Monthly Archives: February 2012

How Sports Make People Smarter

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I was excited when I saw the title of this TEDtalk, How Games Make Kids Smarter by Gabe Zichermann , because I’d like to believe that (contrary to popular opinion) it takes quite a bit of brain power to excel at sports. Imagine my surprise when I realized that the speaker was talking about gaming, not games. In the midst of extolling the virtues of video games as educational tools, one concept stood out to me.

Fluid intelligence.

What is that? Apparently there are different classifications of intelligence and fluid intelligence is what we use when we’re problem solving.

Problem solving is what our athletes are constantly doing in competition, so you can understand why I (and many coaches) would be interested in learning how to increase this particular facet of intelligence. In setting up this argument, Zichermann used the example of folks learning how to juggle. After twelve weeks of juggling, the participants in this study increased their brain matter. Of course it wasn’t the juggling that increased their brain matter…but the very act of learning.

What if we, as coaches, could increase the rate at which our athletes learned…which would then increase their fluid intelligence…which would make them really good at solving problems at crunch time? I think we can!

5 ways our players can increase their fluid intelligence

Seek novelty. Still using the same practice plans from ten years ago? Always going with the tried and true drills? Maybe we should all look at what we’re doing and find different ways to accomplish the same goal. We can ask a coaching friend to let us come to their practices for a week or so, just to see what they’re doing and how they’re doing it differently.
Challenge them. Remember, fluid intelligence is what we use when we’re problem solving, so they’re going to have to practice those skills in order to get comfortable using them in game situations. If we want our quarterback, center mid, or setter feeling comfortable making crunch-time decisions, we’ve got to put them in stressful situations in practice…for many reasons. So they feel comfortable problem solving, so their teammates respect their problem solving, and so we (as their coach) aren’t holding our breath hoping they make the right decision.
Think creatively. When I first started coaching, I scripted out plays for each rotation and didn’t give my setter much leeway to come up with her own plays without running them past me first. Now, because my assistant is in charge of the offense, I see the value of providing a framework (a canvas, so to speak) for letting my setter be creative in coming up with a good offensive plan. Do young setters struggle while they’re learning? Yes…and it’s painful to watch. Are my veteran setters heads and shoulders ahead of where they’d be if I were the puppeteer behind the offense? Without a doubt…and it’s a thing of beauty!
Do things the hard way. It seems to me that “think creatively” and “do things the hard way” go very well together. Coming up with practice plans that give our athletes the leeway to be creative and learn is hard work! It’s hard to come up with a plan that addresses our short term goals (we need to win the game tomorrow) as well as our long term goals (we need to increase our team’s sports I.Q.)…so that means we’ve got to be a creative coach. I think it’s also hard for us coaches not to solve the problem. If we’re to increase our team’s fluid intelligence, though, we’ve got to let them struggle to find the answers on their own.
Network. In the gaming world, creating community is a bit more manufactured than on our teams…we’ve got a ready-made network. Other people automatically add complexity to problem solving. I haven’t been on too many teams where everyone agreed on the correct way to solve a problem. It’s the networking that ties all of these things together. Of course, working in groups in harder than working solo, but the creativity generated in groups can be amazing!

Amazingly enough, our teams can be like those jugglers I mentioned before, struggling to learn…and increasing their brain matter along the way!

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A Step By Step Guide To Handling Conflict On Teams

Coaching strategy, Team chemistryTeam chemistry

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Conflict is a natural outcome of groups and teams, therefore, we’ve got to know how to manage it. It’s uncomfortable and it’s awkward, but teaching our players how to manage conflict will give them a leg up in both their professional and personal lives. So when I saw Are You In A Personality Conflict? over at the American Management Association’s site, I thought I’d bring it on over.

6 things that are vital for our teams to understand about conflict

Be self-introspective. It’s too easy to say that someone else is always the problem. Challenge your players to think about their tone when talking with the person they’re in conflict with…is it always positive? Ask them if they’ve been starting “mess” by talking with other team members about the problem. Acknowledging their own part in the conflict doesn’t release the other person from theirs.
Accentuate the positive. If their teammate is open to talking about their conflict, we have to make them understand that this is a positive thing! Even if the only thing the two fighting players can agree on is that they should talk…at least they agree on something.
Talk to the individual. We’ve got to encourage our players to stay away from messy people. Messy people, in this instance, are people who thrive on conflict. They stir the pot. They’re the ones whispering about what they “heard” to other folks on the team. Instead of starting mess by involving the entire team in the conflict, encourage your players to speak directly to the source.
Keep communication channels open. At the base of John Wooden’s Pyramid of success are the blocks, “loyalty”, “friendship”, and “cooperation”. Without those three things, I don’t believe our teams can be successful. And those three things can only happen when communication is flowing. Every team I’ve coached that has underachieved failed on those three blocks.
Treat everyone alike. This one is a tough one for players. First, they’re drawn to certain personalities on the team. Second, they’re more likely to align themselves with those in their class or who are their age. I think the biggest lesson we can teach our players is that they are more likely to be friends with certain players, so they can’t be surprised when conflict occurs with those outside of their natural group.
Agree to disagree. Finally, if they talked, you’ve talked, everyone has talked and there is still a conflict…they have to agree that neither is wrong, they just see things differently. They’ve got to find a place where they can be loyal to the team, have a friendly relationship with each team member, and cooperate with the team’s goals. That can’t happen when everyone is just trying to prove they’re right.

It’s pretty much a given that players on your team will experience conflict at some point. Hopefully, going through these steps will keep the conflict small and easy to handle.

Like this post? Check out Using Personality Tests To Increase Your Team Chemistry and 5 Ways To Make Conflict Work For You And Your Team.

Success Or Failure: The Power Of Our Mindset

Mental gameCoaching philosophy

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I’m always looking for different ways to motivate my teams. One of the reasons I love Twitter is that it’s full of information. Sure, it can be a bit overwhelming, but I find great quotations, awesome articles, and on rare occasions…poems. I found this one at Big Is The New Small, Do You Think You Can?

Read it. Think about it. Read it again. Then send it to your team. It’s good stuff…I wish I’d written it!

The Victor
Poet: C.W. Longenecker

If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you don’t
If you like to win but think you can’t,
It’s almost a cinch you won’t.

If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost.
For out in the world we find
Success begins with a fellow’s will
It’s all in the state of mind.

If you think you are outclassed, you are.
You’ve got to think high to rise.
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win the prize.

Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man.
But sooner or later, the man who wins
Is the man who thinks he can.

3 Ways Our Athletes Can Control The Controllables

Coaching strategy, MistakesCoaching philosophy

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During the summer, I work lots of camps, which generally means working with middle and high school aged girls. As I get to know them, I usually ask them about their teams and how they think they’ll do in their conference. Inevitably, a girl will say that she’s not looking forward to her season because she doesn’t think her coach likes her.

Then the talk progresses in the same manner, no matter who I’m speaking with: I tell them it doesn’t matter if the coach likes them or not…the coach wants to win! Sport isn’t some sort of popularity contest where coaches bench their best players in favor of less talented girls whom they really like…that makes no sense. I finish my talk with three ways they can “make” their coach give them playing time.

3 areas our players should focus on to be the best they can possibly be

Effort. I don’t know of a coach alive who doesn’t love a hustler. I’ve coached (and I’m sure you have too) players who aren’t gifted with obvious natural talent, but who will figuratively run through a wall in every drill during practice. These players don’t slack off during warmups, but are focused on performing the skill correctly. When coaches show them an area where they need to improve, they work on it furiously. They quite literally don’t understand why anyone would walk onto the court/ice/field without giving their full effort for the entire practice. The beauty of effort is that it is 100% within the control of each athlete…even the coach who “doesn’t like them” is bound to be impressed.

Learning. One of the more frustrating players to coach is the “I know” player. This is the player who says “I know” to your correction before the words have even exited your mouth. When I encounter players like this, I typically have a conversation about how I like to coach…it goes like this. First, I tell them I need them to look me in the eye when I’m talking to them. I’ve found that the “I know” player sees correction as bad, rather than helpful. I want them to see that I’m not angry with them. Second, I tell them I want to see some sign that they’re listening. Head nods, questions, whatever. Finally, I acknowledge that someone else may have taught them a different way to perform a skill and that it probably works…I’m just more comfortable teaching in this manner. A player who is willing to learn different techniques, especially one that her coach prefers, is more likely to get some PT.

Mistakes. This is a big one for me. At my opening meeting of the season, right before preseason starts, I tell my team that they’re going to make mistakes over the course of the season. Some mistakes will be insignificant, some of them will happen on game point and they’ll be crushed. And I tell them that I’m alright with that. I don’t want my team playing scared…afraid to make a mistake. I want my teams to be brave players, willing to risk disappointment (and maybe even embarrassment) on the road to success. If we make space for our players to have to take risks and make mistakes in practice, they’ll be more ready to do it during games. They’ll learn how to manage their emotions and their breathing. Most importantly, though, they’ll know that both you and their teammates respect them for taking the risk.

A lot about teams and sports are out of the player’s control, but these three things (effort, learning, and mistakes) are squarely within their control. If you’d like to read more about this, check out Coach Lok’s series called Creating Confident and Coachable Players.

4 Lessons Our Athletes Need In Order To Measure Their Success

Goal setting, Mental gameCoaching philosophy

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“Bloom where you’re planted” and lots of other clichés (“when life hands you lemons, make lemonade”) are created to help people deal with the fact they’re not where they want to be in life.

Now I’m not naïve enough to think that every student-athlete that I coach has dreamed of attending my institution since they were little tykes. I know that most, if not all, of them would love to play at Big Time State University if they could. They’d get all sorts of gear, they’d be on television every weekend, they’d be big-timers.

You might be in another situation. Maybe a player thought they’d make Varsity and only made JV, or they thought they’d make the “1” team and ended up on the “2”…whatever it is, we’ve got to get them fired up about moving forward rather than looking back.

4 tips we can give our athletes to refocus their goals and have measurable success

Don’t make general plans. Saying, “I want to start” or “I want our team to win conference” isn’t a specific goal. Instead of vague, “I just want to help the team” type goals, let’s focus them on figuring out how they can get better every day. I know of some coaches who have their athletes fill out a goal sheet at the end of each practice. They set a mini goal and then write down whether or not they accomplished that goal.
Award incremental positives. Goals are hard enough to accomplish without waiting until you’re standing on the championship podium! If the player has been able to string a bunch of great games together, be sure to give her a pat on the back. If she wins a smaller award, like all-tournament team, be sure to make it a big deal. Being good is hard, being good over a long period of time is a lot harder…celebrate small victories.
Read. So many times, our athletes are only focused on reading for classwork…it’s rare for them to read for fun during the school year. That’s why I read a book with my team each year. Reading it as a team helps each person to carry the load of the book, because they sign up for chapters and are then responsible for teaching their teammates the content. Picking books that will make them better leaders, players, or help them overcome a mental barrier has been critical to helping my athletes be successful.
Don’t wait for something to happen to you. A few years ago, there was a book that made the “Law of Attraction” popular. The Law said that if you thought about something enough and had enough positive thoughts about it…whatever the thing was that you really wanted would come to fruition. Those of us who live in the real world understand that good things don’t just happen, we’ve got to hustle for them. It’s a great lesson to teach our athletes. If they want amazing things to happen in their lives, hard work and success have a reciprocal relationship.

The idea for this post came to me after reading A Checklist for Measuring Your Success on Huffington Post. As the clichés have a fun way of telling us, we have the ability to take life’s disappointments and turn them into opportunities.

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Does Kindness Equal Weakness? Leading Today’s Athletes

LeadershipCoaching philosophy

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People are funny. I suspect you knew that already. According to an article I found called, “Nice guys and gals still finish last at the office”, folks want to work for kind leaders, but believe that the way to be successful is to be selfish and aggressive.

I’d guess that our teams are no different than folks working in cubicles. Let’s delve into this topic with the ultimate goal of finding out if a great coach and leader can be both kind and powerful.

Characteristics people say that they want in a leader

Integrity means leading with honesty and according to your morals. Our players need to believe that we’re saying the same thing to their faces as we are behind closed doors.
Values…what’s important to us? Our players will quickly figure out if winning at all costs is the most important thing to us or if recruiting and retaining high-quality individuals is our main goal.
All of us have been graded on how well we work with people since we were in kindergarten. Do we share the limelight or always take credit for success? Do we blame the players for losses? Most importantly, do our teams enjoy playing for us?
Cultivate people. Cultivate is a good, Midwestern word…everyone up here knows what I’m talking about when I say it. In terms of gardening, it’s preparing the ground to be fruitful. In terms of our teams, it means nurturing, supporting, and encouraging the positive characteristics we see in each player.

That all sounds great to me…and it’s exciting that folks say they want this type of leadership, but (there’s always a but) they also say they don’t think this person will be very successful.

Qualities people think make leaders successful

Power seeking. In my mind, power means always looking to move up…to better your personal situation. You’re an assistant coach? Then you want to be a head. You’re a head coach? Then you want to be a head at a bigger and more prominent school.
Self-interested. These are the people who are aware of the boss walking into the room. When they hear that the president of the institution is going to be at a gathering…they make it their business to be there as well. They network and make connections with the idea that these people will be able to help them rise up the pipeline.
Aggressive toward competitors. This person pursues their own interests with a singular mind. They may be the coach that brings up the fact that you had a losing season to the recruit that you have in common.

So, to repeat the initial question from the title: Does kindness equal weakness? I suppose it can…but it doesn’t have to! I believe we can lead from a positive place while giving our teams the assurance that we can get after it when we need to.

Keys to leading with power and integrity

Build relationships with useful others. In a great article from the Harvard Business Review’s blog called, “Women and the Uneasy Embrace of Power”, the author talks about actions (regardless of gender) required to attain power. Targeted relationships, or relationships with useful others, is one of those things. After all, it’s not just what you know, but who you know.
Displaying confidence. Confidence seems to be the opposite of weakness, so when looking to appear powerful, we should really aim to appear confident. Whether it’s chatting with a recruit and their family or talking to our team about a specific game plan, when we appear confident, we appear powerful. And when we appear powerful, our teams believe they can be successful with us.
Engaging in self-promotion. In my opinion, this can be done without putting others down. In contrast to being aggressive toward competitors to increase the perception of power, this type of coach toots their own horn. Amazing graduation rates, high numbers of all-conference players, winning seasons. All of those things are promotional without talking badly about another program.
Being willing to work long hours. Does your team believe you’ve done everything within your ability to prepare yourself and the players for every opponent? If our players question our work ethic, then we’ve got big time problems. Being seen as a hard worker, in combination with those other traits, will go a long way in helping us appear to be powerful.

Back to our original question: Does kindness equal weakness? No. I believe we can be moral, kind, just, and ethical leaders…AND wield power. Being powerful doesn’t equal being mean, we’ve just got to know what steps to take.

3 Pieces Of Advice for Female Athletes Once Their Playing Days Are Over

Female athletesFemale athletes

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Our female student-athletes hear lots of doom and gloom stories about what their professional careers will look like after graduation. Whether it’s the glass ceiling or balancing career and family, they are understandably nervous as they try to figure out what they’ll do post-playing career. Here’s how we can help alleviate some of those fears.

3 areas we can help our female athletes as they prepare for the future

Have high ambitions. According to the article, New Research Busts Myths About the Gender Gap, there is a perception among business professionals that women are less ambitious than men.

How we can help: We can teach our athletes not to accept mediocrity. Much like we preach that they can’t “turn it on” come game time, it’s the same thing with having high goals for themselves. If they have high goals for themselves on the court, in the weight room, and in the classroom…why wouldn’t they have high ambitions for themselves in the board room? Once again I have to toot my athletes-are-more-prepared-for-the-real-world horn.

You can have a career and family. And not just a career, but your dream career. Every once in a while, a student will plop down in a chair in my office and wonder if they can have it all. They don’t put it that way, but they wonder aloud if they can have that job they’ve dreamed about for years if they also have the spouse and family they’ve also dreamt about for years.

How we can help: I usually talk to them about my career and family choices. I get to do a job that I love and make a difference in young people’s lives…I can’t imagine doing anything else! I’ve also got a husband who is more than willing to help out at home and who (more importantly) has a large family network where we live. So when I’m out recruiting and he’s off working, grandma can step in and babysit. As coaches, we’ve got to nip those “I’ll never be able to balance it all” worries in the bud before they get cemented as real thoughts.

Understand sponsorship. Mentoring is a popular buzz word these days, but more and more, folks are saying sponsorship is much better than mentorship. Mentoring means giving advice whereas sponsoring means putting in a good word for someone with higher ups. Mentoring is saying, “I’ll email you with a list of common interview questions.” Sponsoring is saying, “I worked with that AD a few years ago, let me give her a call and tell her you’d be an asset to her department.”

How we can help: Let’s show them what it looks like. Perhaps we can set up networking events on campus where our athletes can hob nob with the administrative folks on campus who are the decision makers. As coaches, we’ve got to make sure that we keep up our end of the bargain by having great relationships all over campus, so that when we need to call in a favor…the phone gets answered.

The choices women have are too numerous to detail, let’s be sure we help our athletes to keep every post-competition option as a true option for themselves.

Like this post? Check these out!

How To Equip Our Female Athletes To Be Leaders
What Are You Worth? How To Negotiate Salary
Female Leaders: How To Get Ahead And Not Alienate People

6 Things Coaches Can Learn From Business Leaders

LeadershipCoaching philosophy

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“Great leaders are instruments of a purpose and community.”
—Steve Jobs Wasn’t (Just) a Leader

The more I read and the more I learn, there seems to be such a strong connection between the business world and athletics. Check out this post based on a Harvard Business Review article.

6 leadership qualities we can learn from the business world

Creative. Coaches, we should see ourselves as creators, just as artists do. Sometimes it’s coming up with a coaching philosophy that resonates with you, your staff, and your team. Other times it could be building a culture of success that didn’t exist before you got there. Wherever your creativity shows itself, we should be passionate about shaping and protecting it.

Meaningful work. If you’ve been reading for any length of time, you know that I think coaching is a wonderful profession. Do I think that I’m changing the world by teaching young women how to pass a great ball or hit a smart shot? No. But I do think I’m changing the world, one person at a time, by teaching my players how to win and lose with grace, how to be leaders, how to excel in a team environment…and all of the other lessons that sport teaches.

Performer. I was talking to a professor on campus the other day, and he talked about how he views his lectures as performances…entertaining lessons that grab the student’s attention. I think coaching is much the same. How many times have you been dog tired from coaching, practice planning, scouting, recruiting…but have to “bring it” in practice? That’s call performing and we should all be good at it.

Committed. A few years ago, I was on an interview committee and the young lady applying for the job was coming from the business world. I asked her if she was ready for coaching at the collegiate level and she said she wanted to give it a try. That’s when I crossed her off of my list. That didn’t sound like passion for the job to me, it didn’t sound like enthusiasm for the field to me, and it certainly didn’t sound like commitment to the craft to me.

Expect failure. Every now and then a recruit will sit in my office and talk about how her coach punishes the team for making mistakes. That’s exactly the opposite of how things should be, in my opinion. If we want our players to excel, we’ve got to give them room to fail. If they only do what they know how to do…they’ll only do what they know how to do. Most new things will be different and difficult, which will more than likely lead to failure…and that’s a good thing!

Not about us. In order to become a coach that players love to play for, we need to understand this principle. I’m not saying it’s bad to want personal accolades and successes, but our coaching goals should always be about making our players the best human beings that they can be. We’ve got to desire to equip our assistants with the tools they’ll need to be head coaches one day. I believe that we all want to make a difference in this world and coaching is how we’ve chosen to make that difference.

As the opening quotation says, as leaders we should encourage purpose and community…that sounds like a “team” to me!

Solitude And Leadership: A Seemingly Odd Couple

Leadership, Mental gameCoaching career

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How often are you really alone these days? Not just physically alone, but off the grid? Away from your email, Blackberry, and the various dings of Twitter, Facebook, and all sorts of other social media.

I’d guess it’s not often.

I’m guilty too.

I know it doesn’t seem like it to folks outside of the field, but coaches are creative folks! We’ve got to figure out how to motivate each different personality on our team, come up with game plans for opponents, and create amazing practice plans that prepare our athletes for everything they’ll see in competition…that all takes creativity!

With time becoming an increasingly rare commodity, why should we carve out space for this sacred resource to sit in solitude?

3 reasons space, solitude, and silence are vital for leaders

Reflect. Just as we’d examine our seasons, we should examine ourselves. I know it sounds all touchy feely, but we’ve got to ask ourselves some tough questions at the end of each season…whether we won it all or lost more than we won. Some questions: What did I learn about myself this season? What was I able to accomplish this year? Was I an effective leader for my team? Is my team better off for having worked with me? Reflection and analyzing are very closely related, but they are different. Reflection is about us while analyzing is about our situation. Let’s check out how we should analyze.

Analyze. Did you have a great season? Or an uncharacteristically poor season? Do you know why? If not, taking some time to reflect on the good and bad of every season is critical. What areas do you need to grow as a coach? Who will be your team leaders next year? Do you need to change up your coaching staff? What are potential landmines for the next season? Were the practices intense enough? How can you raise the intensity? All of these questions and more should be asked as we analyze our seasons.

Dream. In those times when I manage to get time to myself, I get clarity. Whether my team is posing a particular problem that I haven’t been able to solve or it’s pondering a career move…getting alone and getting quiet always helps. Sometimes I’ll drive with the radio off and see what pops into my head, or I’ll get on a machine at the gym without my music and let the thoughts flow.

The inspiration for this post was from Problogger’s article, Space…Solitude…Silence, you should check it out. I know it’s hard to get alone and away from electronic distractions, but I believe it’s worth the effort.

Like this post? Check out 3 Reasons Why The Creative Leader Seeks Solitude and Take These 3 Steps To Become A More Effective Leader.

Becoming Extraordinary: Cultivating The Leader Within

LeadershipTeam chemistry

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Years ago I went to a seminar that John Maxwell, a leadership authority, was giving in town. He said something that has stuck with me for years and this article on the Harvard Business Review’s blog reminded me of it. The article is titled, Become An Extraordinary Leader, and talks about working on our strengths—rather than our weaknesses—to become the best leader that we can be.

Now, this is counterintuitive, I know…we’re wired to want to work on those things that we’re not good at. In school, our teachers never would have told us to focus on Math because we were just awful at English. At home, our parents never would have told us to forget about the C’s on our report card…look at all of those A’s!

But in sport we do say, this is where your particular skill set could help us out—focus on getting better at those things and our team will thrive. A volleyball team doesn’t have a floor full of setters out there, and football doesn’t have a team of centers on the field, and basketball won’t start a team of point guards. We tell them, this is your niche, now get really good at it.

So why would leadership be any different? After studying thousands of leaders, they found the qualities that separated the good ones from the great ones.

5 skills that extraordinary leaders have that we can cultivate in ourselves and others

Developing others. If we don’t see our jobs as developing leaders (and just better human beings in general) under the guise of coaching, then I think we’ve got our priorities all mixed up. Our players are blank slates that we get to show the beauty (and work) of leadership…let’s be sure to make it a priority.
Building relationships. I think it would be pretty tough to create an atmosphere where we could truly develop our players without having a good relationship with them. Sometimes, younger coaches think that means we have to be friends with our teams, I’d totally disagree with that…we can’t be friends when we have the power of playing time. But we can create wonderful relationship with our players built of care and respect.
Communicating powerfully. To me, this means communicating clearly, concisely, and when necessary, emotionally. Whether we’re talking to our players about playing time, academic issues, or how their parents are doing, our players should enter and exit every conversation with us knowing exactly what the talk was about and if they have any action items from that meeting.
Being decisive. Here’s an excerpt from my post, 3 Techniques Of Good Coaches: your team “wants 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.”
Being optimistic. This one goes a long way, in my opinion. The season is harsh enough on our players and ourselves…we’ve got to give our team perspective. It’s never as good as it seems…or as bad as it seems. Regardless of where we are in our season, keeping our goals at the forefront will help our teams stay optimistic about the future.

Since we’re all leaders, we should all want to build up our leadership muscles so that we can be the best we can be for our teams.