source

When I first started coaching, I would go and chat with one of the veteran coaches in the office…just to soak up whatever knowledge he was willing to share with me.  He’d been coaching for over thirty years and I was in year two.  Quite honestly, I wondered how he stayed so fired up about the profession.  But he was…there was a glint in his eye that I’m sure hadn’t lost its luster in the entire thirty years he’d been on the sideline.

Of course, whenever I asked that very question, he would brush me off with a (not altogether untrue) joke.  “If you’re not scared to death of losing”, he’d say with a smirk, “then you’re in the wrong profession.”

While I’m sure some measure of his motivation came from fear of failure, I’d guess the bulk of it came from tried and true ways to stay motivated.  Inc.com had a great article about this, 14 Easy Ways to Get Insanely Motivated, it’s a quick read…check it out.

14 ways to stay motivated

Condition your mind.  Staying positive is huge.  We’ve got plenty of opponents who are trying to defeat us…let’s not defeat ourselves too!

Condition your body.  Staying healthy, eating right, working out…those are hard to do when we’re in season.  But we’ve got to try our best to take care of ourselves so that we can be available and energetic for our teams.

Avoid negative people.  If our heart sinks a little when we see someone coming, perhaps they’re negative.  Or if during lunch, we spend the entire time trying to pick someone else up (and they’re still grumpy), we might have to cut our losses and limit our time with those Negative Nellies.

Seek out the similarly motivated.  These are the people we can bounce ideas off of and they keep us fired up about what we do.

Have plans, but remain flexible.  We may think we know how we’re going to accomplish our goals, but staying flexible will keep us from getting down when things don’t work out how we thought they would.

Act with a higher purpose.  What’s your coaching philosophy?  If we do things that go against our philosophy, it will be pretty hard to be motivated.

Take responsibility for your own results.  How can we stay motivated if our success (or failure) is outside of our control?  When things are within our control, we feel that we have power over the situation.  And when we feel we have power, we can stay motivated.

Stretch past your limits on a daily basis.  For me, it’s been committing to reading and writing about my profession every day.  What will it be for you?

Don’t wait for perfection, do it now!  Perfection is unattainable, so if that’s what we’re waiting for…we’re going to be waiting for a long time.

Celebrate your failures.  When we see failure as a necessary step to success, we’re more willing to own our failures…and hopefully learn from them.

Don’t take success too seriously.  Sport is fickle.  We can beat the best team in conference one night and be feeling on top of the world…only to lose to a bottom dweller the next time out.

Avoid weak goals.  Weak goals start with “I’ll try to” or “I hope to”.  Strong goals begin with “I will”.  They are specific and have a deadline to them.

Treat inaction as the only real failure.  My motto: less talk, more do.

Think before you speak.  Don’t become the Negative Nelson that everyone else is avoiding in the office.  Stay positive, stay upbeat, stay motivated.

Not many professions have to live out their successes and failures in the public eye like athletics, which can make it hard to stay motivated sometimes.  Use these tips to get and stay motivated to guide your team to success.

source

As coaches, we’ve got to see ourselves as mini-CEO’s.  I’m the CEO of volleyball here at my college, we’ve also got a CEO of baseball, and a CEO of swimming…you get the idea.  So when I saw this article (Maxims for PR Success) over at The Chronicle of Higher Education, I knew it’d be a benefit to us.

1.       Do what you say you’re going to do. Being reliable is underrated.  In my book, being a woman of my word is the highest priority.  Whether it’s getting paperwork in to the administrative staff, meeting with ladies from my team, or in communications with recruits…underpromise and overdeliver.

2.       Meet often with your supervisor. Maybe not “often”, but enough that they know what your vision is for your team and what your expectations are for the future.  Remember, part of their job is to have answers when benefactors have money burning a hole in their pockets…be at the front of your boss’s brain when that time comes.

3.       Be on time. Yes, your boss knows that you’re working on your practice plans during department meetings…but it’s another thing altogether if you’ve got a one-on-one meeting with them and you’re late.  We’re all busy, we’ve all got important things on our plates…but being late implies that your stuff is more important than their stuff.  Not cool, dude.

4.       Tell the truth. People will hold you to your words…so choose them carefully and stick to them.  This is at the heart of coaching with integrity.

5.       Circulate. Coaching is a time consuming endeavor, to be sure.  But there are other folks on campus who help keep it running…how about meeting some of those folks?  Not just the professors (though that’s important), but the student affairs staff, other co-curricular leaders (music, art, dance), or even the staff that keeps all of our campus space neat and tidy.

6.       Think on your feet. Spot problems before they happen, notice the generous donor in the stands and go chat with them, be ready when you’ve got someone’s ear who can help out your program.  There’s something to be said for being prepared to react quickly.

7.       Keep your ego in check. We love what we do and we think that we’re good at it…but we can’t do anything without the athletes, right?  It truly takes a village for our seasons to come to fruition.  From the higher ups who approve our schedules and budgets to the office staff who submit our paperwork to the appropriate folks, our programs are the products of a group effort.

8.       Improve your coaching. I started this off saying that we’re all CEO’s of our sport…our “brand” as people are saying these days.  Whether you plan to stay at your institution forever or you’re setting yourself up for the next big move…being the best you can be only benefits you.  There are no downsides to getting better.

9.       Embrace your institution, warts and all. The article says it better than I could:  “It’s not that you have to love everything about your college, or ignore its flaws. It is not believable to others, much less yourself, to pretend that your institution doesn’t need to improve in some areas. But if those flaws mean that you can’t wholeheartedly support your college’s mission, you will be doing both it and yourself a favor by moving on. When you find yourself becoming cynical or see your work as just another job, it is only a matter of time before your effectiveness begins to wane.”

10.   Stay current. Take advantage of professional development opportunities that are out there…whether it’s a convention, seminar, or even a free webinar.  Even if your department has cut its budget, there are plenty of cheap or free ways to learn.  Email or call another coach and chat about what’s new and exciting in your sport.  Sit in on a business class on campus.  There are many ways that you can proudly be a coaching nerd.

I’ve heard integrity described as “who we are when no one is looking”…but I also think it’s who we are when all eyes are on us.

source

“The road to achievement takes time, a long time, but you do not give up.  You may have setbacks.  You may have to start over.  You may have to change your method.  You may have to go around, or over, or under.  You may have to back up and get another start.  But you do not quit.  You stay the course.  To do that, you must have intentness.”—John Wooden

John Wooden is the man.  There’s really no other way to see it.  I thumb through his book, Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court, at least once a week.  In the section he devotes to intentness, he uses different words as synonyms to describe what intentness means to him.  So I’ve decided to look those words up in order to shed more light on exactly what intentness should mean to us with our teams.  It turns out that it’s not just one thing, but a combination of five wonderful traits that all of us would love to see in our players.

5 characteristics of teams that are intent on success

Determination: When I looked this word up, the definition that stood out to me was “firmness of purpose”.  I often remind my team that they’ve got to be sure of their goals, because achieving them will be hard.  If they’re not sure…it may just be too hard.  Building our team goals on a firm foundation of belief will help our teams to be determined.

Persistence: “Constantly repeating” is what the dictionary had to say about this one.  As a coach, I love that definition, because that’s another way of saying “practice”!  If our teams are persistent in their approach to practices (and corrections within practice), then success is sure to follow.

Tenacity: Love this one too!  “Holding together, cohesive, tough.”  Like I talked about with determination, sometimes the road to success is very hard.  Weak teams fall apart…they start fighting amongst each other or forming cliques within the team.  But strong teams?  The hard times bring them together and make them a more cohesive unit.

Perseverance: “Steady persistence in a course of action, especially in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement.”  Can you imagine a season without difficulties?  Have you had one without obstacles?  Surely there have been points during the season when your team is discouraged.  In spite of it all, we press on…never losing hope that we’ll be successful in the end!

Patience: This one is a toughie for anyone…who really wants to be patient?  Most of us would rather be successful now rather than later, but that’s not the way it typically works.  Generally you plug away, always doing things the right way, until your team (eventually) finds success.  The definition:  “the capacity for calmly enduring pain or trying situations.”

If we nurture these characteristics in our teams, I believe that we’ll be on our way to building successful teams, seasons, and players.

You can check out more of my writing at www.coachdawnwrites.com.  You can follow me on Twitter @CoachDawnWrites and Facebook so that we can connect and talk coaching.

source

“If you’re afraid of failure, you will never do the things you are capable of doing.”—John Wooden

I sometimes wonder if we’re creating a generation of young people who have never had to deal with failure.  They play age group sports where the score isn’t kept, or if it is, they all get participation trophies or ribbons.  As a consequence, they don’t have to capability to navigate the emotions that failure brings, they don’t have the self-awareness that failure brings, and they most certainly don’t get the correction that failure brings.  As you can imagine, I believe that sport is a great teacher of all of those lessons and more.  In order to reach the pinnacle of the Pyramid (competitive greatness), a measure of initiative will be required…check out these three reasons why!

3 ways that having initiative will make your athletes courageous

They will have the courage to make decisions.
You’ve seen it.  I’ve seen it.  We’ve all seen it.  The athlete that looks at the bench constantly to check in with the coach.  They do something awesome…they check with coach.  They do something awful…they check with coach.  They are so unsure on their own two feet that they need constant reinforcement.  Not only is that player probably annoying to their coach, they’re suffering from a severe case of fear.  That player is afraid their coach isn’t happy with their performance.  With some time in the gym and some leeway to stretch their wings, that player can learn the type of initiative that’s necessary to make game time decisions that they’ll know their coach will be proud of…without checking the bench every two seconds!

They will have the courage to take action.
Say you’ve got captains.  And say they see some of their teammates doing things off of the court that are detrimental to their on-the-court performance.  It doesn’t even have to be something clearly wrong (and illegal) like underage drinking or doing drugs.  What will your captains do when they see their teammates lying to you about doing their weight room workouts?  Or when they hear that their teammates are playing another sport during the season and risking injury?  Well, if you’ve trained them well, they will take action.  They will talk to their teammate and hopefully squash it before you even know about the problem.

They will have the courage to push their limits.
What if I fail?  That’s a question that all of us ask ourselves at some point in time.  Folks with initiative push through that uneasy feeling.  Every year during our first practice of the season, I tell my team to let go of any aspirations of perfection.  I tell them that they’re going to make mistakes…sometimes really big ones.  And that sometimes those mistakes will come at crucial times and they’ll be so disappointed with themselves.  Then I reassure them that no one expects anything from them except their personal best…and the only way to get to their personal best is to test themselves.  Then I tell them that “testing yourself” is coach-speak for making mistakes and pushing their limits.  I want my team to have the courage to see just how good they can be…don’t you?

Let’s all agree to teach our teams about the antidote to fear:  initiative.

You can check out more of my writing at www.coachdawnwrites.com.  You can follow me on Twitter @CoachDawnWrites and Facebook so that we can connect and talk coaching.

source

“As you strive to reach your personal best, alertness will make the task much easier.”—John Wooden

I’ve written before about using the Pyramid as a team building exercise with my team.  Without fail, alertness is a tough one for whomever is lucky enough to pick this particular block.  If you do an internet search on alertness, you’ll find lots of information about caffeinated products designed to keep people awake.  The alertness Wooden is talking about is deeper than that though.  I went to the always reliable Wikipedia to find out what they had to say about alertness. Using their page as a starting point, let’s talk about three ways we can help our teams use alertness to become more successful.

3 attributes of alert athletes

1.      Pay close and continuous attention. My high school volleyball coach talked about being alert so much so that our team started calling ourselves “lerts”.  We didn’t appreciate him enough at the time, because he was a wise man.  Imagine if our teams were consistently alert in practice!  Our athletes would learn from the coaching staff by listening and they’d learn from each other by watching.

2.      Be watchful and prompt to meet an emergency.  This one builds upon the first.  If our athletes have paid close and continuous attention, then they’ll be able to respond to an emergency.  You’re probably wondering what kind of an emergency our athletes will encounter on our courts and fields.  To me, the 6’2” girl across the net who can touch 10’2” constitutes an emergency!  Hopefully our athletes have learned to recognize tendencies and weaknesses in their opponents so that they can properly respond to whatever emergency presents itself in competition.

3.      Quick to perceive and act. This one is more of an intangible.  Don’t we want all of our athletes to be self-aware?  A big part of alertness is knowing their place on the team…and being happy with it.  The young lady whose skills aren’t up to par quite yet should be content with preparing the starters for competition.  That’s being alert to your position and role on the team.  Or how about when your team captain notices that one of her teammates has been down in the dumps lately, so she pays extra attention to her.  That’s being alert to your teammates’ disposition and how it could affect the group.

Can you think of other ways that alertness can be applied to our athletes?

You can check out more of my writing at www.coachdawnwrites.com.  You can follow me on Twitter @CoachDawnWrites and Facebook so that we can connect and talk coaching.

source

 John Wooden is a coaching rock star and legend.   So I thought, what better gift to give my readers during summer break than a series on Wooden’s Pyramid of Success?  Join me for a series of posts that will delve into both the foundation and apex of his Pyramid and examine Wooden’s thoughts on Industriousness, Enthusiasm, Friendship, Loyalty, Cooperation, Competitive Greatness, and finally, Faith & Patience.

Cooperation

Most of us coaches would love to think that we are the magician’s behind the curtains of our teams…willing them to excel and exceed expectations.  But when we wake up from dreamland, we realize that we are beholden to so many groups of people that when you sit down and really think about it…success is a truly wonderful thing, a group effort, and something to be celebrated.  Now, let’s look at the:

The 6 essential pieces of cooperation

1.       Administration:  So coach, you’ve landed that sweet interview at the school of your dreams and they ask the Interview Hall Of Fame question: do you have any questions?  Well, as a matter of fact you do!  Your knowledge of your sport is only going to get you so far.  You’ll also need to know how many assistant coaches your program will be funded for, what shape your equipment is in…and if you’ve got the budget to upgrade as necessary, what the facilities (locker rooms, gyms, weight room, etc.) are like, how the travel schedule is put together and what the mode of transportation is normally.

2.       Support staff: If you think you can really succeed without the training room staff keeping your athletes in one piece, the sports information director getting the word out about how awesome your team is, and the strength and conditioning staff…well, strengthening and conditioning your team, you are living in la-la land.  Not to mention the office workers who make copies, mail letters, and make sure your credit card bill is paid on time.  They are crucial to what we do!

3.       Parents: No matter the level (youth through the collegiate ranks), parents will play a major role in our sports programs.  Whether they’re supplying orange slices, baking cookies, or making a holiday dinner for a college team that’s on the road and can’t make it home…they’re important and you’d be well served to embrace your team parents.  Additionally, building a good relationship with your parents will help when one of your players makes the inevitable grumpy call home.  The parents who feel involved and believe in you and your program will nip that in the bud.

4.       Fans: There’s no such thing as a home court advantage without them!  The ones that come to your games in body paint, or do pushups for how many points you have, or who travel all over the place just to watch you play.  Those folks are awesome and it’d probably be a good idea for your program to figure out a way to celebrate the die-hards who are always there for you.

5.       Athletes: You can know everything about your sport, but you can’t play.  Your knowledge is useless without your athletes.  They’ve got to buy-in (cooperate) to your offensive and defensive schemes, your ideas on off-season workouts, and ultimately…to you as a coach.  They’ve got to be willing to work hard every day in practice and in even harder in the classroom.  You’ve got to trust them to be good spokespeople for your program and ambassadors for your team.

6.       Coach: I haven’t forgotten about us coaches!  Our job is to be knowledgeable…that’s the way we earn the respect of our teams.  We’ve also got to be caring…once we reach that combination, that’s when our teams start running through walls for us.  We need to be able to make in-game adjustments that put our team at an advantage.  In terms of functioning within a larger group, we have to be able to manage our athletes when they’re out of our sight (in the classroom, at night when they’re out with their friends), so training up quality leaders is huge.  Finally, we’ve got to be our team’s biggest advocates.  Whether we’re fundraising or just getting the word out about good things that are happening within our programs, it’s part of the job of the head coach to get out front on these things.

As Wooden says, “in order to reach the full potential of the group, there must be cooperation at all levels.”  Hopefully you were thinking about some of the folks who help you and your team out and will thank them for their cooperation.  Next up:  competitive greatness.

You can check out more of my writing at www.coachdawnwrites.com.  You can follow me on Twitter @CoachDawnWrites and Facebook so that we can connect and talk coaching.

source

John Wooden is a coaching rock star and legend.   So I thought, what better gift to give my readers during summer break than a series on Wooden’s Pyramid of Success?  Join me for a series of posts that will delve into both the foundation and apex of his Pyramid and examine Wooden’s thoughts on Industriousness, Enthusiasm, Friendship, Loyalty, Cooperation, Competitive Greatness, and finally, Faith & Patience.

Loyalty

According to the incorrect science that is Wikipedia, loyalty is faithfulness or devotion to a person, country, group, or cause.  So in this case, I think they’ve gotten it right.  When building a team, we coaches try to build a group of players who have a belief in what they don’t see…or faith as some would call it.  Faith that their hard work will pay off in the end.  Faith that all of those sprints and drills and hard practices will end with a successful season.  And without tangible evidence of that payoff, the only thing that they can hold onto is the loyalty they have to their teammates and their program…in other words, they play for each other.  Let’s look at some of the ways that loyalty will increase your team’s chances of success.

Player to player “Loyalty is a cohesive force that forges individuals into a team.” Quite simply, there can’t be a connection that’s higher than your players with one another.  Their love and loyalty toward their teammates will take them to higher and higher heights.  Loyalty will make them play defense harder, hit with more force, and serve with more accuracy because they feel like they’re part of a bigger unit.

Coach to player “Respect helps produce loyalty.” Yep, I wrote that correctly.  Coach to player respect…that’ll produce loyalty for sure.  Your players need to know that you respect their effort, their desire to be successful, and their ability to process the complexities of your sport.  Once they feel that care and respect, the loyalty they’ll feel toward you , as their coach, will be tangible.

Player to coach “Loyalty is a powerful force in producing one’s individual best and even more so in producing a team’s best.” If your team is loyal to you (after you’ve done the stuff from the point above), your collective unit can be better than it should be and go farther than others thought you could.  Why?  Because each person will work their individual hardest and that will only benefit the entire team in the long run.  They’ll go hard for you and just as important, the older players will squash any unhappy grumblings from non-starters or newbies.

All to program “How can you work to the best of your ability unless you have someone or something to whom you are loyal?” We’ve got to create a team chemistry that’s strong enough that there’s a sense of history and a sense of pride in our programs.  Your players should feel compelled to leave their mark in some positive manner through their loyalty to the continual development and betterment of your program.

It takes time and effort, but it’s worth it.  Cultivate loyalty within your teams and watch the fruits of your labor result in successful seasons.  Next up:  cooperation.

You can check out more of my writing at www.coachdawnwrites.com.  You can follow me on Twitter @CoachDawnWrites and Facebook so that we can connect and talk coaching.