Monthly Archives: November 2012

Are You Committed To Your Team?

Coaching philosophy, Leadership

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I found a nice article over at Basketball Insights that talked about NBA coach Gregg Popovich’s leadership skills. Since he’s been so successful, I thought I’d share it with you and put my spin on things.

6 ways to show your commitment to your team

1. Understand what motivates your players. In practices and in games, we’ve got to know how to get our teams going. I often tell my teams that games aren’t the time for teaching…go play and we’ll fix it later. The same goes for us as coaches. We’ve got to remember to use practice time to figure out how each player is motivated to learn, how they’re motivated to push themselves, and how they’re motivated to excel. In the same manner, we can use scrimmages to see how they’re motivated in stressful competitive situations.

2. Do what it takes to be a champion. Winning cultures win. I’m sure you’ve played teams that your team was better than…but that other team had crazy swagger. They expected to win more than your team hoped to win. Before we can create a culture of winning, I believe we’ve got to create a culture of success. You all know by now how deep my love of John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success goes, he was awesome. He was also a champion.

3. Be a learning leader. Isn’t the coaching cliché that the best coaches steal from the best coaches? With so many coaches out there, I can’t think of a reason that we can’t all find someone to learn from! I believe in being a coaching nerd and learning from as many folks as I can, whether it’s another coach or a business leader.

4. Provide vision for your program. What is important to you? What is your coaching philosophy? How do you want your team to be perceived? All of those things go into creating a vision for your program. Then you go out and get it. Without knowing what you want, how will you know what players to recruit? Beyond that, how will your players know when they’re successful?

5. Put the team first. Everything we do has to be about the team. Whether it’s being incredibly prepared for every drill, practice, and game…or making sure you’re on the same page with your assistants. All of that puts the team first. Add to that all of the intangibles that we teach our athletes, they’ll appreciate that it’s “we before me” and model that behavior.

6. Have fun. Hopefully you love your sport. Hopefully you love going to practice. Hopefully you love coaching. Hopefully you love your athletes (even when they’re driving you crazy). Hopefully you get along with your coworkers. Hopefully you’ve got rockstar assistants. If you’ve got all of that, then you’re having fun.

Leading, coaching…it’s not easy, but it’s the best job ever! We can learn from those folks who’ve not only been successful, but who’ve been continuously successful over a long period of time.

Book Review: Gender & Competition

Books

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In 2000, I took my first collegiate head coaching job. While I was fired up about coaching and volleyball…I was pretty clueless about what it took to be successful as a leader of young women. That same year, I went to my coaches convention where Kathy DeBoer was the keynote speaker and it was an eye opening experience to say the least. Her topic was “Improving the Competitiveness of Your Female Team” and she’s expanded that two-day seminar into a great book, Gender and Competition: How Men and Women Approach Work and Play Differently. Here’s a bit about her book:

The rundown: The book is filled with stories from her coaching days and missteps she made with some of her female players, but also stories from her time in athletics administration. At the heart of the matter is a generation of female coaches who may not have had female coaches themselves who then try to coach as they were coached by men…and the utter disaster that follows. Of course I’d suggest that you read the book, but basically it comes down to women having different expectations from other women than they do from men.

That’s one side of the story. The other side is how to motivate female athletes for greatness. DeBoer says that culturally, young girls view winning and losing as opposite of the “closeness that females value” and avoid it in play activities. As you read this, your eyes will be opened to the type of environment that you can create to help your female team embrace competition.

Recommended for: Coaches of female athletes…whether male or female. It gives good insight into why our athletes are the way they are and what they need from us to push them to be great.

Not recommended for: People who insist that there aren’t gender differences, because that’s the basic premise of the book. As DeBoer says, “until recently, it was not politically correct to think of women as different. If you said women were equal, then they couldn’t be different. The wonderful news is we can now say women are equal and different. And that’s a huge and dramatic breakthrough.”

Great book and it’d make a great gift for the coach in your life…or for yourself to read over winter break.

Keeping Our Players Engaged With Their Teammates

Mental game, Team chemistry

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Over the course of a season, we have the opportunity to deal with lots of personnel issues. Some of them are easy, some of them are quirky, and some of them are tough. One of the tough ones, in my opinion, is when a player suddenly withdraws from the team. I saw a great article called, Shutting Others Out, that talked about the reasons that this could happen. Read on for three of the reasons that a player could isolate herself from you and her teammates.

3 reasons a player may isolate herself from her teammates

1. They may want something. Some of our players will be passive aggressive by nature. They’re afraid to come directly to us, so they stew. In the personality assessment that I use, they’d be the S…resigned that no one wants to hear what they have to say anyway, so what’s the point? Action item: Reach out to them. They have things on their mind that are very important to them, but don’t know how to properly assert themselves. And when you talk to them, reassure them that they don’t have to be nervous about talking to you about anything.

2. They may have something to hide. If your players think they’ve let you or the team down, they may withdraw. They’re probably embarrassed at doing whatever it is they did…and they’re surely afraid of the consequences that may follow. This player is of the “why do today what I can put off until tomorrow” mindset. They know they’ve screwed up, they know they’re going to get in trouble for it…so they’re going to let you find out any kind of way except from them! Action item: Get behind the scenes. Someone on your team knows what’s going on. So talk to your captains or talk to her bestie on the team to find out what’s happening in her life. That way you can approach her and come up with a plan of action so that she can be herself again.

3. They may be hurting. Something happened to them. Whether it’s a bad grade, a fight with a good friend, or a sick relative…they’re sad, but they really don’t want to talk about it. These are your independent players who are used to doing everything themselves…and usually they do it pretty well. They have a tough time admitting that they’re having a problem that they can’t solve…this player will say they’re “alright” if you ask them how they are doing. Action item: Ask once and then step back. Alert your captains, have them keep an eye on her and chat with her. You’ll check in with your captains about how this player is doing, because they’ll just get annoyed if you keep asking them what’s wrong.

We’ve got to keep our eyes peeled for these things…and also know our players personality type so that we can correctly address the situation.

1 Thing A Coach Can Do Each Day To Make Their Team Better

Coaching strategy, Recruiting

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Recruiting. Most coaches have a strong reaction to that word. It’s either something like, “Yippee!!” or an expletive that can’t be written in this blog. I tend toward the yippee crowd, because I understand what recruiting is…but before I get into all of that, check out this post I wrote a year ago when I started this blog, The 1 Thing You Need To Be A More Effective Recruiter.

I believe when we understand what recruiting is, we take a more active and engaged interest in potential student-athletes. Recruiting is our chance to make an impact, to teach young people leadership, team building, goal setting…more on that in the next post. And if we’re lucky enough to coach female athletes, we have the added opportunity to show them that girls and women can not only get along in groups…they can achieve great things together. We don’t get the chance to teach these lessons if we don’t get our recruiting on! That’s why I’m talking about recruiting during “I Love Coaching” month.

Now that we can agree that recruiting is more than putting together a bunch of folks with an array of skills that will benefit the team (though that’s certainly important!), let’s talk about the four quadrants that make up a successful recruiting class.

  1. Scout. This is the beginning of the process. The most obvious way to scout is to attend recruiting events. I won’t talk about how much I love the first view when I walk into a convention center and witness volleyball courts as far as my eyes can see…it’s glorious and it never gets old. More important than scouting is being connected. If we have contacts with club/AAU teams, high schools coaches, even other college coaches, we can maximize our efforts.
  2. Contact. Once we’ve got athletes that we’re interested in, then it’s time to get in touch with them. Whether that’s going to see a practice, watching a game, calling, emailing, talking to their club coach, home visits…whatever you can do within the rules of your league is fair game. If you’re not doing it, someone else will.
  3. Visit. Any Admissions professional will tell you that your odds increase dramatically if you can recruits on campus. Sooo, we’d better make sure we get them on campus! Not only do they see campus, they get to sit in on a class, meet your team, and generally see what campus life would be like if they were to attend your college. I know some coaches who threaten their team with copious time on the bench if they’re negative with a recruit. I’d prefer to remind them that someone took time with them when they were still making their college decisions and now it’s their time to return the favor. Also, they don’t want the team to be awful when they leave…the only way to ensure that the level of play stays high is through recruiting efforts.
  4. Retain. Plain and simple, we’ve got to keep them on the hook. We don’t want to spend months and months on an athlete, only to have them snatched out from under us because we thought we had them wrapped up. Use your team, have them send your recruits emails or hook up with them on Facebook. Of course, we should stay in touch with them and remind them of why they fell in love with our team and our college all those months before. In the last few weeks before I got married, my brother advised me to “not screw it up now”. Great advice! Basically he was warning me not to become Crazy Wedding Lady and forget to show my hubs why we were doing this in the first place. Coaches, we’ve metaphorically “wooed” these recruits…let’s not screw it up by not closing the deal.


Recruiting is any team’s lifeblood. I think remembering that our job as a coach is to teach life lessons through our sport will make recruiting more meaningful and less of an obligation.

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5 Qualities To Be Thankful For In Your Team Leaders

Leadership, Team chemistry

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

5 things that coaches look for in captains and team leaders

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Personality Assessments Could Be The Key To Your Team’s Success

Personality tests, Team chemistry

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As coaches, I think we all know that we’ve got different personality types on our team and I’m sure we’re all pretty conscious about how those personalities will interact. When we bring recruits on to campus and we sit down and chat with them, we wonder about their “fit” with our teams…how their personalities will mesh with the current players. Sometimes we don’t want to rock the boat and try to recruit like-minded players. Other times, we want to shake things up a bit…whether it’s bringing more toughness or more fun…we know that the team needs a different makeup.

But do you think that your team recognizes that some folks are just made differently than them…with a whole different perspective on things? I’ve used personality testing in the past with pretty good results, because the team gets to hear about themselves and also put the people that they know into categories. The testing is pretty informative and can help them with their relationships outside of their team as well.

There are lots of personality tests out there: Myers-Briggs, colors, animals, and DiSC…and that’s the one that I use. DiSC breaks the personalities down into four different categories.

D’s are dominant. They’re what folks would call Type A personalities. They like to get immediate results, make quick decisions and love to manage trouble and solve problems. They’re decisive and competitive…natural born leaders. That’s the good stuff. The down side to D’s are that they are too self-reliant, the one’s who hate group projects in the classroom (can you see how that could negatively impact your team?!), and can be so blunt that they’re hurtful to others.

i’s are your people of influence. They’re the one’s who everyone gravitates toward, the life of the party. They’re your players who will pull the team aside in practice and fire them up if they feel that the effort isn’t where it should be. They’re the folks who will immediately walk up to the newbies on your team and make them feel right at home. i’s just need to remember that life isn’t all play and no work…that they’ve got to get down to business at some point. And they try so hard to be everyone’s friend and not to hurt feelings that their teammates may not feel a true connection with them.

S’s are Steady Eddie’s. They’re quiet, but very loyal and love the teaminess of teams…the one’s who stay on your team even though they know that they’ll never get any playing time. They are skilled at calming an explosive situation and calming the scene down while others are freaking out. S’s need to learn to assert themselves in group situations so that their teammates don’t overlook their contributions. Since they can be overthinkers, S’s should learn the difference between the time for thinking and the time for acting.

C’s are your conscientious workers. They’ll drill all day long and never feel as if they’ve gotten it down…they’re perfectionists. C’s are good in the film room because they’re so analytical. Come game time, they’ll know the opponents tendencies without a doubt. Their downside is that they ask so many questions that they may drive their coach to drink! And they have such high standards for themselves and their teammates that they may be destined to fail.

As you were reading this, I’m sure you were thinking of your team and where they fit. Obviously, having a strong mix of folks is pretty key…but most important is that your team understands to positives and negatives of their personality and how they can be perceived by others. Also, it’s pretty huge for us coaches to know the rough mixes. Your D’s are going to think your i’s are screwing around too much and that your S’s need to toughen up. Your i’s will constantly get their team in trouble for getting practice off-track with their incessant yapping. Your S’s will either toughen up or continually get their feelings hurt by the too-blunt D’s and the hard-to-read C’s. Speaking of C’s, should you deign to change the lineup or change a play without significant notice, get ready for their world to be spun off kilter and they’ll be pretty useless to you for a few plays.

Do you use personality tests with your team? How do they respond? At what point in the season do you administer your test?

Click here to learn how knowing your personality type will help you manage your team.

Creating A “No Excuses” Culture On Our Teams

Team chemistry

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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.

How Coaches Can Fight Burnout

Burnout, Mental game

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Are you getting ‘er done…or just burned out? Do you know when you’ve hit the wall and just can’t go hard anymore? I was over at Bnet.com (a business website) and read a great article called “Is Your Company Turning You Into A Corporate Zombie?” and thought it made a lot of great points about what folks look like when they’re burned out and decided to bring it over here and put my coach spin on things. How do you know when you’re burned out? Well read on to find out!

**Keep your eyes peeled! If you’re doing these things, you may be on the verge of burnout.**

1. Your creativity level has dropped. Back in the day, you could spot a problem on your team and figure out a drill to fix it…or you’d schedule a team meeting…or you’d do whatever it took to address the issue. Now, you’re flummoxed. You’re all out of ideas to keep your team motivated.

2. You spend less time in reflection. So I wrote this whole post about how leadership and solitude are linked (read it here) which makes it pretty obvious that I believe in giving yourself time to reflect. When you’re burned out, you’re like the hamster on a wheel…just go-go-going!

3. You laugh less. Your team goofball used to be able to make you smile no matter how intense you were in practice…not anymore. Nothing’s funny because you’re tired, hopped up on caffeine, not eating right, and haven’t seen your family in weeks.

4. You look beat down (like everyone else in your office). You come dragging in to the office at 7 am and you go dragging out at 9 pm. You get home, go to bed, get up the next morning and do the same thing all over again. Why? Because everyone else in the office does that when they’re in season. You’re exhausted but you won’t rest or sleep or otherwise enjoy yourself because you’re “getting after it.”

5. The sparkle in your eye dims. Talking about your team, planning practices, chatting with the coaching staff after practice…all of those things used to fire you up. Now you sigh when someone asks about the team, dread planning practice, and hustle out of the gym as fast as you can when practice is over to avoid shop talk.

**Burnout killahs…do these 3 things to keep the bounce in your step!**

1. Go home. Whether it’s to spend time with your family, or to make a proper meal, or just to relax and read a book…we all need to get away for a few hours. Many, many things are out of our control as coaches. Our players may get injured or another team may get the world’s best recruit, but our time? It’s ours. Let’s manage it so we can stay sane.

2. Set time limits on email/phone calls. Some of us think we can game the system. We say, “oh, I go home at 6 every night.” But what you don’t say is that you’re on the computer with the phone attached to your ear the whole time. At some point, you’ve got to make an agreement with yourself when you’re going to turn everything off…and not just when it’s time to go to sleep!

3. Workout/pray/meditate. Whatever you need to do to get your mind right…do it! The idea of all of these burnout killahs is to get in control of your time, because it seems like burnout happens when you feel like there are so many things that you’ve “got” to do and you just “can’t” take time for yourself. (I put those in quotation marks because they’re not empowering and most times just not true.)

Author’s note: just because you’re doing the top five things doesn’t mean you’re burned out…you may thrive in that environment for short spurts. But take an honest look at how you’re going about your business and figure out how long you can operate like that without losing your love of the game.

Using Meetings To Increase The Success Of Your Team

Meetings, Team chemistry

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I love the individual meeting. It’s my time to chat with players, find out how classes are going, how they’re feeling on the team. All sorts of stuff. It’s also a time for the players to get to know me a little better, so I think it’s a win-win. For me, the meetings can take lots of shapes. Let’s talk about them.

During preseason This is typically a very informal meeting conducted right there in the gym. Whatever drill we have the team participating in, my assistant and I will call out a player and have them come and chat with us. When we’re finished with that player, we tell her to grab someone else. It goes like that until we’re finished with everyone’s meetings. This meeting will address whether we thought they came in to preseason in shape, what we think their strengths are and how they can be an asset to the team, and what we think their weaknesses are…or potential barriers to court time. They should walk away from this two to three minute conversation knowing where they fit into our team’s depth chart and should understand what they need to do to benefit our team’s success.

In season This is a scheduled meeting where the student athletes sign up for meeting time with me. I typically ask them to come up with 2-3 academic goals and 2-3 individual volleyball goals. This is important time for me to demonstrate to my athletes that I care about them beyond what they bring to the court. I believe that it’s important for your athletes to know that you care about them as people…not just players. We talk about their academics, their majors, the classes that they’re worried about, professors that they’re worried about, their goals beyond college. Armed with that knowledge, you’ll understand how to handle each of them. Some are just like me (poor souls) and come in to the meeting with their planners out, notes neatly typed, and good answers for all questions. Others come in and can’t find the paper they wrote everything out on, and you’ll be able to tell that they haven’t actually thought about your questions until they were sitting right there in your office.

And of course we hit their volleyball goals. Some may be tangible…I want to be the starting setter. While others are intangible…I don’t want to be as nervous as I was last year when we played our arch rival. Either way, it’s the coach’s job to help the student athlete navigate through this maze. What steps does he need to take in order to be the starting setter? What are his strengths that make him an asset? What are his weaknesses that make him a liability? Armed with that knowledge, the athlete is free to sink or swim. I always make sure that they understand that I want to put the best combination of players on the court. I’d love it to include him, but if he’s not willing to put in the work…I know of others who will.

The impromptu Years ago, I had a player who came into practice with the super red eyes. I looked at my assistant and said, “uh oh, we’ve got a crier.” I sidled up next to one of my captains and asked if she knew what was wrong. Nothing. Another player that this girl was close to…again, nothing. I left it alone. Later in practice, I was giving her instruction and she started crying again. Not sobs, just slow tears trickling down her face while she nodded at what I was saying and apparently hoped that I didn’t see her crying. I asked what was wrong while my assistant ran the drill and she said she didn’t know. I asked again (class? boyfriend? parents?) and she said she didn’t know…just was feeling kinda blah. To which I said (and I’ll never forget), “it’s every woman’s right to cry for no reason, you just have to let your team know so that they don’t think you’re mad at them.” That was it, she was fine…all was right with the world.

End of the season This can be an awesome meeting or an awful one depending on the season and the person. It’s awesome when season went well and the player had a tangible contribution. It’s awful when the player doesn’t have a proper view of their skill level and how they could have impacted the team. It’s good to be prepared for the tough ones ahead of time…don’t be caught off guard by a disgruntled player. Anyhoo, this meeting is meant to fire them up for the next season…whether that’s spring ball or fall season. We talk about their practice and game contributions and how those impacted the team positively and how they could get even better. We look at their goals again and figure out how they did with those. If you think they’ll be chosen as captain by their teammates (or you just want them to be), I talk to them about acting like a leader before they’re chosen…and what that leadership should look like. For seniors, it’s never a happy meeting. They’re sad because there’s no more volleyball and no more team and now they’ve got to go work in the real world and everyone knows that that’s no fun. I talk to them about what a joy it’s been working with them (it almost always is) and how they’ve changed the team dynamics for the better and that they should believe that they left the team better than they found it.

So that’s that! How do you handle your individual meetings? I’d love to hear your ideas!

Coaching Is Leadership

Leadership

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I believe it’s important for us to model quality leadership for our student-athletes. We have an amazing opportunity to show our young people what it takes to lead with integrity, focus, and success. Check out the things that will make us great leaders…and prepare our players to do the same!

L…learn. I’m a big fan of reading business magazines, blogs, and books. What I read time and again is that business leaders are voracious readers. And if they love to read, maybe we should be too since we’re the CEO’s of our programs. Reading forces us to think critically, follow our mentors, and find different perspectives on how to solve problems.

E…enthusiasm. As I’ve said before, we’ve got to love what we do…and that passion should be contagious to our teams. I’ve caught the volleyball bug and my goal is to infect my team with it. I want the passion I have for my sport to go through my team like a cold in a kindergarten classroom.

A…advocate. For the noun version of this word, we should be advocates for our student-athletes on our campuses. Whether it’s with professors who may not understand or value the time commitment required to excel at our sport or an apathetic student body that may not appreciate with athletics brings to the campus community. For the verb version, I believe that it’s the coach’s job to always advocate for awards for our players…both athletic and academic. It’s always sad to hear that an athlete would have won an award if only their coach had taken the time to nominate them.

D…delegate. I know we head coaches are crazy control freaks, but we’ve got to let some things go…for the benefit of the team and our sanity. We hired our assistants because we believe they are capable and knowledgeable…let them be those things!

E…effective. Ineffective leaders are unreliable, take no ownership, are resistant to change, and have a negative attitude…read more here.

R…relevant. A great leader will stay up to date on all of the newest innovations with their profession. Whether it’s reading books, attending conventions and seminars, or even just watching a webinar…effective leaders keep up with all things relevant to excelling at their job.

S…servant. 10 characteristics of a servant leader: listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the personal growth of people, and building community…read more here.

H…humility. We’ve all been around that coach who blames her team when things are going poorly and takes all of the credit when her team is rolling…don’t be that coach.

I…integrity. It basically comes down to your moral code, whatever that is, and how well you stick to it. Will you treat your star players the same as those who will never get off of the bench? Will you bad mouth another coach in order to get a prized recruit? Will you fudge the numbers to make sure that your budget is balanced?

P…purpose. I believe that God created me to coach. Not because I think I’m some sort of baller coach, but because I believe in what sport teaches young people. I feel privileged to be able to teach life lessons (disguised as athletics) that these young ladies will be able to use out in the real world.

If we believe that coaching is more than the X’s and O’s, the wins and losses…then we’ve got to be intentional about creating a respectful environment that is conducive to leadership.