you have a good reason for those early morning practices. When one person (the coach) holds all of the power, it’s pretty hard to be friends, but a friendly relationship with your team is essential to being the best leader for your group.

Good Boss Tip #2: They consciously break out of the power bubble by asking for direct input and feedback. Good bosses “are more sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of their charges.”
Good Coaching translation: As tough as it is to admit for us controlling coaches, we don’t know everything and aren’t always aware of how we impact the team. Instead of railing about how awful practice was, how about asking the team? They no doubt realize how bad the practice was and will probably be just as eloquent in getting that point across and it’ll mean more to their teammates coming from their peers. Or maybe you can meet with your captains and find out how the team dynamics are shaping up…are people getting along on and off the court? Who do they feel the most comfortable with on and off the field? This knowledge (that most of us aren’t privy to) will go a long way in putting the right grouping of people together to ensure successful competitions. The toughest, and most essential, is asking them what they need from you as a coach. Sometimes you will find out that they want more/less discipline or feedback…or maybe you’ll find out that they love what you’re doing with the team. Regardless, it’s pretty important to find out.

Good Boss Tip #3: They are decisive rulers. Employees don’t want “touchy-feely group therapy leaders.”
Good Coaching translation: For as much time as you take your team’s thoughts into account, they want to believe that you know what you’re doing and that you believe in what you’re doing. As coaches, it’s our job to explain the benefits of a decision and go with it. If we believe that a certain defense or offense or lineup is in the best interest of the team, it’s our job to “sell” it to the team in a manner that they understand and can get behind. We’ve got to alert them to the strengths and weaknesses of our plan, but also be enthusiastic and authoritative with our decision.

What do you think about these tips? I thought they were a nice starting point and could help us become a coach who “continually and constructively pushes [players] to do their best.”

So You Want To Be An Excellent Coach?

Books, Coaching nerds, Coaching philosophy, Work/Life balance

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I want to be an excellent coach and I’m sure you do as well. But how to do it? Should we stalk the experts in our field…mining their brains for what has made them successful? Or just keep grinding, hoping to stumble upon the key to excellence? Well, according to this article titled (attention-drawingly enough) Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything, the key is simple. Practice…and practice a lot. So we don’t have to be coaching savants, having everything seemingly dropped at our feet…we can work our way to excellence. It goes on to say that “numerous researchers now agree that 10,000 hours of [deliberate] practice is the minimum necessary to achieve expertise in any complex domain.” That’s great news! That means anyone who’s committed and dogged and focused enough can become excellent. Let’s look at how we can do it.

  • Pursue what you love. As the great book, The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle says, “if you don’t love it, you’ll never work hard enough to be great.” The passion we have for our craft has to be at such a level that we’re willing to obsess over it and still love it at the end of the day.
  • Do the hardest work first. We think we’re focused, but we’re not. So sit down in the morning, write your to-do list and identify those things you’re not all that fired up about doing and knock them out first thing in the morning when you’ve got the most energy.
  • Practice intensely. Check out this sentence from the article: “If you want to be really good at something, it’s going to involve relentlessly pushing past your comfort zone, along with frustration, struggle, setbacks and failures.” Enough said.
  • Seek expert feedback, in intermittent doses. I’m sure we all have peers that we know that we can chat with and know that they’ll give us good, honest advice. The article says that we should definitely do that…only sparingly, so that we learn who we are and form our own style and philosophy.
  • Take regular renewal breaks. I love volleyball…I think it’s the greatest sport ever. And I love coaching…I think it’s the greatest profession ever. I read about them, I write about them, I talk about them. I am fired up about my job. But I can’t be this fired up all the time, my heart can’t take it. So I enjoy my summers off, using them to relax and find out what it’s like not to always obsess over how to be better at what I do.
  • Ritualize practice. The 6 Keys article says none of us have very much will power (we think we do, but we don’t), so we’ve got to plan for getting better. Personally, I look at a few business blogs everyday because, a) there aren’t many sports coaching blogs out there, and b) there seems to be an intrinsic link between the business and coaching worlds. If you’ve checked the links on this site, a lot of them come from the Harvard Business Review’s blog…good stuff, highly recommended.


So it seems that excellence is closer than we think. It’s not something innate or inherited, but something we can will to happen through our own focused hard work. Are you up to the challenge?

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3 Reasons Why Making Mistakes Is Vital To Your Team’s Success

Coaching strategy, Mental game, Mistakes

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Trust me, if you aren’t making mistakes, you’re not learning — or, at least, you’re not learning enough.
The Miracle of Making Mistakes

I enjoyed this article because it has been my mantra as a coach for as long as I can remember and I can’t imagine that there are too many coaches out there who want the sort of timidity that comes from playing it safe. That quotation above is from an article in the Harvard Business Review (HBR), which I’d highly recommend you read by following the link. The fun part of my job is getting across to my players that there is joy in making mistakes and that those mistakes are the best way to get better and here’s how you can teach the same lesson.

First: Learn to take risks
The opening of the HBR article talks about our obsession with perfection: from getting A’s in the classroom to avoiding getting in trouble with mom and dad…we’re hard wired at a young age to not make mistakes. So it’s our obligation as coaches to explain that mistakes are a part of the game and that neither you nor they should expect perfection. I usually tell my team that if they make twenty five different mistakes, that’s great! But making twenty five of the same mistakes? Not so great. They should take risks and make new mistakes every day. As the German proverb says, “you will become clever through your mistakes.”

Second: Learn to manage their emotions when taking risks
Using volleyball as an example, how will your players learn that their heart will be pounding out of their chests when they’ve got the serve and it’s match point? How will they learn to manage their breathing, their thoughts, and their self-talk if you don’t put them in those pressure situations (in practices and games) and coach them through it? And that’s the key. It’s our jobs as coaches to equip them with the tools that they need to successfully navigate risk-taking.

Third: Learn how to turn failure on its head
This is where your athletes learn that making mistakes will pay off for them. If they’re challenging themselves to master new skills, they’re going to fail because it’s new. But if they keep at it, they’ll fail themselves forward and acquire a new skill that they can use to challenge competitors. Imagine if a baby decided that it could do everything it needed to do by crawling everywhere…how limited would their lives be?! The same is true for athletes! It’s our jobs as coaches to challenge our athletes and to give them enough knowledge in practice that they can self-correct mid-competition…and I believe that knowledge is the key to taking smart risks and making smart mistakes.

How do you encourage your team to make mistakes? Do you think you create an environment where your athletes feel comfortable making mistakes?

Building rapport with your team: It’s easy as 1-2-3 (4-5)

Coaching strategy, Team chemistry

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What if you could get along with everyone you met? From the super quiet people to those folks who are hyper chatty? I’ve talked about using personality tests to increase your team chemistry previously and believe that this is the secret to building rapport with your team. I follow the DiSC method of personality testing, but know that there are many different tests out there. Whichever you decide on using, the result should be a higher level of understanding for you of what makes different people tick and how to put the various personality types at ease. Here’s a quick DiSC refresher…for more in depth discussion, click on this link to the post about personality tests and team chemistry.

D: Strong and direct decision makers.
i: Your people of influence.
S: Your sensitive and steady Eddy’s.
C: Your conscientious and careful workers.

Even if you aren’t able to test (you can’t test everyone you know!), just having the knowledge for yourself will be extremely helpful. Knowing your own personality type as well as how it meshes with the others will give you a game plan for building the rapport you desire with your team. Let’s go over how to build that rapport and at the end of each tip is a recommendation of which personality types would respond most positively to the tip…that certainly doesn’t mean that others won’t appreciate the effort though!

5 easy ways to build rapport with your team.

Building rapport tip #1: Be human and approachable. Even if you are the leader or the expert, be sure to maintain your level of approachability and openness. Always remember that as a coach, you’ve got the upper hand of power in your relationship with your team, therefore it’s your job to build the bridge of rapport. Good for i, S.

Building rapport tip #2: Care about them. Your athletes want to believe that you care for them as people…not just for the particular grouping of skills that they have. Spend time talking to them about their classes or their parents or whatever. I’ve got a young lady on my team who loves the TV show Glee and we’ve been able to bond over our mutual love of the show. Good for i, S.

Building rapport tip #3: Have them over to your house. Break out of the monotony of the office or the gym or the field and bring them over to your house for dinner. Not only will they get to see your other side, they’ll appreciate time to hang with you without “talking shop” being the goal. Good for i, S.

Building rapport tip #4: Support them in things that aren’t a direct benefit to you. Do you have players who are in the orchestra or who dance or who are involved in student government? Whatever it is, surely they have interests in things that don’t involve you…ask them about it! Attend whatever correlating functions go along with their activity. That way, when you tell them that you care about them (tip #2!), they’ll believe you. Good for D, i, S, C.

Building rapport tip #5: Ask them what they think. Some folks are bossy and love the opportunity to give their opinion. Others are quiet ruminators and won’t give their opinions unless asked…and then you’ll be amazed at the depth of their opinions. Either way, taking the time to ask will be noted and appreciated. Good for D, C.

Now let’s get out there and start building some rapport! Let me know if you’ve got any other ideas or strategies.

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3 easy steps to motivate your bench players

Coaching strategy, Team chemistry, Team roles

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Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

The takeaway? We’re all in this together and everyone’s role is important…different, but vital. I’ve used that quotation with teams before, especially those teams where a couple of folks have risen to the top of the metaphorical heap. And if you’ve got a situation where playing time may be hard to come by or younger players who have supplanted your veterans, it’s a good idea to talk to your team about embracing their roles. That quotation is from the Bible and if your campus isn’t particularly churchy (like mine) or you just don’t feel comfortable citing where it’s from, I’ve found that the quotation is powerful enough that it stands alone.

No athlete wants to hear from their coach, “Your role is going to be sitting here next to me cheering on your teammates.” Though someone has to fill that role on every team, most folks assume that it will not be them. Once it sinks in that they will get limited playing time, how do we, as their coaches, keep them motivated, mentally engaged, and most of all…how can we help them to maintain a positive attitude? Some of your most engaging and fun and strong personalities will come from your bench players. If you want their impact to move your team chemistry along in a positive direction, rather than becoming cancerous, here are three ways to motivate them and make them feel as if they are an integral part of your team.

Make the team better: Imagine if you had a track & field athlete who could go hard rep after rep…but just couldn’t make the leap from middle of the pack to the best on your team. I mean, this girl is like clockwork…you tell her a time to hit and she nails it, every practice. Now imagine if you could embolden this athlete to see her role as making her teammates better, that while she may not have that “next gear”, she does bring something very valuable to the team which will ultimately make the big dogs more competitive. Now she’s not the girl who just isn’t good enough, but she’s your All-American’s training partner.

Be better than the competition: Hype up your reserve team! Empower them to challenge your starters…they know their strengths and weaknesses better than anyone else. While you certainly don’t want to develop any animosity between your starters and non-starters (that can be alleviated by moving people freely between the two sides…and maybe not calling them starters and non-starters), you do want to create a spirit of competition where your young ladies are getting after it in practice. Then your bench players will feel proud because they’re giving your starters a run for their money and your starters will feel well prepared because they’ve run the gauntlet everyday at practice.

Learn the game and be ready: How many times have we seen one of our better players get hurt and have to sit…and all of a sudden, she’s the smartest player in the world?! We all know that sitting back and becoming a student of the game is helpful, but it’s a luxury our top players cannot indulge in. But our reserves can, and they should use it to try and work their way into the starting lineup. If they’re just standing around yapping with the other ladies who aren’t starting instead of watching the game and trying to figure out how to get on the court, then they’re probably right where they deserve to be! As much sense as that makes to coaches, you probably will have to let them know that you expect them to fight for a spot…that it won’t be handed to them. You must also get across to them that it’s not personal. I always tell my team that I love all of them and think they’re all great, but starting spots are not gifts…they’re earned.

So, how do you handle playing time issues?

Book review: championship team building

Books, Coaching philosophy, Team chemistry

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Because teamwork is critical to your team’s success, it is important to invest the time in developing it, just as you spend time developing your talent.

The rundown: I saw Jeff Janssen, the author of this book, years ago at an AVCA convention and really appreciated his enthusiasm for team building. Not just team building activities, but the nuts and bolts and daily grind of building a team over the course of a season. The bulk of the book is about what Janssen calls his “7 C’s of Championship Team Building”:

  1. Common Goal
  2. Commitment
  3. Committing to a Common Goal
  4. Complementary Roles
  5. Clear Communication
  6. Constructive Conflict
  7. Cohesion

It’s a great book that talks about the stages of team development and how to manage that process. Each chapter also has cool team building activities at the end that are pretty easy to implement with your own team.

Recommended for: Any coach that wants to be sure they’re on the right track with their team development.

Not recommended for: Coaches that think that it’s not their job to make sure that their team is cohesive and functioning at a high level.

I’d love to hear from people who’ve read the book…did you find it useful in getting your team to where you want it to be?

Athletics CAN effectively collaborate with academics…here’s how

Coaching strategy, Collaboration, Community

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Our institution, like many I am sure, has increased its conversations about interdepartmental collaboration and challenged us to look for natural intersections amongst our peers. As a member of our Athletics Department, that’s exciting to me because I (in the same vein as the amazing John Wooden) see my job as a teacher of sport. And as an educator, I look forward to the opportunity to work with professors and link their field of study with mine…volleyball.

In my mind, the possibilities are endless! Let me share a few of my ideas for collaborative projects between athletics and academics.

Physics: A natural connection! Motion through space, energy, force…I’m excited just writing about it. What if you could get a Physics professor to come to your practice and measure the amount of force is generated when two padded football players collide?

Religious Studies: The beginning of the season is all about faith, right? Every team believes in something that they don’t see…that if they work hard, that they’ll receive the benefits of said work. Hook up with folks in your Religious Studies department and have them chat with your team about leaders in the past who dreamed and believed and hoped in things that had not yet come to fruition.

Women’s Studies: Have a professor come in and talk to your team about the history of women in athletics…about how we got to where we are now. I’d bet your young ladies would be interested to hear about days when ladies who played basketball couldn’t cross half court lest they get too tired.

English: There are many, many books written by coaches, as well as strategic manuals about there. Maybe you could ask your favorite English professor to bring in a couple popular books and lead a discussion of its content.

Languages: The World Cup just passed and that would be an incredible time to bring in a Spanish, or German, or Italian professor to a practice. They could enlighten your team on the culture of whatever nation their language represents and elaborate on the popularity and importance of soccer with that particular group of people.

Sociology: I just read an article about a woman who is believed to be the first female head coach of a varsity football team, that would be a great kicking off point for a discussion of traditional gender roles in our society. Or how about bringing in a Sociology professor to chat with your athletes about race and athletics? Sure to be an exciting discussion!

I’m going to stop there, but there are more intersections out there if we keep looking. The first step to collaborating with our academic peers is to find the natural intersections between fields and I hope that I’ve helped you see a few of them. The next step is going out and making connections. Not only would this promote collegiality between peers, think of the money the Athletics Department could save by using their very valuable resources right there on campus rather than bringing in folks from the outside.

Have I missed any other collaboration opportunities? Has your program been doing this already?

The making connections series: alumni

Coaching community, Connections

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This is the third in a three-part series focusing on creating meaningful connections and this post will focus on your alumni base. Whether you’re involved with a high school, club, or collegiate level team…you have alumni and they more than likely have very fond memories of their time with your organization. The key is engaging them in meaningful contact and conversation and not always being worried about what’s in their wallet.

Come together: We all have natural gathering points that we should focus on. For high schools and universities, Homecoming is a great time to focus on…have an alumni game and a reception for your sport’s alums and encourage them to bring their families. Everyone loves to catch up…why not have them catch up at your event? For club directors, the beginning of club season could be a gold mine for bringing former players back into the fold. Have them speak at your parent’s meetings, if they can’t be there…maybe their parents can be. I can’t imagine you have any parents in your system that aren’t more worried about their child’s experience than her playing time…your parent alums can speak on that subject.

Strategic scheduling: How about scheduling games near your biggest alumni base of support? If you’re a northern team, but have a big influx of folks from the west coast, why not schedule a weekend out there and notify your alums & parents out west? Find your most boisterous and well-connected alum and put them in charge of rounding other alumni up and having some sort of gathering where they can catch up with their classmates and also meet the new team members and coaching staff. They will appreciate being able to see the team in action and you will get a real connection with supportive alumni.

Connecting for the financially strapped: I’m sure you know what I’m about to say, but I’ll say it anyway. Send your alums electronic newsletters and link them to your team’s webpage. Create a Facebook fan page so that your alumni can “like” your team…or a Twitter account so that they can follow you. Maybe you could pick a home game to honor your alums, bring them out and have them announced, then have some sort of meet & greet thing afterward.

I started off this post saying that your alumni need to believe that you want to be in contact with them even if they don’t donate a penny. That being said, all of the work you put in to create good will should pay off with a more financially involved and supportive alumni base. Most folks are still giving to churches and charities because they have a reason why…we’ve got to give our alums a reason to give and show them that their support is both needed and appreciated.

What is your club or college doing to connect with its alums? I’d love to hear what folks are doing!

Making Connections: community
Making Connections: campus

Teaching our athletes to embrace power: part 2

Coaching community, Female athletes, Mentor

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The last post introduced a Harvard Business Review blog post which talked about women being wary to hold power. (Women and the Uneasy Embrace of Power) Let’s finish the discussion today with the author’s “actions required to attain power.” We, as coaches, have the awesome opportunity to equip our female athletes with what’s necessary to be in powerful positions later in life. To be President’s and CEO’s and well, Big Shots. Here’s what they need to learn:

And while men, too, are sometimes uncomfortable with the actions required to attain power — building relationships with useful others, displaying confidence, engaging in self-promotion, being willing to work long hours — women, as a rule, tend to be less willing to make the trade-offs required to attain positions of power.

Building relationships with useful others Not just others, but “useful” others. According to this post, women typically dislike hierarchical relationships, so ladies probably aren’t super fired up to strategically target people for what they can do for them…but we should be! I believe that it’s both what you know and who you know. If you’ve got the next big thing, but only you know about it…how does that benefit you or others?

Displaying confidence This is one area that I do believe athletes are a little ahead of the game. Think about the sprinter who has to believe that she has superior skills than the rest of her competitors. Or the gymnast who is out there on an island, with no teammates to hide behind, performing her event knowing that she is being judged (quite literally) on every little detail.

Engaging in self-promotion Even for the most confident of us, this is probably the biggest hurdle. But it is just a hurdle…meant to be leaped over, conquered, and dominated. As leaders of women, we must get across to our athletes that promoting themselves does not mean that they are demeaning anyone else or their accomplishments.

Being willing to work long hours Our athletes are already putting in long hours with their sport and sacrificing their personal time for the benefit of the team. How do we get our athletes to flip that switch so that they are just as dogged in their pursuit of success for themselves in the business world?

I suppose the biggest factor in women accomplishing these things on a greater scale and being okay with wielding power is having a supportive partner who’s willing to take up the slack at home while she’s off schmoozing at a party and selling people on the fact that she should be the next athletic director at their college or university.

How do we go about doing this? Making sure our athletes are comfortable having and exerting power and that they believe that they can do those things while maintaining a family and a home when they’re older?

Read Part 1

Teaching our athletes to embrace power: part 1

Captains, Female athletes, Team chemistry

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We’re going to take a break from our Connections series for a moment to discuss an article that I read on the Harvard Business Review (HBR) blog titled, “Women and the Uneasy Embrace of Power”. This discussion will take two posts, then we will get back on track with the third and final part of the series where we will discuss alumni connections.

I’m going to take a quotation from the post that is the jumping off point for the discussion. I’ve removed the (numerous!) linked information from the text, so if you’d like to see the backup evidence regarding these claims, clink on the HBR link and you’ll find it all over there.

The evidence shows that women are less power-oriented than men. Women have more negative attitudes toward holding power, they are less likely to pursue power-based influence strategies, they are more bothered by and disfavor hierarchical relationships, they are less motivated to dominate others, and they are less likely to take actions to attain power. Moreover, in situations such as salary negotiations, studies show that women often believe that they deserve less than similarly qualified men and are, as a consequence, likely to demand less and to press their salary demands with less vigor.

Okay, we’ll take those statements as generally true, because the evidence he has to back it up is overwhelming. So the next step is to ask ourselves, as leaders of women, how do we address this predicament? We could get all huffy and say that athletes are stronger (mentally & physically) than the average woman so this doesn’t apply to them. Or we could look at what we’re modeling for our athletes and figure out if it is hurting or helping their chances at being more likely to embrace power.

Most of us have captains on our teams and that puts them in a position of leadership and power amongst their peers. In the context of a team, can you see why there is sometimes an uneasiness between captains and the rest of the team? If women generally have a negative perception of holding power…how are your captains viewed by their teammates? I believe that it is critical to shape your team’s and your captain’s view of what a captain should be, what she should do, why she is doing it, and that it is okay to exercise power in her role as captain. I often say that we need followership classes just as much as we have leadership training. It’s got to be okay to have captains with power and influence who feel comfortable exerting that power with their teammates.

How can we, as coaches, empower and enable our young ladies to embrace their roles as leaders and followers?

Read Part 2