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We should always be trying to learn and get better. I love to read and I’m always scouring the internet for anything that will make me a better coach and I think that “20 Business Truisms That Can Change Your Life” is one of those articles. I cut it in half and applied it to athletics…check it out!
Here are 10 practical lessons that will change the way you coach
1. If you don’t know, say so. If you don’t know what you’re talking about, stop talking. Too often, we think we’ve got to have all of the answers because of that awesome adjective (Coach) in front of our name. If we have all of the answers, that’s because we’ve stopped learning…and that’s not a good thing!
2. Don’t jump ship before you hit the iceberg. Hang in their physically and mentally with your team until the bitter end. Most times we can read the writing on the wall about our teams and we can tell when the season will be a bust. That’s no reason not to hit it hard with video, or to stop being creative in practice, or to cease trying to make your players better.
3. Confidence comes from success, knowledge comes from failure. In my mind there’s no greater teacher than failure and no greater motivator than success! I’m sure most of us wouldn’t be the coaches we are today without some significant failure in our past. (See #8)
4. If you’re miserable, quit and do something else. If you’re still miserable, it’s you. We’ve all been around the folks who complain all the time…their team doesn’t have enough financial support, they’re working crazy hours, their team is underachieving, yada, yada, yada. So maybe coaching isn’t your gig. If it is, the rest of us don’t want to hear about it because we’re happy. (See #9)
5. People won’t perform for those they don’t respect. Your team doesn’t have to love you or even like you (though that’d be nice), but they do have to respect you. They should respect your knowledge of the game, your interest in their well-being, and the way you coach them. Not saying they should agree with you…respect is on a higher level.
6. If you’re not passionate about what you’re doing, you won’t be successful at it. I wrote a Pyramid of Success series a couple of months ago, based on the John Wooden tool. One of the cornerstones of that Pyramid is enthusiasm. If you’ve got it…show it. If you don’t got it…go get it. Enthusiasm and passion are huge!
7. Conflict is healthy; anger is not. Get some help for that. I wrote an article about yelling at your players a while back and gave three ways that you can get the most from your team without screaming at them. You’re going to have to manage your team and over the course of the season, that will probably involve conflict. Control yourself so that you can control the situation.
8. No matter how smart you are, wisdom only comes from experience. Boy oh boy, when I first started coaching I knew everything! And with each proceeding year, I knew less and less…funny how that worked out. Book knowledge of how things should work with your team is only valuable when combined with the street knowledge of how things actually go down. If you’re new to coaching, hook up with someone who’s been at it a while. (See #3)
9. Whine and complain all you want; nobody gives a crap. We’ll listen (grudgingly) to you, but we can’t help…so why even start in down that path? We can’t make your alums more involved, or your recruits commit earlier, or your boss give you a raise. So let’s celebrate getting to be a coach and how awesome that is! (See #4)
10. The boss isn’t always right, but she’s still the boss. What else is there to say beyond that? Our job is to coach ‘em up and make our bosses look good. Beyond that, we should give the boss the respect that we want from our teams.
I’ve always thought that the link between the athletics and business world is pretty strong and this article was a good demonstration of that.
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