Monthly Archives: January 2011

12 Step Program: Follow These Steps To Accomplish Your Goals

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As a manager of people (and that’s what we are, right?), do you know how to lead your team through the goal setting process? Every team has an interesting mix of individual and corporate goals…and managing those is an interesting process in itself! We’ve got to come up with, define, and try to accomplish goals that are months away from fruition…that’s no easy task. I saw an article called “12 Steps To Achievement In Teams” that I thought would give us a good place to start. This is what they had to say:

Here are 12 steps to guide your team through the goal setting process

Purpose. Everyone has to understand what the goals are…otherwise there’s an unclear reason for coming together as a team.
Responsibilities. Does everyone know what their roles are? Have you talked to your captains about what you expect from them? Do your non-starters know that they’re non-starters…and they’re okay with it?
Objectives. These are your team’s specific goals. Not just “we want to win conference”, but “we want to hit .350 each match” or “we want our opponents to have 2 reception errors per game.” Objectives are your specific subsets of your overarching goals.
Process. This is probably where the coach comes in…after your team tells you what goals they’ve decided upon. Hopefully they’re attainable. If they are, then you’ve got to give them the hard truth about the amount of work they’re going to have to put in to fulfill their objectives.
Working conditions. Saying they want to accomplish a goal is different from doing what it takes to be successful. It takes commitment, hard work, focus…everyday. Even when they’ve got a pile of homework. Even when they’re having relationship troubles. Even when they’re tired. The teams that can push through the ups and downs of a season have a solid chance of success.
Resources. If one of your team’s goals is to be nationally ranked, but your department won’t financially support traveling to play a tough schedule…that goal will be at risk. Some goals are out of your team’s control and I would challenge them to come up with things that they’re completely in control of.
Targets. In our world, these could be called team rules. Whether you’re coming up with them or your team captains set the norms for your team…they’ve got to be clear and they’ve got to be followed. Your team may decide they want to refrain from eating fast food all season in order to fulfill their objectives…that’s a target.
Authority. Is it clear who’s in charge? That’s a bit easier on a sports team, but there’s usually a little ambiguity there. Obviously the coach is in charge and your captains run the show at the ground level. But what about the freshman phenom on your team…does her playing status give her authority?
Training. Surely the coach is willing to train the team. But is the team willing to put in the mental and physical effort to get better? Quality training is only as good as the athletes who use it.
Priorities. Has your team made training for their sports season a priority? Are they in the weight room in the off-season? Are they training hard in the summer? The things that take priority in people’s lives are the things they tend to spend their time on. Is your team and its success a priority for every one of your players?
Progress. How will they define success? And is there a way to measure it along the way? Maybe you can encourage your team to assess their goals every couple of weeks…or maybe just your captains. But someone (besides the coaching staff…these are the team’s goals, after all) has to be willing to see if the team is on or off course.
Supervision. Coaches can holler and yell, but I believe that our team’s hold the highest level of respect for each other. Equip and prepare your captains to lead through good times and bad…always being there to help or take control if necessary.
Example. Are your team leaders the hardest working people in the gym? Are they the one’s who are rallying their teammates for off-season workouts? Well, then you’ve got fine leaders by example.

That’s a lot of info…but I think there are good points in there that I may not have thought about before. Even if we use just a few of these, our goals may turn out to be more accessible…and that’s a good thing!

Here’s A Quick Way Your Team Can Accomplish Goals

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Teams are all about goals. We have personal goals, short-term goals, and long-term goals. But before we get into how to actually accomplish your goals, let’s go back to the beginning and check out what you need to accomplish your goals. I’m not talking about follow-through and desire and motivation…much more basic than that. I’m talking about the day after your season is over and you’re already looking forward to the following season…what will you need?

Here are the 3 things you’ll need in order to accomplish your goals

1. Task: Our teams are just groups of people with a common goal…to win! But that can’t be our only reason for gathering together. What are your personal goals for your team? What type of players would you like them to be when you’re finished with them? What type of people? And what are your team’s goals? Are they goals that each member can get behind and believe in?

2. Team: Every team begins the season with a goal that is months away…to win a conference or national championship. It’s the coach’s job to navigate the time between imagining the goal and actually accomplishing it. There could be personnel issues (players not getting along or not getting it done in the classroom) or there could be injuries. Or, there could be blows to confidence in the way of poor performances and losses. Whatever it is, our job as coaches is to keep the team focused on the goal.

3. Individual: Each person has a stake. The problem is…they’re all probably very different! It could be based on age (your freshmen won’t have the same urgency as your seniors), it could be based on skill level (your non-starters will have dramatically different expectations than your starters), or it could be based on history (your team leaders could have a real desire to leave their mark on your program). I’ll tell you this though, every person on your team needs to have a stake (or a reason to come to practice every day) in order for goals to be accomplished. A team can’t function if some of its members have checked out…so be sure that everyone on your team has a reason that’ll keep them engaged.

Those were the basics. Check back next time for a step-by-step process to accomplishing your goals.

8 Ways To Help Your Team Overcome A Weakness

Coaching strategy, Mistakes, PracticePractice

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Every team has a weakness, just like every player has a weakness. Every offensive scheme has a deficiency…as does every defensive system. The best way to camouflage those weaknesses is to be honest about them and figure out to minimize them. Here’s a step-by-step plan to do just that…enjoy!

8 ways to keep from beating yourself and get on the road to success

Admit that it exists. You’ve got to identify your team’s weakness before anyone else does. Once you’ve identified your shortcomings, you can style your offensive and defensive schemes around hiding it.
Be specific. Whether you’ve got a slow-footed setter or a hitter with a poor armswing, you’ve got to be specific with yourself and your coaching staff about how other teams will try to beat you. And then give those athletes tools to overcome their deficiencies.
Set quantifiable goals. Using our hitter with the poor armswing as an example, you could give her measureable times to come in and work on her mechanics. During season, you’d like her to be able to verbalize what she’s doing wrong 100% of the time…and to perform the skill correctly 50% of her opportunities.
Seek advice and guidance from others. Sometimes we can’t see what’s right in front of our faces. We think that we’ve got it together, we can see our weaknesses, and know how to fix them. But then we sit down with our assistants and they bring up something totally different.
Assess regularly. The whole purpose setting those quantifiable goals that we talked about earlier was to be able to assess ourselves and our success. Does our hitter understand what she’s doing wrong? Can she feel it as she’s doing it? Is she able to self correct?
Challenge the weakness. Perhaps your hitter is great in drills, but she struggles with transition in game-like situations. That’s your new focus with her. If you don’t challenge her…your opponents will.
Keep a journal. Or keep your practice plans. You’ll just need a method to go back and look at your athlete’s progress and the plan you had for her. This way, when you’re frustrated because she’s still not getting better…you can reflect on just how far she’s come.
Be patient. Developing bad habits takes time…and so does breaking them in order to build new ones. You want to correct your hitter’s armswing not only because she’ll be a better player for you, but also because she’s risking getting seriously injured. Helping her with that is worth the time, right?

I believe that this method will work at the individual as well as program-wide level. Good luck!

7 Things We Must Teach Our Teams To Make Them Better Leaders

Coaching philosophy, Leadership

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Can we teach our athletes to be better leaders? I think that we can and so does Richard Greenwald in his article, “Today’s Students Need Leadership Training Like Never Before” where he talks about leadership in academia. Greenwald says that we are “suffering a crisis of leadership”…which got me to thinking about how we can give our students a leg up after their time with us is complete.

The 7 pillars of leadership that we can share with our student athletes

1. Appreciation for lifelong learning. You can read any leadership book and it will tell you that if you’re not reading and learning, then you’re not a good leader. We can model this sort of behavior by letting our teams know what we’re reading or what conferences that we’re attending. They need to understand that college is just the beginning of their learning cycle.

2. Social and cultural capital. This requires a high level of alertness to your surroundings. If we could teach our athletes to survey their situations in order to see how different people are motivated, that would automatically make them better leaders. Some will need a quiet “atta boy” while other want public recognition for their efforts. Also, an effective leader knows the time to speak up and in contrast, to remain silent.

3. Creativity. We spend a lot of time on our teams talking about synergy…getting everyone on the same page in order to accomplish a goal. We tell them that they may have to sacrifice their own personal desires for that to come into fruition. But does that give them the tools that they need in order to be a leader? Or just a super awesome follower? There needs to be some balance there, I think.

4. Team building skills. Let’s agree to give our athletes the tools that they need in order to be team leaders…on our teams and afterwards. They need to learn how teams function, how to develop their voice, how to resolve conflict, and how to lead alongside others.

5. Ethics. This one’s a doozie…and it’s been around forever. Discussions of morality, right and wrong, good and evil, and justice fall under this header. Our athletes will have to decide what type of leader that they’ll want to be…and their moral fiber will be the backbone of that leadership type.

6. Self-reliance. The world is a different place than when most of us graduated. A lot of our student athletes may turn out to be entrepreneurs or consultants. Which means that they’ll need to be able to set deadlines for themselves, organize their day, and just generally be efficient with their time. And even if they do work for or lead a group of others, these are still highly desirable qualities.

7. Understanding of economics. Ugh, this takes me back to high school and my complete lack of understanding of this topic! But if they’re to be entrepreneurs, they’ll need to understand the basic laws of finding something to supply that others are demanding. And even in a company construct, those supplying effective and creative leadership will always be in demand.

I don’t know if we can do all of this in the course of a school year, but we’ve got our student-athletes for four years. What if we committed ourselves to giving them these traits over that course of time? What if the backbone of our coaching philosophy was a desire to create great leaders…and we had an organized plan in order to accomplish it?

I think it can be done. What about you?

Female Leaders: How To Get Ahead And Not Alienate People

Coaching career, Female athletesCoaching career, Female athletes

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Hey ladies…it’s true! We always thought that it was, now there’s proof. A study by the Harvard business school shows that when women asked for raises, not only were their bosses less inclined to give them the raise, “but they also didn’t like the women very much” for asking! Why? According to this article, we (you, me, everyone) are culturally wired to see women as advocates for others…not themselves. So much so, that even when women assert themselves and become their own advocates, everyone is uncomfortable with the perceived selfishness.

Since folks see women as being more emotional and relationship-oriented, turn those perceptions on their heads and make them work for you! When talking to your boss, make it all about the group as a whole (I’ve written before about women being all about the relationships) and how the pay raise, or additional assistant coach, or more expensive equipment will benefit your team and the department…not just you specifically.

3 targeted techniques women can use to get ahead in the business world

1. Talk about how much you care about the team. Women are seen as caring and nurturing, so use that to your advantage in negotiations. Explain how this upgrade in pay or staffing or equipment benefits your team and will make their experience on your team better. It’s not about you…it’s about the team.

2. Explain how important your relationships are to you. Talk about how you benefit the office and what you bring to the table. If you’re a female coaching females, you can talk about how important it is to you that your athletes learn to get along and work together under a female leader. You can explain how preparing your athletes for the “real world” is your highest aim. Again, you’re not asking for the upgrade just for yourself, but so that you can better serve your team.

3. Articulate how much you love your job and would hate to perform it at any level other than excellent. This may be the time to mention that you’re the lowest paid (but most successful) coach in your conference, or how your facilities are the oldest of all “like” schools…whatever it is that you’re asking for. Again, you’re explaining how much you love your job, your school, and your team…and how it pains you not to do everything at a top-notch level.

There you go coach! The next time you feel like you’re up for a little bump in pay or your program has needs, use these techniques and success is sure to follow. It’s also a great tool to teach our female athletes for when their playing careers are over and it’s time to (literally) get down to business.

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So You Want To Be A Coaching Rock Star? Do These 7 Things!

Coaching philosophy, Team chemistryCoaching philosophy, Team chemistry

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Coaching is so much more than knowing the X’s and O’s of our sport. A coach is a psychologist, an academic advisor, a “significant adult” in a young person’s life, a guiding post, a motivator, a conscience, and much more! If we want to reach rock star status, like the Russ Rose’s and John Wooden’s of our time, then we’ve got to consistently keep our teams motivated and engaged throughout each season. Let’s learn some tangible lessons on how we can be on our way to becoming coaching rock stars ourselves.

These 7 simple things will keep your team motivated and engaged throughout their careers.

Do what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it. Sounds easy enough right? But how many times do we get the “drop in” visit to the office that conflicts with a meeting we have set up with an athlete? Or we tell them that we’ve got an open door policy, but when they stop in to use it…we’ve got one eye on the computer screen or on our phone. If we say what we mean and mean what we say, our teams will appreciate us for it.
Be responsive. I’m admittedly not the best at returning emails and whatnot in a timely fashion…except for with my team. If they call or text or email, then they’ve got my attention. They know that they can count on me to answer and answer quickly.
Publicly support your team. Obviously you support them with the press, but what about amongst each other. What if you really wanted your team to take more risks in practices and games? And what if you had a player who was willing to step out on the ledge and try all of the things that you’re asking? Wouldn’t you want to stop the drill, bring the team in, and publicly acknowledge the effort that you were seeing? Sure you would, coach!
Admit your mistakes. This season, I moved our all-conference hitter to a defensive position. I told her about it and she basically said that while she wasn’t fired up about it, she’d do anything for the team. A month later, I told her (in front of her teammates) that I’d screwed up and moved her back to her original position.
Give your team recognition. Midway through the season, acknowledging the effort that they’re putting in is pretty essential. The season is long, it’s tiring, it’s mentally draining…they need to know that you appreciate what they’re doing each and every day. Then you can keep figuratively kicking their butts and they’ll keep loving it.
Ask and listen. We all know the old school coach…we may have even been coached by the old school coach. You know him, Mr. “Do As I Say And Don’t Ask Any Questions” Guy. Yeah, that won’t work these days. Asking and listening goes a long way. Even if you don’t agree with or even allow what the team wants, at least they should believe that they have your ear.
Smile and laugh. I’m not saying that practices should be a party…I’m not the most fun person when I’m in season, to be sure. But every now and then your team needs to see a smile crack your face. And when your team goofball says something funny (and every team has a goofball!), it’s okay to laugh, coach.

That wraps up the motivation series…hope you liked it! Simple stuff for sure, but stuff that is sure to keep your team engaged and motivated and loving your sport!

Keep checking back as I continue to talk about motivation here on Coach Dawn Writes. Based on this article from The Business Insider, I’ll discuss what influences the level of engagement on your team and the do’s and don’ts of keeping your team motivated.

7 Sure-Fire Ways To Alienate Yourself From Your Team

Coaching strategy, Leadership, Team chemistryTeam chemistry

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I love the television show “What Not To Wear”. If you’ve not heard of it, it’s a show about people with awful fashion sense who learn how to dress themselves so that they don’t look like a walking circus. This article is my ode to that show and its alternate title could be, “What Not To Do…” because if you do these things with your team…it’ll be a circus for sure!

Do these 7 things and you will certainly suck away any joy your team experiences with your sport.

Get angry. If you can’t determine when to let things go and when to come down hard on your team, things can go sideways mighty quickly! As Mark Twain said, “Getting angry is easy. Anyone can do that. But getting angry in the right way in the right amount at the right time, now that is hard.”
Be cold, distant, rude, unfriendly. Imagine a coach who was grumpy on the bench, didn’t really want to talk to their players off the court, and their “corrections” in practice were more like missiles aimed right at an athlete. I can’t imagine that their players would be willing to “run through walls” for them!
Send mixed messages to your team so that they never know where you stand. Some coaches are masters of the mixed message. One practice, they’ll tell a player that she’s had the best practice ever…then the next day, they’ll tell her that she’s the worst player that God ever created. The strong-minded player will use her anger to excel…the weak-minded player will give up and she’ll never be the same again.
BS your team. I’m sure we’ve all heard of the coach who tells a player that she’ll start a certain game…and then that game comes along and she doesn’t start. That’s BS. Or making an appointment to speak with an athlete and not showing up…or worse, showing up but playing on your phone for the entire meeting. That’s BS.
Act more concerned for your own welfare than anything else. Hopefully your first reaction after a loss or poor performance isn’t to defend yourself and your scouting report. We all preach that we’ll sink or swim and win or lose together. Make sure that your team believes that.
Avoid taking responsibility for your own actions. Ultimately, it comes down to us as coaches. These are our teams, our programs, and it’s our coaching. So when that reporter comes to chat with you after the game, be sure not to throw your players under the bus. There’s only one person that belongs down there…and that’s you coach.
Jump to conclusions without checking the facts first. We always “hear” stuff as coaches. Some stuff we hear is great, some stuff we hear is not so great. It’s our jobs to make sure that it’s real before we enact any sort of penalties upon our teams or our players. Your captains should be pretty engaged and be able to give you the goods on most things that happen on your team.

I’m sure you’re a super awesome coach and you’re not doing any of these things…so this was just to confirm the things that you knew you shouldn’t be doing. Now that we’ve talked about the “don’ts”, come back next time as we talk about the “do’s” of keeping your team motivated and engaged.

Lessons From The Business World: Keeping Your Team Actively Engaged

Goal setting, Leadership, Team chemistryTeam chemistry

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Whether it’s because the season becomes a long haul, or maybe you’ve got a large bench of non-starters, or maybe your team hasn’t been as successful as you’d like…your team could be suffering an engagement problem. What do I mean by that? I mean: does your team dig their sport, do they like it, is it fun, do they still enjoy coming to practice, are they getting better, are they putting in maximum effort daily? That’s what I mean by “engagement”. While I don’t have all of the answers, I certainly do have a lot of questions. This post is based on “14 Management Do’s and Don’ts to Motivate Employees”. I believe there’s a strong correlation between the business world and athletics, so let’s look at…

3 ways to increase the engagement of your team

1. “Alignment of the employee with the goals and vision of the company.”
Does everyone on the team know the goals? Are they still invested in them? Do your players know your personal vision for the program…not just the team? How do they specifically fit into that vision…and have you explained that to them? There’s a Bible verse that says that without a vision, the people perish. Obviously, your team won’t literally die…but their desire to fight the good fight can slowly die without a clear vision of what your successful season/team/program looks like.

2. “Faith of the employee in the competence of management and their commitment to realize the goals and vision.”
Does your team think that you’re knowledgeable about your sport? Do they believe that you’re committed to working harder than they are? Do they believe that you feel their team goals are attainable? If your team doesn’t believe that you’re in it to win it…all of the words that come out of your mouth will tumble right onto the floor. If you want those things that you say about faith and patience and belief to sink in…they’ve got to think that you really believe it.

3. “Trust in their direct supervisor that he or she will support his or her people and help them to succeed.”
Are you willing to come in early and work with an athlete? How about staying late? Will you break down video with one of your players so that they can see how to get better? Are you going to yank them off the court as soon as they make a mistake? If your athletes believe that you’re willing to support their efforts to succeed, they’ll be much more willing to support the team’s efforts to push toward a common goal.

I believe that if you do these three things with your team, they’ll be much more engaged in the process of team-building and more willing to work hard for you and their teammates.

Keep checking back as I continue to talk about motivation here on Coach Dawn Writes. Based on this article from The Business Insider, I’ll discuss what influences the level of engagement on your team and the do’s and don’ts of keeping your team motivated.

How To Make Your Staff More Productive And Autonomous

Coaching career, Leadership, Meetings

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Every coach has their maxims. You know what I mean, things that you say over and over again that your teams can recite in their sleep. One of mine is “enough about leadership, we need followership classes.” I could write a whole article about that (and maybe one day I will!), but this one is about creating a coaching staff that is both productive and autonomous…a staff that makes you, as the head coach, look good. Those things don’t just happen though, the leader has to be intentional about creating an environment that’s conducive to building autonomous and productive teams.

4 ways to recognize what productive teams look like

1. Brainstorming sessions. As leaders of our coaching “team”, we’ve got to take time out to chat with our coaches. Not only to make sure that we’re all on the same page as far as assignments go, but to discuss issues involving the team. Perhaps you have a player that’s underachieving (or an entire team who’s underachieving!)…that’s when it’s time for the productive team to sit down as a group and see what you can come up with.

2. Encourage creativity. In those brainstorming sessions, the leader (you!) of productive teams should encourage creativity. In my opinion, coaching is all about being creative in order to create the correct environment for each athlete to thrive. That creativity should spill over into recruiting and practice planning as well.

3. Offer suggestions. Productive teams aren’t afraid to offer the leader a strong opinion. Hopefully you’ve surrounded yourself with quality coaches whose opinions you respect. If that’s the case, be sure to create an environment where they are able to offer suggestions that they believe are being taken seriously and may actually be enacted.

4. Deliver great performances. Come game day, productive teams have a high level of synergy because they spend their time together creatively brainstorming and offering quality suggestions as solutions to problems. And if that doesn’t describe an opponent on game day (a problem needing a solution), I don’t know what does. So not only do productive teams work well behind the scenes, they are efficient and creative on game day to steer their athletes toward success.

2 clear-cut ways to make your team more autonomous and productive

1. Adapt. If you’re new on the scene, just got hired, and don’t really know the dynamics of your new team of coaches, then I’d suggest sitting back and surveying the scene. Take time to figure out their personality types, learn how they best work with one another, and wrap your brain around the office dynamics. Plus they need to learn about you…and your personality, and how you work best, and what sort of office dynamics you’d like.

2. Train. Since you didn’t just barge onto the scene with a “my way or the highway” kind of attitude, you need to take a training attitude. If you want your team to be productive and autonomous (like those teams described in the four points above), then you’ve got to invest some time and energy into showing them what you’d like. They need to understand that creative brainstorming is important to you and that you value their input behind the scenes and come game time.

I hope this article got you to thinking about whether you’ve created an environment of autonomy and productivity. If even the tiniest thing has to be cleared by you, that’s not autonomy. If there are layers upon layers of reports or paperwork…your team may not be as productive as it can be. Not only does creating productive and autonomous teams help you and your current athletes…you are preparing your assistants to be head coaches themselves, which is an added bonus!

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The Top 5 Qualities To Look For In Team Leaders

Captains, Leadership, Team chemistry

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Great leaders . Everyone’s looking for them. Check out this list for a good start at creating the type of leaders that will put your team on the road to success.

5 things that coaches look for in captains and team leaders

1. Integrity: Who are they when no one is looking?
A great team leader will be committed to working out in the off-season, hosting recruits, and being a good example for the rest of the team. They have a sense of humility about them, never wanting to abuse their perceived power position. They hold themselves and their teammates accountable to a very high standard of excellence in the classroom as well as on the field. They are motivated to portray a positive image of the student athlete: hard working, active on campus, and involved in the classroom. Finally, they are prepared. They know the scouting report, they come in early to help with whatever the coach or team needs, and they let the coach know of any problems that may be brewing in the background.

2. Awareness: Are they willing to be who their teammates need them to be?
There’s been a shift in the business world from following The Golden Rule (Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you) to The Platinum Rule, which says that we should do unto others as they would like to be done unto. That goes back to the different personality types that you’re sure to have on your team. The thought is that doing what I want could very possibly be exactly opposite of what you want and therefore the bridge isn’t passed. The good leader knows their teammates well and how they communicate.

3. Inspiring: Can they help focus the team on the common goal?
When they sit down with the team at the beginning of the season, they are the folks who are actively submitting ideas for those goals. They’ve been thinking about this for a while and have a vision that is as big as the coach’s and encompasses the whole team.

4. Straight-forward: Will they squash small issues before they become major drama?
I’m sure all of us coaches meet with our captains pretty regularly. And I’m sure that most of us ask them about things that are going on behind the scenes that we should know about. The straight-forward leader will have noticed any issues that are rearing their heads, respectfully gone to that teammate, and will have gotten it taken care of before we even know to ask.

5. Confident: Can they rally the troops in good times and bad?
Being a team leader is a tough job! We require them to be the vocal leader as well as to lead by example. We ask them to commit to working hard toward an unseen goal. And we ask them to keep their teammates motivated even when their classes are killing them, the team has just lost a big game, or the pressure’s on because you’ve won a lot games in a row.

Coaches, we can’t do it alone! We need great team leaders and captains for our teams to function at a high level. So let’s all agree to nurture these qualities on our teams.