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.

“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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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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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.

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

“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!

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.

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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.”
5. 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.

Goals are usually things we talk about in relation to our players, but they’re also powerful for our own careers.  As usual, the wonderful Harvard Business Review has a great article on their blog, this one’s called Nine Things Successful People Do Differently.  That piqued my interest because I sure would like to be successful!

7 things we can do to make sure we accomplish our goals

1. Seize the moment to act on your goals.  Let’s say your goal is to workout everyday of a particular month.  It’s a personal challenge that you’ve set up for yourself, because you understand that working out is good for you…it’s just that time always gets away from you.  If you’re going to complete your challenge, you can’t sleep in everyday and go home to watch television every night.  Carpe diem and get it in!
2. Know exactly how far you have to go.  Here’s another scenario: you’ve got a player who you think should be an all-conference player.  She’s not there yet, in fact, she’s totally under the radar with the other coaches in your conference.  Figure out what your player needs in order to be the best in your conference…and then convince her to put the work in.  Understanding where she is and where she needs to go will be a great life lesson for her!
3. Be a realistic optimist.  Wanting something isn’t enough.  Wanting to be successful isn’t enough.  Having positive self-talk isn’t enough.  Those are all good things, but they won’t make things happen.  While we want to stay focused on our goal and believe that we will accomplish it…successful coaches always assess where they are in terms of being able to check that goal off of the list.
4. Focus on getting better, rather than being good.  A lot of times, people ask me how I have time to write this blog.  I always say the same thing: I’m trying to get better.  Writing this blog and speaking at different places forces me to learn more about working with people, different coaching techniques, and how to communicate effectively…all things that I believe will make me a better coach.
5. Have grit.  According to the article, “grit is a willingness to commit to long-term goals”.  Even when we’ve totally crashed and burned.  Even when it looks like success isn’t in the cards.  Toddlers are gritty when they’re learning to walk.  They don’t fall down once and say, “oh well, guess I’ll just crawl everywhere.”  Nope.  They get up…again and again until they master walking.
6. Build your willpower muscle.  Willpower is something we can practice, it isn’t just something we have.  Going back to our first example of the month-long challenge to workout every day for a month, that is a good test of our willpower.  You’ll probably feel great the first week or two, maybe even a little proud of yourself.  But those last couple of weeks might be a grind where you’re dragging yourself to the gym.  That’s building willpower.
7. Focus on what you will do, not what you won’t do.  We’ve all heard people say that if you tell someone, “don’t think about a pink elephant in a tutu”, then the first thing that’s going to pop into their mind is a pink elephant in a tutu.  It’s the same thing with us.  If we say, “whatever you do, don’t yell at that player”, it’s going to be all you can think about.  You may not yell, but you won’t be focused on the task at hand.  Instead, let’s say what we will do.

These seven steps may take a bit of time to accomplish, but we’ve got time and we’ve got the drive to put the work in.  If our goals are important enough, we’ll do what it takes to accomplish them.

“Who is on the team matters more than what the team does.”
– One bad apple DOES spoil the whole barrel

I’ve coached her, and I’m sure you have too.

The player who instantaneously sucks the fun/joy/life out of your team by her mere presence.

Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what she’s doing, you just know that something isn’t right.  So when I saw Leadership Freak’s article (linked above), I knew I’d bring it on over here.  I’ve been pretty lucky in my coaching career to have lots of hard-working young ladies on my teams… but I’ve coached a few bad apples in my day.

The power one person can hold on a team is never more apparent than when they are a negative influence on everyone around them.

Watch out!  These three players can destroy your team’s chemistry

Dominant.  I’m not talking about the dominant person who everyone is drawn to on your team…the person that rallies the troops at water breaks.  I’m talking about the dominant player who thinks she’s the boss of the team.  She doesn’t ask their opinion and when they do give it, she shoots them down with the precision of a mercenary.  The unfortunate outcome of having this type of dominant person on your team is that the rest of the team will stop trying to communicate with the dominant teammate (what’s the use?) and with you (they think you condone the behavior)…leaving you to wonder why your team is in a tailspin.

Disagreeable.  This is the toughest one for me, because it’s the epitome of selfishness.  The disagreeable player comes into practice all mopey and won’t talk to anyone.  When someone asks them what’s wrong, they mumble “nothing” and continue to grump around the gym.  Eventually, the disagreeable player’s teammates stop asking her what’s wrong and start to tip toe around her for fear of getting sucked into the abyss of her grumpiness.  Sometimes she’s not just grumpy, but downright mean.  Regardless of its expression, the disagreeable player upsets any opportunity of comfort and cohesiveness your team has until it’s addressed.

Irresponsible.  This player is never prepared.  You gave your team a summer workout with the promise of testing when everyone returns…the irresponsible player didn’t have time for the workout.  You’re working on installing a new offense and you want everyone to study what you’ve been working on…the irresponsible player didn’t look over your new offensive scheme.  Unfortunately she’s a key player for you, so the next practice is a bust because she didn’t take the time to learn her responsibilities.  Your athletic director needs to meet with all of the fall sport athletes…I’m sure you can guess who doesn’t make the meeting with the AD.

How to handle these team chemistry killers

• Talk to them and let them know what our issue is with their behavior.
• If it continues, talk to our captains and have them talk to her.
• If it still continues, talk to her again and ask her if she understands the behaviors we find distasteful.
• If she continues with the poor behavior, we’ve got a few options: bench her, keep doing the talking routine, if she’s a captain…take that title away.
• Whatever we choose to do, it’s imperative that she know what behaviors we would like her to display.  We can’t just say, “don’t do this”…we’ve got to say, “instead, do this.”

Good luck!  I know it’s no fun to have one of these players on our teams.  We have to believe that we’re doing our jobs as their coach by trying to teach them the lessons of proper behavior in a group.  No matter how painful it is to teach that lesson!

Sometimes it feels as if academics and athletics are at odds with one another.  The coach gets upset when the teacher keeps a student late and they’re late for practice and the teacher gets upset with the coach because the student-athletes have to leave early…again.

But really, we’re part of the same coin…one is heads and the other is tails.

A great article from the NY Times called, What If the Secret to Success is Failure?, explores how schools should measure success.  Is it only from standardized tests and aptitude?  Or are there qualities that we want each student to leave the institution armed with?

Whenever I give a talk, regardless of topic, I always end with a long list of things that athletics gives to its participants.  These are the things, in my opinion, that will make our athletes successful human beings after they’re playing days are over.  This, also in my opinion, is why athletics is a perfect complement to academics.

7 qualities our teams need in order to be successful…now and in the future

Zest  Playing a sport with great energy and enthusiasm should be the price of admission for getting on the court or field.  If you don’t love it, why do you do it?  Enthusiasm is contagious and players owe it to their teammates to always bring energy to the group.

Grit   A powerful combination of perseverance toward and passion for a goal, grit is a requirement for everyone on a team.  A player with grit is focused, has faith, and works tirelessly toward a future reward.  They get after it in practice because they know it makes them better.  They motivate their teammates because they know they can’t do it alone.  And they always believe because the alternative in unacceptable.

Self-control  A player without self-control gets emotional and cries at practice, while a player who has self-control understands crying is selfish and takes away from the team.  A player without self-control complains and grumbles to their teammates about playing time, but the player with self-control believes that the coach has the best interests of the team at heart.  Self-control puts others first.

Social intelligence  According to Sean Foleno, social intelligence is a person’s competence to comprehend her environment optimally and react appropriately for socially successful conduct.  Little kids don’t have this and that’s why they end up embarrassing their parents by pointing at strangers and asking inappropriate questions.  But our teams need it.  If we are creating pseudo-families, then we’ve got to be empathetic to those around us.  The day a guy breaks up with his girlfriend isn’t the time for his teammate to ask if he can go out with her.  You get the idea.

Gratitude  I’ve heard many coaches lament the lack of thankfulness and gratitude their teams display…as if playing a sport is some kind of God-given right.  “Playing sports is a privilege”, they say, “be thankful that you have this amazing opportunity.”  Their message to their athletes:  Be grateful for the hard work, one day you’re going to miss it.  Be grateful for your teammates, one day you’ll wish for a group that accepts you the way you are.  Be grateful to play, one day your body won’t let you.

Optimism  It’s not just happiness with life, but an expectation of happiness.  If our athletes walk into practice each day with an optimistic attitude about that day, practice will go much better.  If our athletes enter each competition with an expectation of success, I believe it’d go better for them.  Everything is better with optimism…have your team try it out!

Curiosity  These are the players who want to learn more about the sport.  Their eyes don’t glaze over when you talk about some of the greats of your sport who aren’t around anymore, but were pioneers.  When you want to put a new wrinkle in your offense, these players get all excited because it’s something new.  They’re the athletes who sit next to you while you’re scouting an opponent so that they can learn.

If our athletes graduate with a diploma in hand and armed with these qualities, I’d consider it a job well done!