Coach Dawn Writes

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Does everyone on your team think the same way and have the same belief system? Of course not! I believe that every team is filled with people from diverse backgrounds even though it seems that we tend to think of race or ethnicity as the only kinds of diversity out there. But whether it’s geographical or cultural differences, political or age disparities…diversity is all around us. As leaders, we manage people with varying ideas of what constitutes “right” and “wrong” or even what “hard work” means and it’s our job to figure out how to be a consistent and effective leader for those folks. And as coaches, we need to learn how to celebrate personality quirks while pushing our team toward their common purpose for the season.

Over a series of three posts, I’ll delve into the subject of leadership and discuss what we need to do in order to improve upon what we’re doing so that we can get the best from our teams. Let’s get started!

The 2 Most Out-Of-The-Box Ideas For Team Leaders

• • The Skinned Cat Theory: Making Connections With People of Influence
    Since we’ve already agreed that diversity is everywhere, we can now talk about how to wield our influence across boundaries. This is a big one for coaches! The longer our athletes compete, the more coaches they will encounter, and the more opportunities they will have to experience different philosophies and coaching styles. Much like a business person has to learn diplomacy and cooperation, a coach also has to embrace the fact that we are not the only person of influence in our athlete’s life, so rather than see it as a challenge to our leadership, we have to work in conjunction with all of those folks in order to get the most from our athletes.
  • Parents, former coaches, concurrent coaches (for the high school athlete who may compete on a club team)…these are all people that have influence on our athletes. Here are a couple of ways that we can all work together to increase our effectiveness as leaders. Parents: use them to reiterate a positive message to your athlete (coach says that you’re doing a great job as captain), while reinforcing your authoritative role in their life. Former/concurrent coaches: while they may have a different coaching style or strategy, that doesn’t make your way (or their way for that matter) better or worse…just different. I think that it’s important to let our athletes know that there are many ways to skin a cat and the result will be the same…a skinned cat! I know that it’s a gross metaphor, but I think it gets the point across: there are multiple ways to get to the same destination. Leadership means building connections (inside and outside of our teams) and cooperating with others in order to develop our athletes.

• • Goals and Goofballs…We Need Them Both!
    I’ll never forget attending the volleyball Final Four years ago when Stanford and Long Beach State were competing against each other. Since I’m a big time coaching nerd, I was there super early so that I could watch the teams warm up. And this was a tale of two different coaching styles if I ever saw one! Long Beach State was on the court very early doing a tremendously regimented warm up, while some of the Stanford players were challenging each other to see how high they could pass the ball and others were scattered around doing their own thing. The fact that these teams made up half of the four best volleyball teams in the country (whittled down from over three hundred Division One teams) shows that we can be very different, while still being very successful.
  • I think that is not only true of teams, but individually as well. I’ve written before about using personality tests with your teams, because I’m a believer that it takes all types to build team chemistry and success. Every team will have its goofballs, super serious overthinkers, the ladies who seem to get along with everyone, and your fiery, rally-the-troops types…we need them all in order to be successful! Bringing them together in order to accomplish the team’s goals is our job as coaches. I think that the level to which they appreciate and value each others personality quirks is directly proportional to a team’s success.

Our athletes have different ways of thinking, different ways that they’ve been coached, different ways of playing the sport…and different folks who influence their lives. We deal with people from diverse backgrounds and it’s our jobs as leaders to mold them into a team.

Read Part Two

Read Part Three