Monthly Archives: September 2012

The 7 Secrets Of Inspiring Coaches

Coaching philosophy, Team chemistry

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If my team is still loving volleyball and enjoying coming into the gym every day at the end of the season, I feel like I’ve done my job well. If they’re still working hard, achieving, getting better, and excelling…I’m a happy coach. But how can I make sure that it’s happening? Check out this post based on the article, The 7 Secrets of Inspiring Leaders.

7 ways we can inspire our teams

  1. Ignite your enthusiasm. We’ve got to be passionate about our jobs…and we’ve got to somehow get that across to our team. As you may or may not know, I’m a big fan of John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success and one of the cornerstones of his Pyramid is enthusiasm. If we’re enthusiastic about not just our sport, but the welfare and success of our players as individuals…we’ll find success as a team.
  2. Navigate a course of action. What’s your vision for your team? Do they know it? Is it inspiring? A few years ago, I told a team I was coaching that I wanted other folks who saw us practice and play to think we were doing things the right way…that we were working hard and getting after it in the gym. My expectations for them were high and they rose to the challenge.
  3. Sell the benefit. What will accomplishing your vision for the team mean for each player individually? Of course having a winning season is great…every team wants that, but what about your particular vision for the team is unique? For me, and I understand that it’s a bit touchy feely, but I sell the feeling they’ll have at the end of a successful season. The sense of pride in achievement is a major benefit for my teams.
  4. Paint a picture. Is your team close to winning a championship? Maybe you can bring in a former player from a previous championship winning team to talk to your players. They can tell them about the amazing experience they had winning for the school. They can paint a mental picture for your players about how amazing they’ll feel when they’ve won it all.
  5. Invite participation. I’m not saying that your team has to be a democracy, but I am saying that your team needs to feel like they have some sort of say in things. With my personality, this is always a tough one for me, but I’ve found a few ways to give my team input. Individual meetings with each player…you never know who’s got some great idea but is afraid to tell you. And giving the team control over smaller things (like hotel room assignment, where the team goes for dinner, etc.) takes things off of my plate and helps them to feel a responsibility to the team.
  6. Reinforce optimism. There’s this thing called the recency effect. It says that we best remember the most recent things and not only that, we think the way things are right now are the way things will always be. So it’s our job as coach to remind our players that things are never as bad (whether they’ve had a bad game or the team is on a losing streak) as they seem.
  7. Encourage potential. Not just in things that directly benefit our programs. Sure it’s our job to squeeze every bit of potential from our student-athletes…but it’s also our job to prepare them for whatever they want to do in the future. Maybe we encourage them to study abroad, or try out for the orchestra, or wherever else a passion may lay.


I believe our players look to us for inspiration in good times and bad…let’s be prepared to support them in every way that we can.

Have The Courage To Create Conflict

Coaching philosophy, Meetings, TEDtalk

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In her great TEDtalk, Dare To Disagree, Margaret Heffernan talks about conflict among individuals and within larger organizations…and how constructive conflict isn’t bad, but actually very good. I’ve written enough on here about conflict that you all should know that I completely agree with this viewpoint.

Benefits of operating our teams with a constructive conflict model

  1. Surrounding ourselves with assistant coaches who will challenge us and create conflict around what we think is true will make us better leaders. For example, a few years ago, one of my starters got hurt mid-match and we made in-game adjustments as necessary. But after the match, when we had time to think about it, we discussed our options and I poo poo’d my assistant’s suggestion of a lineup change. He persisted and his suggestion worked much better than the one I’d assumed would be best.
  2. When we explore all possibilities, we can feel confident we’re on the right path. I’m a big fan of asking my assistants, “so what do you think?” They may get tired of me always exploring, but when we hit a problem from every angle, I can feel confident that we’re doing what’s best for the team.

How do we set up a constructive conflict model with our team?

  1. See conflict as thinking. Conflict gets a bad rap. When we get right down to it, conflict is just exploring different ways to solve the same problem.
  2. Don’t be afraid of conflict. Conflict among coaching staffs shouldn’t include screaming, yelling, name-calling, or other any of the other negative outcomes. It truly should be a group of people with the same destination…they’re just all taking different roads.
  3. Find assistants who think differently than we do. Heffernan says we’re genetically predisposed to surround ourselves with people who are like us. That’s great if we want coaches who just parrot off what we say…not so great if we want to be thoughtful about the direction of our team.
  4. Have the patience and energy to seek these people out. Finding those folks who will feel comfortable challenging us isn’t easy and it will take time. Some of us have the opportunity to hire those people, while others of us will have to cultivate this atmosphere of constructive conflict among an existing coaching staff.
  5. Be prepared to change our minds. This is the biggie. If we’re going to seek out folks who’ll disagree with our opinions, we have to be open-minded enough to acknowledge that their ideas may, in fact, be better and more successful than ours.


So how many of us will dare to do this? When we learn to see constructive conflict as productive and not negative, we’ll be more apt to try it.

Are Optimists Better Coaches?

Coaching philosophy, Coaching strategy

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There are all sorts of coaches out there.

There’s the Sandbagger Coach: “My team is okay…we’ll be lucky if we’re above .500 this season.” Of course, they proceed to win the conference championship.

There’s the Eeyore Coach: “Recruiting was terrible, I’ve got no good players, and the best of this bad bunch just got hurt.” Self-fulfilling prophecy?

There’s the Over-The-Moon Coach: “My team is ready to win it all this year, go ahead and buy your tickets to the finals!” Even keeled isn’t in this coach’s vocabulary.

Where do I think I fall on the coach spectrum? I’m an optimist…for better or worse. It’s in my DNA to see the glass as half full rather than half empty. Of course, I will game plan to figure out a way to get the glass full instead of just half full…but I’m generally more positive than negative with my team. I suppose it’s a matter of perspective though. If you were to ask my team, they may think my “honest conversations about where they stand on the team” are really just me being mean.

Anyhoo, without the fear of the theoretical hammer being thrown down, how does an optimist inspire her team and get them to challenge themselves?

5 ways optimists can get the best from their teams

  1. Optimists overcome fear. As Winston Churchill once said, “optimists see opportunities in every difficulty.” Every team, no matter how successful, will face challenges. Helping our teams to overcome their fears and tackle those challenges is the major job of the optimistic coach.
  2. Optimists inspire their team. Optimistic coaches understand the power of their words. It’s our job to make our players see things in themselves and the future of the team that they wouldn’t have seen without our leading.
  3. Optimists rally the troops. This is just an opinion, but I think most folks rise and fall with the tide of their emotions. They played great…everything is awesome! They played poorly…everything is awful! The optimistic coach keeps the team level-headed and focused on the end goal instead of the day to day ups and downs of being on a team.
  4. Optimists see the big picture. I just heard about this and thought I’d share a quote here: We all need optimists in our lives to fight the recency effect. The recency effect is a psychological term that simply means the most recent experiences we go through are the ones we are likely to remember and we assume those experiences will continue into the future. It’s the idea that we’ve lost three games in a row…will we lose all of our games? Or, we’re on a roll…no one can stop us! The optimistic coach brings perspective to her team.
  5. Optimists make things better. Our players are looking to us for inspiration. Maybe it’s the player who plops down in your office and asks if she’s really got a shot to play. Or maybe it’s after a tough loss. Or maybe it’s when you’re about to face a team you’ve never beaten. The optimistic coach will give their players a vision of success in their mind’s eye.


I was inspired to write this post after reading, 5 Reasons Why Optimists Make Better Leaders, over at forbes.com. The season inherently has its ups and downs…I believe an optimistic coach can better guide her team through those treacherous waters.

Are You A Compassionate Coach?

Coaching philosophy, Coaching strategy

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I give talks all around the country about motivating female athletes. There’s a portion of my talk where I talk about creating great relationships on your team—among the players as well as players with the coaches. Without fail, during the question and answer period, someone will ask something along the lines of: “So, you’re saying that we should be friends with our players…”

I, of course, remind them that I don’t think it’s possible for coaches to be friends with players…not with the power weighted squarely in the coach’s corner. We can be friendly, but not friends. In much the same way, I think the word compassion is misunderstood by leaders and those they are leading.

Understanding compassion and how it relates to leaders

  • Compassion does not mean avoiding difficult situations. Years ago, I had a player in a leadership position who floundered. She was off-putting to her teammates and she seemed miserable every time she stepped into the gym. It would have been much easier for me to avoid talking to her about her behavior and trying to take advantage of the teachable moments her poor behavior provided. Instead, we sucked it up and talked to her. Not only because of her impact on the team, but the impact on her future life.
  • Compassion is not kindness. Kindness is being friendly and having a gentle nature. Compassion is having concern for others. A kind coach may let poor behavior slide, while a compassionate coach will address it because they know it will make them a better player in the long run. A kind coach will ignore poor team chemistry, because they want to escape the unavoidable conflict that is bound to occur. The compassionate coach will try to get to the bottom of the problem so that she can educate her team on how to function properly.
  • Compassion is caring about the development of your players. If we see our jobs as transforming our players into better versions of their current selves, then we’ll develop them. Sometimes that means motivating them. Sometimes that means being their biggest cheerleader. Sometimes that means tooting their horn so that everyone knows about a particular success of theirs. And yes, sometimes that means correction.


I expanded on a very good idea I found on Harvard Business Review’s website. The post was called, “What It Really Means To Be A Compassionate Leader”…it’s just a couple of paragraphs long, but very powerful.

How To Cure A Slump Of Confidence

Mental game, Mistakes

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Slumps are unexplainable. Sometimes it hits just a single player, while other times it hits an entire team at once. The worst part is that, by its very definition, a slump has to attack a vital member of the team…someone on whom everyone is counting. Is it a slump if a bad player continues to perform poorly? I don’t think so.

One thing is for sure, slumps are frustrating for everyone involved. While the slump manifests itself as a severe drop in skill level, I happen to believe there’s an equally (if not more critical) dip in confidence that affects slumping players. Imagine the player whose identity is wrapped up in being the best at what they do and what would happen to their confidence when they stopped being at the top of the heap.

So what can coaches do to help this player revive their confidence and regain their top skill level?

4 Steps We Can Take To Address A Player’s Slump

  1. Don’t talk about confidence. I wouldn’t suggest starting the conversation with, “So you’re lacking confidence…”. An elite athlete will almost never admit to losing their confidence even if it’s true. Beyond that, confidence and skill are intertwined so addressing the skill will more than likely take care of the confidence issue as well.
  2. Address self-talk. Many times, I’ll ask athletes who are consistently struggling in a particular area, what they say to themselves before they perform the skill. Without fail, they’re telling themselves, “don’t do this” or “be careful”…some sort of passive or fearful self-talk. Our goal has to be to get them to say what they will do correctly instead of filling themselves with doom and gloom over what could possibly go wrong.
  3. Work on a specific, tangible skill with specific goals. Most likely, our slumping player thinks everything they’re doing is awful and they’re just a hot mess. Our job is to pick one tangible skill that can be worked on and give our player cues to replay in their head when they’re performing that skill. A specific goal combined with a tangible skill could be something like: “I’m going to come to practice fifteen minutes early to practice every day for two weeks and work on keeping my elbow high when I serve.”
  4. Visualize success. The next thing we can do for our athlete is to give her steps to visualize her success. There is all sorts of research out there that says that our bodies react the same to a realistically imagined event as they do to the real thing. Meaning, if our player visualizes herself serving an ace on game point, cheering with her team, and the officials signaling the end of the game…her heart rate will increase just as if it were happening in reality.


Most of us will have to deal with a player going through an unexpected slump and they’ll be looking to us to help them figure things out. Check out this post, How To Fix A Slump, for more information…the comments section was particularly festive.

On The Myth Of Instant Success

Coaching philosophy, Goal setting

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“Remarkable careers take a remarkably large amount of training.”

When I saw the title of this article over at Study Hacks, I thought it could stand on its own as significant: On the Remarkably Long Road to the Remarkable. Isn’t that true? We want our athletes and our teams to experience success at a high level, yet it never happens when we think it should.

A few years ago, I had a team that was tremendously talented and they dominated our conference all season only to fall in the championship game to a team they were better than. It wasn’t their time. On paper, this team was better than the team which went on to capture the championship the next year. It was their time…though I don’t know if they’d ever won it all without experiencing the disappointment of losing the year before. Being remarkable takes time and we’ve got to teach our players to embrace the struggle.

3 ways to teach patience in our players

  1. Set realistic and attainable goals. If our players’ only goal is to win a national championship, they will experience a lot of disappointment. They should set some stair step goals that will get them closer to their mission.
  2. Set “reach” goals. Though every goal they set can’t be easily reached…that wouldn’t be much of a goal. Their reach goals should require a good bit of time to reach, maybe even more than one season.
  3. Revisit and reassess goals. Oftentimes, teams will set goals at the beginning of the season and never look at them again. If their goals don’t drive them to achieve each and every day, they aren’t effective goals. Players should look at their goals once a week and see where they are and what they need to change about their effort to achieve them.
  4. Constantly evaluate performance. This one goes along with number three. Questions they should ask themselves: Am I working hard in every drill? Am I trying to get better every day? Am I challenging myself to improve weaknesses? Do I work to improve my strengths? Am I a valuable member of this team? Why?
  5. Celebrate successes along the way. Like I said at the beginning, if our teams only have one big, huge, gigantic goal…their success is going to be limited. If we are to believe that becoming a remarkable player and team takes time, we should celebrate when we take a step forward, right? I know we’re all super-focused grinders, but a little pat on the back should be allowed.


For those of us who have ever fallen short and been disappointed, I truly believe it’s that very disappointment which fuels our desire to continually strive for that elusive goal. It’s hard for us as coaches, because we want success so badly for our players. It comes in its own time, though, and when the team is ready and has prepared for it.

The Power Of Letting People Fail

Coaching strategy

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It’s tough. As coaches, we’re trained to see the potential in every athlete we work with…to view them as works of clay that we can mold into a super stellar athlete. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work that way.

Sometimes the warning that we’re too caught up with a player comes in a warily raised eyebrow from one of our players. Other times, one of our assistants is the unlucky soul who has to break the news to us: we’re favoring an athlete and propping them up rather than letting them stand on their own two feet.

Maybe we’re doing it for completely unselfish reasons. Perhaps we see something akin to a diamond in the rough in this athlete. Other times, though, we’re doing it out of utter selfishness. Maybe she was our “big” recruit and she hasn’t panned out…but we’re unwilling to admit defeat. So we give her chance after chance, even when she doesn’t deserve it.

A good coach knows she eventually has to remove herself from the equation and let the athlete succeed or fail on their own merits. But how?

A 4-step plan to stop hand-holding

  1. Stop covering for someone else’s weaknesses. I once had a player who immediately rubbed many of her teammates the wrong way. While I poo poo’d the complaining players, I also worked behind the scenes, trying to get the offending player to stop being a jerk. I’m pretty sure I drove myself crazy trying to make her into the player I thought she could be, meanwhile, the jerky player never had to lift a finger.
  2. Admit that you thought you were helping and now realize you weren’t. As the saying goes, hindsight is twenty-twenty. I look back now and think, “man, a lot of people told me she was bad news and I didn’t believe them.” I thought I was helping her to become a future leader of the team, unfortunately, she didn’t want the job!
  3. Acknowledge how your “helping” weakened the team. On a good day, I could say that I thought I was helping the team. On a more honest day, I can say I hurt the team because the jerky player had no passion for the sport or for our team. There’s a possibility that she had even less passion because I was trying so hard to make her into someone she didn’t want to be.
  4. Understand that they may succeed when you let go…but they also may fail. When I finally came to my senses, I had to face the fact that this player may not have appreciated all of my hard work on her behalf. She may prove her teammates right (and me wrong!) through her selfish behavior. It’s a roll of the dice, for sure, but one worth taking.


3 benefits of failure

  1. Growth. As each player works through their own personal failures, the entire team actually benefits from the struggle. We’ve got to teach our players to embrace the struggle.
  2. Strength. Hopefully we can teach our players to appreciate the strength required to fail. Acknowledging how hard it is to fail should help our players to appreciate each other more.
  3. Wisdom. There’s a German proverb that says, “You will become clever through your mistakes.” I believe that wholeheartedly.


This post was inspired by Successful Failure, a great post about letting people fail themselves forward.

Does Your Team Have Talent, Belief, And Vision?

Team chemistry

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I like to think I’m pretty good at knowing how to create a great team culture. Now, that doesn’t mean that I’m always successful at it…but I know how to do it. And so do you, Coach. It comes down to knowing what you believe as a coach and finding players who buy into your vision.

It’s that simple.

You may have to frame it in a way that is understandable for them, but having a shared mission is critical to team development. Let’s look at how we can create the team atmosphere that we desire.

4 steps to creating a successful team culture

  1. Committing to shared mission and vision binds talent together. I’m sure we’ve all seen teams that are tremendously talented…on paper. Unfortunately, that talent isn’t focused in one direction, but rather in the many directions each “star” takes it. A truly successful team will have players who give up personal glory for the good of the group. It’s the coach’s job to give each person a roadmap to the success everyone wants for the future.
  2. Talent without shared commitment is disruptive and dangerous. Common goals keep a diverse group of people focused on the task at hand. I know I’ve used this example before, but having a team without a common vision is like putting ten people in a row boat and have them all rowing in separate directions. Not only will our teams not be focused, lack of vision makes players complain about playing time, or not go all out in practice, or slack off in the classroom.
  3. Don’t just tell me what you’ve done, tell me what you believe. As we talk to our teams, before and during their time with us, we’ve got to demand that they walk the walk and not just talk the talk. Talking is easy, working is hard. As it resting on what was accomplished yesterday. I’ve found that those who relive the successes of the past have an elevated opinion of themselves and an unrealistic view of their contribution to the group. I want to coach players who win a championship on Friday night and are back in the gym on Saturday morning. Those players aren’t living in the past, but preparing for the future.
  4. Talent is overrated – belief is underrated. What do you believe? When I ask coaches, I’m usually talking about their coaching philosophy. But players are the same. We need to find out what they believe and if their values are lined up with ours. I’m certainly not saying that we don’t need skilled and talented players on our teams, but I’ll take a lessor talent—who buys into the team vision—over a tremendously skilled player who is on their own program. Do they believe in team? Do they believe in something bigger than themselves? Then they can play for me!


The inspiration for this article came from Leadership Freak’s post, Talent is Never Enough.

Feeling Comfortable With Conflict

Female athletes, Team chemistry

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If I wrote a post called, Conflict Keeps Teams at the Top Of Their Game, what would you think? Many of you probably wouldn’t believe me, but when I read that headline on the Harvard Business Review’s website, I thought it was great.

When I speak to various groups about their female athletes and how to beat the cursed “girl drama”, I explain that in my opinion it all comes down to how their team handles conflict. If their players view conflict as inherently negative, then when it ultimately arises (it always does) they don’t know how to handle the situation.

Why teams experience conflict

At the beginning of our season, I explain to my team that it won’t always be this way. Day 1, everyone sees themselves as a starter. Day 1, people haven’t started to get on each other’s nerves yet. Day 1, the players aren’t trying to balance practice and relationships and school work. So it’s all great.

Eventually starters are named. Personality conflicts may arise. By midseason, players are frazzled with the grind of the season and trying to balance it all with their school work and having a social life. If we don’t warn them this will happen, they’re going to be blindsided and think something is wrong, when it’s actually perfectly normal.

The contradiction of teams

Before I really sat down and thought about it, I didn’t realize how odd the idea of “team” can be. Think about it: We’ve got a group of athletes who are committed to a common goal (because they can’t accomplish it by themselves), but there are subsets of folks within the group who are in direct competition with one another. If we don’t think conflict will happen in that environment, we’re crazy.

Preparing your athletes for conflict

  1. Take feelings out of it. When conflict first rears its head, it feels very uncomfortable. That feeling sometimes makes our athletes feel as if the team is experiencing problems, when it’s actually going through a very normal part of the team building process.
  2. Creatively solve problems. I’m sure coaches out there have all sorts of solutions to guide their teams through conflict resolution, but my favorite is to have them take personality tests. In my experience, we’re all (players and coaches alike) drawn to complementary personality types and generally have conflict with those folks who aren’t like us. For example, the super quiet player might think the very outgoing player is really annoying. Showing our players how much of their conflict could arise from something as simple as an opposing personality type keeps the conflict from feeling personal.
  3. It’s bound to happen…and that’s good! If you’re scanning this post and not really reading the whole thing, I hope this one thing sticks out to you. We’ve got to tell our teams that conflict will happen and that it’s okay. Make sure you equip them with some great conflict resolution skills (Don’t know any? Check out the posts below.) and watch them flourish. Conflict isn’t bad…not dealing with conflict is bad.


Collaboration and success won’t happen when conflict is seen as negative. Let’s all agree to educate our teams on healthy conflict resolution tactics.

If you enjoyed this post, check out 5 Ways To Make Conflict Work For You And Your Team, A Step By Step Guide To Handling Conflict On Teams, 3 Keys To Building Collaboration Within A Competitive Culture, and Teaching Our Players How To Handle Conflict.

How Great Coaches Communicate

Leadership, Team chemistry

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I’ve talked before about the connection I see between the business world and athletics. I think we’d all do well to study up on great business leaders to see how we can adapt their success to our world. Saying that, here’s a podcast from Harvard Business Review’s blog, called How Effective Leaders Talk.

After studying and interviewing tons of hot shot leaders, they came up with four ways that effective leaders engage their employees…which I thought would be great for us. Whether we’re just working with our athletes or are in charge of an entire staff of folks…engagement is always the goal! Why is engagement so important? As they said in the podcast, “And the more engaged they are, the more productive they’re going to be.”

4 ways to engage our athletes

  1. Intimate. You guys know how much I love John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success, right? Well, the foundation of his Pyramid has loyalty, cooperation, and friendship as its components…doing those things should make a team pretty intimate. Effective and engaged teams are close with one another…and their coaches.
  2. Interactive. Of course, we’re the coaches and we’re not running a democracy and ultimately what we say goes. But, our teams should know and truly believe they can talk to us and actually have us listen to what they say. That doesn’t mean we’ll do what they want us to, but being heard goes a long way with creating engagement.
  3. Inclusive. Does everyone on your team enjoy their experience? Even your newbies? Or is your culture so bogged down in making the new folk’s lives miserable that they can’t settle down and enjoy the sport? Inclusion is a top-down endeavor. If we, as coaches, make it clear that we don’t tier our athletes, then they won’t do it either.
  4. Intentional. It’s hard for coaches to have intimate conversations with everyone on the team all of the time. But there are some ways we can be more intentional about it. Individual meetings are good. Setting up a system where you check in with a few people to check on the health of the whole team. Engaging those quiet folks on our teams will always be a challenge. They usually have good stuff to say, but we’ve got to draw it out of them.


A lot of the “old school” ways of coaching destroy rather than build engagement. Today’s coaches have to coach this new breed of athletes a little bit differently. These four steps should get us closer to our ideal.