Monthly Archives: October 2011

6 Things I Believe About Building Successful Teams

Coaching philosophy, Team chemistry

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I don’t like the dreaded “rebuild” word. And I’m pretty sure that our student-athletes don’t like it either…especially our senior players! In their minds, what exactly are they “rebuilding” for since this is their final season? And does “rebuilding” mean we’re giving this season up? Are we saying that it’s okay to not execute and reach for the best possible outcome because we’re young/injured/inexperienced/pick your adjective?

So, instead of saying “rebuild”, I say “build”. Every team needs building, even if every single person on the team is returning… “the team” still needs to be built. Everyone has had their own personal experiences since the team was together last and those experiences will change their perspective and reactions to the team. I got the idea for this post from an article on Inc.com, 7 Mistakes To Avoid When Starting Up, and it seems that starting a business and starting a team have a lot in common!

Here are 6 key ingredients for building a successful team

  1. Have a plan. What should the plan entail? Well, success of course! The whole purpose of a coach’s plan for her team is to put each player and coach in a position to be successful. Is success winning? Sometimes, but sometimes it’s not. If three of your starters just got injured, winning just might be out of your control. But everyone can control their effort level, their enthusiasm for the team and the sport, their commitment to being a good teammate, etc.
  2. Sell your vision. Once we come up with our plan for success, we’ve got to sell, sell, sell! When I was a kid, there was an older lady on our street who always sat in her living room staring out of the window…she could see everything from there. She saw kids misbehaving, spouses arguing…everything. If you wanted to know what was going on around the neighborhood, you just needed to stop by her house and she’d give up the goods. I tell you what…we’ve all got her on our team! She’s the person of influence that all of the players flock to and respect. Sell her on it and you’ve got your own personal marketing team for your plan.
  3. Think big. Why make a small plan? Big dreams will require big plans. Where will we need to challenge our teams? Do they have a loser’s mentality because of previous performances? Then we need to break them out of it! Are they lazy in practice? Then we’ve got to show them the meaning of hard work!
  4. Be flexible. What’s a plan if it can’t be tweaked, modified, or totally scrapped and redone? Boxer Mike Tyson had a great quote: Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. When things start going sideways or the unexpected occurs, then we’ve got to be nimble enough to make adjustments.
  5. Listen to criticism. I’ve had seasons where I tried everything under the sun to try and reach my team. Some stuff worked, some stuff didn’t. That’s the time to listen to your other coaches and captains so that you don’t lose your team along the way.
  6. Stay balanced. Building a team takes time. Staying in the office all night won’t make the team better faster, but it will make your family hate your job. So go home, have dinner with the fam, tuck the kids in at night, maybe even relax a bit. You’ll be more refreshed and ready to come up with more plans the next day!


Success may not come the way we expect it…and it certainly never comes quickly enough. But if we keep our eyes focused on our key ingredients, success will surely come!

Want to know more about what I believe? Check out 10 Things I Believe About Leadership, 6 Things I Believe About Team Chemistry, and 8 Things I Believe About Coaching Difficult Personalities.

8 Things I Believe About Coaching Difficult Personalities

Coaching strategy, Personality tests

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To paraphrase Forrest Gump, coaching is like a box of chocolates…you never know what you’re going to get! You may get a fabulous, hard-working, goal-oriented team…or you may get an apathetic, lazy team. You may get supportive, non-intrusive parents…or you may dread walking across the gym because you know “that parent” wants to talk to you.

A coach’s job is to manage a group of people toward a common goal…even those folks with personalities that rub you or their teammates (or both!) the wrong way.

Here are my 8 tips for dealing with difficult people

Tip #1: Remain calm. Have you ever seen someone screaming their head off at someone else? Have you felt alternately embarrassed for them and uncomfortable around them? Don’t be that coach.

Tip #2: Focus on the facts. Say a player comes up to you after a bad loss, complaining about playing time. First of all, I’d tell you to schedule a meeting with them and not discuss it while emotions are running high, but…if you don’t have that rule established: focus on the facts. In that situation, the fact is everyone is trying to win and you put the people out there who you thought would make that happen. End of story.

Tip #3: Keep perspective. Whatever the situation is, it’s not life and death. Your family still loves you. Your friends still think you’re cool. And you’ve still got a team to prepare. Sometimes we’ve got to learn to let it go.

Tip #4: Take the high road. Even if that parent is calling you every name in the book, or that player is questioning your coaching chops…stay (as I said in tip #2) focused on the facts.

Tip #5: Be very direct and assertive. I don’t want you to misunderstand numbers one through four with being a pushover…none of us deserves to stand in there and be someone else’s verbal punching bag. State your position clearly, let the person know you hear what they’re saying, and tell them if they’d like to discuss it further, to set up a meeting for a later date.

Tip #6: Embrace the challenge. This is why we get paid the big bucks! I always tell my teams that they should (non-verbally) thank the other team for making them better, because there are certain things that come out in competition that won’t present themselves in practice. Along those same lines, those difficult people who put us in difficult situations are making us better coaches.

Tip #7: Become process oriented. We’ve got to deal with it. We can’t avoid the upset player or parent and silently wait for the season to come to an end. We’ve got to sit down and think about the situation and come up with an action plan.

Tip #8: Acknowledge imperfection. Acknowledge that while you may have made a mistake (because no one is perfect), you always have the best intentions of the team at the forefront. If, at the end of the day, you can look at yourself in the mirror and know that you gave your best effort…what more can you ask?

The inspiration for this post came from companyfounder.com and their article, How To Deal With Difficult People. A lot of it comes down to understanding the various personality types, I’ve written about that here. Sometimes difficult people are just rough mixes for our personality…while others are just difficult. Either way, we need to know how to manage them.

Want to know more about what I believe? Check out 10 Things I Believe About Leadership, 6 Things I Believe About Team Chemistry, 6 Things I Believe About Building Successful Teams.

6 Things I Believe About Team Chemistry

Team chemistry, Team roles

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I typically use my summers as camp time, going all over the country working with various schools. I had the opportunity to work with a very talented high school team a few summers ago. They had a really good player on their team. I mean straight. up. baller. She could pass, she could set, she served tough, and hit the snot out of the ball. By the summer before her senior year, she’d already been verballed to play Division I ball for a year. And the rest of her teammates were no slouches: young, experienced, and skilled…they were a very nice team.

But there was one problem.

The baller? The one going Division I? She was not a good leader and totally screwed up the team’s chemistry. She was hot and cold, sometimes open and engaging…other times sullen and withdrawn. The team never knew what to expect. Worse still, she let her emotions affect her play. Everyone in the gym knew when she was feeling grumpy, because every time she touched the ball, something awful happened. And when those bad things happened…she totally pouted her way around the court.

Ugh!

I felt for her coach (who stood helplessly on the sidelines) because he was afraid to broach the subject with her, because she was his best player. By letting her behavior slide, though, he lost the respect of his other (very capable and talented) players.

So what do I believe about team chemistry? No one player is above the team…not even the really good players. I’m not saying he shouldn’t treat her differently, as a matter of fact, I think he should treat her differently. Her skill level has warranted the attention and adulation of her peers and competitors. That alone means that she’s got more than the average measure of power with her teammates.

If I were advising that coach, I’d tell him to do these six things to show his players the power of team.

Team building. I love any cheesy, team building stuff…the cheesier the better! If I can get them to roll their eyes at something I’m asking them to do, I feel successful.

Forced groups. At the beginning of the season, I really push togetherness. I ask my captains to organize off-the-court activities and I make working groups mix up in practice. Even if I’m just doing partner stuff, I’ll have them switch partners a few times to avoid staying with your “favorite”.

Belonging. Every person on the team has a role. Whether they’re super studly and need to carry the bulk of the point earning load, or they’re a bench player who’s main contribution will be in practice…they all know they’re valuable.

Team time. We read a book as a team each season and I have the players get up and present their section of the book. It’s always nice to hear their perspective…I’m always interested in how they’ll use their time to make the team better.

Locker room. I like decorating the locker room. I know some coaches don’t…hopefully they empower their captains or team leaders to do it. The locker room is a transition for our athletes…from academics to athletics. If we don’t help them get into an athletic head space, our practices may suffer. I put up motivational quotes, conference stats, things that represent whatever our team theme is for the season.

Caring. Years ago, an old coach told me that he made a point of talking to each and every player at each and every practice. That’s huge.

These six qualities came from the Championship Coaching Academy’s article, Building A Close And Cohesive Team. I liked them, so I thought I’d bring them over here. Studs are great, but even they need their team. Let’s not forget to show them!

Want to know more about what I believe? Check out 10 Things I Believe About Leadership, 8 Things I Believe About Coaching Difficult Personalities, 6 Things I Believe About Building Successful Teams.

10 Things I Believe About Leadership

Coaching philosophy, Leadership

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Leadership is a huge topic. There are a million (maybe more!) ideas about what leadership entails and what leaders look like, so I figured I’d add my two cents to the mix. These ideas were spurred after reading Leadership Freak’s post, The Key That Unlocks Leadership.

My leadership manifesto:

  1. Believe you matter. Why? Because you do. We coach because we enjoy being around young people and we believe in the life lessons that sport can teach. We have the opportunity to show our teams why sports are awesome on a daily basis…and that matters.
  2. Make others believe they matter. Why? Because they do. What better gift can we give to our athletes than to show them that they have significance on our team? That without them, our team would cease to be the same? And that once their time on our team is finished, they have the opportunity to be significant at work or in their community?
  3. Take Action. No team has thought their way into a championship…but teams have worked their way into them. Sure, we have to have a dream or a goal, but at some point we’ll have to put in some work. In a quote from another Leadership Freak article, the author puts in quite well: “What you do makes a difference, not what you want to do.”
  4. Embrace and follow purpose. Some folks would call purpose a personal mission statement. Basically, it’s why you do what you do. Check out this post, Can You Sum Up Your Coaching Philosophy In 8 Words Or Less?
  5. Love people, purpose, your organization, and yourself. Be nice…it goes a long way. Know why you do what you do…it’ll keep you grounded in the tough times. Love your institution…even though things about it drive you crazy. Be patient with yourself…nobody’s perfect.
  6. Have character/integrity. I’ve heard it said that integrity is who we are when no one’s looking…but I also think it’s who we are when everyone is looking. Will we maintain our cool when our team is losing? Will we follow the rules when we know we could get away with cheating? Can our teams trust us to be who we say we’re going to be?
  7. Be creative. Your team has high expectations for the season. Your team has low expectations for the season. Your team has bad chemistry. Your team is losing. Your team has no energy. Your team has a hothead. There are all sorts of issues that we can face over the course of the year, thinking outside of the box might be just what your team needs to snap out of it.
  8. Be humble. Success involves, players, coaches, administration, support staff, fans, and parents. As much as we’d love to believe that we the magicians behind the curtains of our team’s success, it takes cooperation from multiple entities to make a program run smoothly.
  9. Delegate authority. The head coach can’t simultaneously be worried about the practice plan, getting the floor mopped, how the players are doing in class, in-fighting on the team, offensive schemes, defensive schemes, alumni relations, homesick newbies, the booster club, etc. At some point we’ve got to let go of control and let someone else’s light shine.
  10. Develop passion and vision. Sure, coaching is our job. But it’s also got to be our passion. John Wooden says there is no success without enthusiasm. The Bible has an analogy that says that without vision, people perish. That says to me that in order to push through the normal ups and downs of a season, we’ve got to have a goal for the future.


I don’t think there’s a leadership “magic bullet”. I think we just keep plugging away, studying, and getting better. In that way, we improve in our profession and we model the behavior we want from our athletes.

Want to know more about what I believe? Check out 6 Things I Believe About Team Chemistry, 8 Things I Believe About Coaching Difficult Personalities, 6 Things I Believe About Building Successful Teams.

10 Things Great Coaches Do

Coaching career, Leadership

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In my mind, coach is just another word for teacher, educator, or manager. So I was excited when I saw bnet.com’s article called 10 Things Great Managers Do. I hope to one day be a great coach so let’s check out the parallels!

  1. Maintain your cool and sense of humor, especially during a crisis. Your team is watching you. They’re watching how you behave when things go well…and when they get sideways on us. They’re watching when your stud player is being a stud…and when she struggles. If you don’t want your team to freak out when things aren’t going well…then you can’t freak out.
  2. Tell team when they’re shooting themselves in the foot. Do you have a captain who sulks and grumbles and just generally leads in a poor manner? If you do, then it’s time to sit her down and let her know how her actions affect her teammates. And how it keeps her from leading effectively.
  3. Be in charge, but be humble. I’ve seen both types of head coaches. The ones that are uncomfortable with their role as leader (maybe because they’re young or not much older than their athletes), so they’re not really in charge. Sure their title says “head coach”, but the team doesn’t see them that way. I’ve also seen the coach that is solidly in control of the team, but so cocky and arrogant that the team feels uncomfortable around them. Neither of those is ideal.
  4. Let your guard down sometimes. Tell a joke, let them know of something silly you did that day, or just talk about everyday stuff…it’ll go a long way to making you human for your team.
  5. Stand behind people you believe in. When your best player has a bad game (or two, or three), talk to them and let them know that you still believe in them and their skill level…and that they’ll work out of their funk. Sometimes that word of encouragement will take some of the pressure and burden off of their shoulders.
  6. Complement your team’s weaknesses. So you’ve got this amazing player, but she’s an awful leader. She yells at her teammates and sulks when she’s not playing well. Basically, she’s a nightmare…but she’s also really good. Challenge her to get better. It’s our job to give our players what they’re missing, whether it’s a killer serve or leadership ability.
  7. Compliment your team’s strengths. Unless they’re supremely confident, our athletes always think they’re screwing up and disappointing the coaches and the team. They may never say it, but negative self-talk is a real thing and our athletes are doing it. How about letting them know what they’re doing well…in front of the whole team?
  8. Teach through personal failure. “Freshmen are supposed to be idiots”. That’s what I told a newbie one year when she was crying after practice because she’d made approximately a million mistakes. I told her about forgetting my uniform for a game when I was a freshman and thinking that I could get away with it, because we were playing a really good team. Well, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, my coach wanted to put me in the game and I had to tell him the awful truth. My player was able to laugh through her teary eyes at how stupid I was and that it all worked out in the end (after a whole lot of running on my part).
  9. Do the right thing. That means reprimanding the senior star the same as you would the player at the end of the bench. It means not yelling at officials. It means being a person of your word.
  10. Do what has to be done, no matter what. This includes everything we’ve talked about before, plus grunt work. Are you willing to lug out equipment if the setup crew was late? Or help your fellow coaches with manual labor they need to have done? Consistently working hard should be the hallmark of a great coach.


Like this post? Check these out!

7 Personality Traits of Top Coaches
Adventures Of A Bad Coach: Variations On A Theme
11 Things You Should Be Doing If You’re The Head Honcho
5 Signs You Are A Wimpy Coach

3 Keys To Quality Communication For Leaders

Captains, Leadership, Pyramid of success

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It takes a special kind of person to want to be a captain. I’m not talking about the obvious stuff that is outwardly fun, like the “C” on your jersey or creating a warmup playlist for the team. I’m talking about the real stuff, the nitty gritty…the stuff that’s hard to do while still executing on the court or field. I’m talking about leading by example and verbally. Or supporting a teammate that’s struggling…or calling out a teammate who’s not giving the proper amount of effort to the team. I’m talking about not being afraid to bring the team’s concerns to the coaching staff. A captain has to do all of these things while maintaining high grades in the classroom and managing family and friend relationships…it’s a big job.

So how can we, as coaches, equip our athletes to handle this job effectively? In an article from the Harvard Business Review’s blog called, Speaking Up Takes Confidence, Candor, and Courage, the author gives us the three things are leaders should possess…let’s break those down.

3 things our captains need to lead effectively

Confidence. As is usual with me, it all comes back to John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success. Confidence is one of the blocks of the Pyramid and Wooden says that we must believe in ourselves if we want others to believe in us. If we want our leaders to feel comfortable leading, we’ve got to give them the power to do that…but we’ve also got to give them a structure within which to work. Giving parameters will make their job much easier, which will lead to success, which will give them to confidence they need to be effective captains.

Candor. This can be described as being forthright, sincere, or honest. All of those things are great qualities of anyone in a leadership position. The Pyramid of Success tie-in here is to use self-control with their candor…there’s nothing worse than someone who’s “honesty” feels more like a sharp stab in the back. Sincerity and honesty that’s tempered with caring will go a long way on a team. Then it feels like the captain has their back, rather than just picking on them.

Courage. Having initiative is a scary, but necessary part of being a leader on a team. And what is initiative anyway? It’s having the courage to make decisions. It’s having the courage to take action. It’s having the courage to push past their own perceived limitations. With courage, our leaders won’t be afraid to call out teammates, they will advocate for the team with the coaching staff, and they will be confident in their team role as captain.

Communication is the basis for every relationship, including those on our teams. Let’s show our captains how to communicate with their teammates so that it’s received in the spirit it was given.

Click here and you can get Coach Dawn Writes articles emailed directly to your inbox! It’s free and easy…and this is a no-spam zone!

Losing Is Lonely: Encouraging Yourself In Tough Times

Coaching career, Coaching strategy

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I’ve been blessed to have had a fun and competitive coaching career. My first year assisting with a men’s and women’s program, both teams made it to the NCAA tournament…for the first time in school history. School after school and place after place, I was fortunate enough to be able to turn around a bad team or keep a good team rolling.

More or less.

Because there have been those seasons when success eluded me. Those are frustrating times, but more powerfully, they are lonely times. Most folks are afraid to broach the subject of losing with a loser. So what’s a winner to do when she’s losing?

According to Psychology Today: fake it! In an interesting articled titled, You Become What You Pretend To Be, the author asserts that we have much control over our attitude about current situations…which then becomes a predictor of our future.

4 ways coaches can cope when things aren’t going according to plan

Our support system. As I said before, losing is frustrating, so we’ve got to have a plan to handle that negative energy. I’m not a yelling coach, so I don’t believe that emotionally unloading on my team is the appropriate course of action. My husband isn’t on the court losing games, so getting mad at him won’t make me feel better. But talking to other coaches should and does! Most coaches have been through bad stretches and can help us get through ours.

Our behavior influences attitude. The article that I referenced earlier had a study of two different groups of people. The first group received bad news, like “your grandma just passed away.” The other group was forced to hold their face in a sad position, with the corners of their mouths downturned. When surveyed afterward, the folks in both groups felt the same level of sadness. So the second group, even though they’d not received any bad news, felt a high level of sadness because that’s how they’d carried themselves. What does that tell us? We (coaches and players) have to figure out how to carry ourselves like winners…even when we’re not winning.

Our responsibility to the team. As much as we coaches hate losing, so do the players. They don’t want to text their friends and family with this solemn message: lost again. Our main responsibility to them is to make sure they know that the coaching staff will keep kicking butt in practice…no giving up. The next thing is to let each player explore the topic (of losing) with you, whether it’s in an individual meeting or on the bus to the next game…give them a voice. The final step is to raise everyone’s level of expectation and that can be done in many ways. Show them a pump up video, like Hoosiers; have alums write notes to current players; and quite simply, don’t accept a laissez faire attitude in practice.

Remember we’re winners. Much like “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”, what happens during a losing season, stays in the losing season. If we were winners before, then we’ll be winners again. Confidence that the world will right itself is key to maintaining our sanity.

Hopefully your ride on the losing train is a short one. Losing is lonely, but it doesn’t last forever.

5 Ways To Earn Loyalty From Your Team

Team chemistry

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In the third of a three-part series, I’ll discuss how to build loyalty among teammates, loyalty to the coach, and loyalty to the program. If you’d like to see the original blog post, check out Leadership Freak’s 15 Techniques That Build Loyal Followers.

“People want to be loyal to a person, cause, or organization that deserves loyalty. Expressing loyalty is a noble act that enhances our feelings of worth and gives meaning to life.”—Leadership Freak

Here are five ways to show our teams that we deserve their loyalty

  1. Clearly describe what you want. Since we’re the leader, our teams want us to be strong, clear, and unwavering. I’m not saying that the game plan can’t change…good coaches make in-game adjustments. And I’m not saying that you can’t use different methods to try and reach your team…if it ain’t working, you’ve got to switch things up. Here’s what I’m saying: every coach needs to have beliefs that don’t change about how we will approach our job. Is it okay to yell at your team? How will you handle it when a player blatantly disobeys you? Is it okay to curse at and/or around your team? There are many other questions to think about, but thinking along these lines will help you to send a clear and consistent message to your team.
  2. Model behaviors you expect. If we want our teams to remain composed during tough times, then that’s what we’ve got to do. If we want our teams to compete ‘til the very end, then they’ve got to see our competitive juices flowing as well. I think it’d be pretty hard for our teams to remain loyal to us if we’re asking them to behave in a certain way, yet we weren’t willing to operate under the same rules.
  3. Share the spotlight. If we make the highs of our season all about the team and the lows all about us, our team will be willing to run through walls for us. Not only that, they’ll see that being on a team is about being unselfish and that no team victories happen because of just one person…coach or player.
  4. Don’t be a buddy. I wrote about this topic in my post, Adventures Of A Bad Coach: Variations On A Theme. The coach has power (teaching, leading, assigning playing time) over the athlete, which makes a friend relationship impossible. Coaches who try to be friends with their athletes eventually realize that it can’t be done. We’re all naturally drawn to certain personality types, which means that we’d be better “friends” with certain players on the team. Can you see how that could be seen as playing favorites? And how it could destroy any loyalty that you’ve built up on the team?
  5. Make it easy to get things done. How can we do that? Give them less options, check out this post to see more on that topic. The less options they’ve got to sort through in order to accomplish a goal, the more success they will find. Instead of saying, tell me your goals, you can ask them for three specific goals about their sport. Instead of asking them to be a good leader, you can tell them that the team really needs them to be a positive voice on the court. Whatever the issue, narrowing the choices and focusing their energy will help them be successful…which will lead them to feel loyalty toward you.


Hopefully you enjoyed this series on loyalty. Click the links below to read the other posts!

Part One: How To Become A Leader That People Follow
Part Two: 5 Reasons Loyalty Is Important On Teams

5 Reasons Loyalty Is Important On Teams

Coaching philosophy, Team chemistry

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In the second of a three-part series, I’ll discuss how to build loyalty among teammates, loyalty to the coach, and loyalty to the program. If you’d like to see the original blog post, check out Leadership Freak’s 15 Techniques That Build Loyal Followers.

As you all know by now, I’m a gigantic fan of John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success. Loyalty is in the foundation of his Pyramid, which means he thought teams would not find success without it…but what is loyalty? And how do we show our teams that we are loyal to them? And how can we create a group of teammates who are loyal to one another? Loyalty is one of those intangibles that is hard to define, so here are…

Five solid things that we can do to show loyalty

  1. Answer public challenges publicly. Some of us are from the old school, the-coach-is-always-right-and-don’t-you-dare-question-her, way of thinking. Today’s athletes (and students, in general) have been taught to ask questions—not to be disrespectful—but because they genuinely believe their questions warrant answers. If we’re not willing to answer them, we risk appearing to be withholding information…which isn’t a great platform on which to build loyalty.
  2. Give meaning to tasks. Why is warming up important? What about those first drills of practice…the ones that are a bit mundane? Why is focusing on those drills important? Whatever it is, it’s the coach’s job to let the team know why they’re doing what they’re doing. The first reason is to make sure they have an understanding, but the second reason is to equip your upperclassmen and leaders to answer that question when their teammates are complaining about a drill or a practice. We can’t assume that our teams buy into everything we say without question…so let’s give them answers before they even think to ask them.
  3. Stand behind people when they screw up. This is huge! I’ve had players who were so upset after a match when they didn’t play their best. I never sugar coat anything and always acknowledge that they didn’t put forth their best effort…but remind them that their performance was an exception to the rule and I believe they’ll rebound in the next competition.
  4. Admit when you are wrong. Another biggie, but oh so tough. If your team is losing a lot, it’s not just their fault…then the coach holds some responsibility. If they’re not working hard enough, admit that you haven’t held them accountable in practice, then figuratively kick their butts to show them you mean business. If you make a mistake (call the wrong play, make an incorrect substitution, etc.), then you’ve got to admit it. You don’t have to make a big deal about it, but just saying something will go a long way with building loyalty.
  5. Be emotionally steady. This is a big one in our profession…athletics are highly emotional. Every day we have a choice to personally belittle a player or not. To play favorites or not. To yell or not. I know coaches (some of them very accomplished and successful) who do all of those things. I would say they build antagonistic relationships rather than loyal relationships…that when things start going sideways, their players will not have their backs. I believe that we can be successful and have winning programs…all while building loyalty to ourselves and our programs.


Sometimes building loyalty is doing something as small as admitting that you’re fallable…or just being there for someone when they’ve performed poorly. The last post in the series will discuss the final five ways to build loyalty: Clearly describe what you want, model behaviors you expect, share the spotlight, don’t be a buddy, make it easy to get things done.

Part One: How To Become A Leader That People Follow
Part Three: 5 Ways To Earn Loyalty From Your Team

How To Become A Leader That People Follow

Leadership

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In the first of a three-part series, I’ll discuss how to build loyalty among teammates, loyalty to the coach, and loyalty to the program. If you’d like to see the original blog post, check out Leadership Freak’s 15 Techniques That Build Loyal Followers.

Can you be a leader if no one follows? I’d say no. Since we’re the big leader on our teams, with smaller leaders underneath us, we’ve got to model great leadership so that our captains know what it should look like. Let’s look at how we can create a team of loyal followers who are willing to figuratively run through walls for us.

5 ways to build loyalty on teams

  1. Enable other’s success. Coaches are facilitators. Our days on the court or field are over, we now have the opportunity to give great memories (and a lifetime of intangibles) to our players. Whenever I have a recruit in my office and they ask me about playing time or what positions I’m looking for, I always say the same thing: it’s my job to put you in a position to be successful. Now that could mean they’re a starter…or they’re sitting until they figure things out. It could also mean that they’ve got to change positions, because there’s someone who’s better than them.
  2. Leverage other’s strengths. You may see something in your players that they don’t see in themselves. It could me a freshman who is a natural leader. You see it in her and of course you’ll nurture it so that when her time comes, she’s confident and ready. Maybe your film study shows you that you should move a player to another position where she’ll be a total rock star. If you tell it to her like that, she’ll be fired up to make the change.
  3. Improve other’s performance. This is the essence of coaching, right? If our players aren’t getting better, then we’re doing something wrong. At the end of the season, we should be able to go down our roster list and think of (at least) one tangible way that each person on our team has gotten better. A good way to ensure that happens is to have a game plan to make each individual better, preseason should show you what the players would most benefit from.
  4. Adopt high standards. I’m sure most of us have a “way” things should be done…it’s the [insert school name here] way. It’s understood that means we work hard, we focus, we take pride in our program, we support our teammates, we compete until the end, we never give up. I’m sure you’ve got some things that are your “way”. Make sure the team knows the “way”, believes in the “way”, and teaches the “way” to your newbies.
  5. Correct and discipline. A few years ago I had a young lady on my team who didn’t understand what effort meant. So I had to show her my definition of effort by assigning the team “opportunities for fitness” each time she made a lazy move for the ball. By the end of practice, she was sniffling with tears threatening to fall from her eyes. After practice was over, I asked her what was wrong. She said she felt that she was the cause of her team having to run at the end of practice. I told her in a light manner that she did cost her team a bit of fitness, but now she understood that going all out is very important to me and to the team’s success…and she also understood that her team loved her even when she screwed up. She left the gym smiling and I never saw that lazy player again!


The next post will discuss numbers six through ten: answer public challenges publicly, give meaning to tasks, stand behind people when they screw up, admit when you’re wrong, and be emotionally steady.

Part 2: 5 Reasons Loyalty Is Important On Teams
Part 3: 5 Ways To Earn Loyalty From Your Team