(Photo by pedrosimoes7)

This is a continuation of the Credibility in Coaching post, based on the same lecture and influences.

1. Don’t make stupid mistakes on purpose!
   - If it’s about you and not the team, you are making a giant mistake!
   - Don’t undermine the team’s trust! If you tell the team, “If you work hard, we’ll be out by five,” and the team is still working hard at 5:30, why should they trust you again?
2. Don’t make criticism personal.
   Never say, “Are you an idiot?” Talk about criticism in a positive way, explain that it’s there for the team’s improvement. Make sure your players know you’re trying to help them. At least once a week, remind the team that it’s about the we effort.
3. Avoid sarcasm, belittling, and embarrassment.
   Making fun of players, yelling at players in front of the team, the other team, or spectators is extremely belittling and embarrassing.
4. Don’t use profanity – not even for attention.
5. Evaluate yourself.
   - After every session, practice, or class evaluate how you did. What worked and what didn’t? Did you accomplish your goals?
   - At the end of every week, take time to review the whole week as well. Are you on plan? What have you discovered? What do you need to work on?
   - Ask people you trust. Your other coaches can provide valuable, honest feedback. If you ask your athletes, give them with anonymity (ie. suggestion box, survey). You can’t expect them to criticize you openly when you’re in charge.
6. Focus on the solution.
   How are we going to get there? We all know complainers and we know how we feel about them. Don’t be one! We want to know how to fix the problem. Choose a practical, realistic approach and do it!
7. How effective am I in getting coaches to lead?
   Your effectiveness is your credibility. If you back your team 100% they should back you 100%. If they don’t, you have a problem. If you have a credibility problem, you have a lost team. Don’t put your players in that position.
8. Be a transformer.
   You set the environment. The greatest thing about being a coach is you have the power to shape the lives and characters of your personnel and players.
9. Do you create fear or develop confidence?
   - Have you ever had a coach you feared? Did he do a good job? (Prob. not)
   - Do you inspire loyalty and allegiance or create antagonistic behavior?
   - Never say, “We have to man up.” Only idiots who lose focus say things like this. Be honest, say, “We need to work ___.” Noone on your team “has no heart” and everyone “wants to give their best try.”
10. Credibility
    - Don’t lie. Don’t turn away. Address the issue. You don’t have to seek out a confrontation, but be honest and stand up for what’s right.
    - Stay human. Stay consistent. Understand integrity. People have to believe in you. Back up who you are. If you don’t have integrity, you are not a leader, you are not a coach, and you cannot teach effectively. Sell who you are. Prove what you say. Build trust. Earn trust.
11. Cohesive Leadership
    We may not like our players every day, but we will show our players that we love them every day.
    “Even if I ride a player and she has a tough day, I make sure at the end of the day, she knows that I care about her. Coaching may be a business, but it’s not all business.” You never want a player to think, “He hates me,” or, “I hate him.” If it got to this, there’s been a big mistake and it needs to be fixed. It’s not your team. It’s not my team. It’s our team.

This is based on a lecture from Mike Perez’s Intro to Physical Education class. The material is a combination of Mike’s extensive experience as well as notes from a talk by Dr. Gregory Dell, Professor of Sport Psychology and Sport Ethics at Duke University (excellenceinperformance.com). If you’re in the South Bay Area, I highly recommend taking Mike’s course (PE.30) at West Valley College.

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(Photo by apesara)

Credibility in Coaching

1. Coaches need to understand players first as people and second as athletes.
2. Quality of Effort: The process is more important than the product. Aim to develop your players and help them do their best. The focus should be on effort and improvement rather than on the scorecard. Even from the competitive standpoint, building hardworking, self-improving attitudes is the best way to achieve results.
3. Good coaches improve all their players: Make it a we project. A good coach makes the least talented player feel as important as the most. Players who didn’t make the winning shot or didn’t even play in the game still helped the team during practice. That contribution should be recognized, thanked, and appreciated. This way each team members understands his or her responsibility and the entire team develops and grows stronger.
4. Communication: Take the time to be a good listener. Keep reiterating to players, “Let me know if you need to talk. We can sit down and have a word together.”
5. Be a consistent coach: The same rules apply to all people. People are different and have different needs and learning styles, so you can’t treat everyone exactly the same way. But when it comes to goals and punishments, you must be consistent. Ask your team to help you with this: have them hold you accountable and call you out when you aren’t consistent.
6. Be yourself… unless you’re a jerk… If you’re a jerk, change!
7. While 75-80 percent of success is in recruiting, once you get your athletes, don’t let the nuts and bolts make you lose track of the cultural chemistry. A group of top players can lose half their games if the right chemistry isn’t there. “My most talented team stunk: four Draft Picks, four 90+mph pitchers, seven Division 1 Players, and we lost half our games. Too many I’s and not enough we’s. You need the right chemistry.” Make sure each team member understands his or her responsibility and that it’s a team effort.
8. Once (or more) per month, have a topic for motivation: It could be a talk from you, a guest speaker, or fun off the wall activities. A cooler with some treats or a bowling night. (Note to coaches: If you give the talk, keep it under a few minutes, especially after a game! You’ve been there yourself. Don’t torture your athletes.)
9. Demonstrate passion about your job. Show you are committed. Show your enthusiasm. “I have the greatest job in the world. I’ve gotten to put on a uniform for 27 years.”
10. Caring: Talk, be consistent, and praise. Take the time to say “thank you” to individuals and to the team as a whole.
11. Confidence building: Be enthusiastic. Have a sense of humor. Be creative. Be passionate. Try hard to bring a joke. Show that you’re human. Laugh with the team and laugh at yourself. If you’re one of those serious types, make an extra effort here. Players will appreciate it.

This is based on a lecture from Mike Perez’s Intro to Physical Education Class. The material is a combination of Mike’s extensive experience as well as notes from a talk by Dr. Gregory Dell, Professor of Sport Psychology and Sport Ethics at Duke University (excellenceinperformance.com). If you’re in the South Bay Area and are serious about physical education and development, I highly recommend taking Mike’s course (PE.30) at West Valley College.

Also, feel free to subscribe to receive email or feed updates or follow @livetruly on twitter. ]]> http://www.livetruly.com/credibility-in-coaching/feed/ 0 http://www.livetruly.com/good-business-leadership-flow-and-the-making-of-meaning/ http://www.livetruly.com/good-business-leadership-flow-and-the-making-of-meaning/#comments Tue, 03 Jan 2006 10:33:27 +0000 Boris http://www.livetruly.com/?p=39 I thought Good Business was just another business book. Not that I don’t like business books, but this one is far more. The way the author describes working environments that foster flow and the way he discusses responsibility and purpose. He breaks it down so clearly. I want to go out and get the print version and take notes from it. It’s so clear and so powerful.

What is flow? Flow is when you’re vibing, it’s a period of time when you’re working at your maximum capacity. It’s when time gets distorted and you completely forget about yourself. You have clear goals and you become the task you’re accomplishing. The amount of flow time in one’s life corresponds with a feeling of purpose, happiness, and well-being. The author talks about strategies of bringing flow into the workplace, but also, toward the end of the pack, talks about choosing a life and career or business that’ll foster such time. He covers all sorts of topics like time allocation, family and work, and has so many insightful quotes. This is one of the few books on tape, that I’ll probably listen to twice.

Another really neat part of his work deals with complexity. He combines evolution, physics, biology, religion, and purpose and weaves through metaphoric threads to prove the need for growth in our lives. Building up step by step, he really creates a work of art, a very powerful one. This is definitely no regular business book. This is a book about living a meaningful life.

The most important concept I got from it so far, and there are many to choose from, is that in order to live a meaningful existence one must do something that’s enjoyable and complex enough to challenge, and at the same time it must benefit mankind. It’s that simple (broken down in far better detail in the book): find something challenging that you love and that helps people. If you make a bad choice, get stuck, and start losing energy, try something else. Find what you love, not what you’re not good at and not what’s too easy. Choose a fun challenge that’ll help others and help you.

It’s another Nightingale-Conant Production. For those that don’t know, it seems like almost every book makes the world a better more meaningful place. This book is no exception. From the get-go Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (say that three times fast) made a few remarkable points about happiness. (Not a literal quotation, more an outline of thoughts)

We strive for happiness. It’s above wealth and power, because those are sought after to attain happiness. What are different levels of happiness? How do we attain them? Who is happier?

On a very low level, we need some material things to make us happy. Someone who’s starving, will find happiness in being able to get food. An extremely impoverished family will find happiness in rising to a more stable level of living. However, after a certain bit, materials no longer have a lasting effect. Many people who win the lottery are at first very happy and then they go back down. Many people who become injured or disabled, also show a comeback and bounce back to previous levels of happiness. How does this work?

Again, at the lowest level, we have basic necessities. Having enough to live comfortably. After this level people go for status or love to support them. Marriage and family, status symbols, cars, job titles, specific careers. These are steps toward getting self-esteem. Upon gaining this self-esteem, people may still be unhappy. In order to attain the highest level of happiness people must truly live out their life to its full capacity, meaning making use of their talents and abilities for a purpose greater then the self.

True happiness comes from knowing that one is living at 100% of one’s potential–from doing something that’ll improve other people’s lives and enjoying what you do.

This should be the basis for any business. Any company and every product must aim to raise its customers’ happiness. Some products offer only temporary improvements at high costs, while others offer hopes of happiness with little chance of success. Some try and fail to deliver, those are forgivable, while others lie from the start, those are not good businesses. A good business, that will bring true happiness to its owner is one that will bring happiness to its customers and to its employees. The perfect role is one which is complex enough to make you work hard and keep your interest, and at the same time it should energize you and make you feel like you’re living a fun and meaningful existence.

The purpose of one’s life should be to do something that raises the happiness of others and at the same time lets you enjoy doing it.

Few people have broken it down as well as Mihaly did within the first few minutes of his Good Business. Many have hinted at it, but he hit the spot. Can’t wait to share more.

The chapter on leadership rocks. Looking at good leaders, it’s as if they’re following the qualities listed word for word. I love how he broke it down and the whole part about finding what people are good at and helping them improve on that, instead of telling people to work on things they’re not good at. In many situations just by changing the approach a person can accomplish the same thing through empowerment. I also love the debreifing section. How it breaks down everything and maximizes learning from every situation.

The code of honor is interesting, very similar to part of the message in Hill’s book. Looking at my friends and groups and companies, I see the code stuff is true. The only danger is when this code gets used against the employees or “friends”, when even achieving the goal offers nothing to most of the team and most of the individuals. I guess that’s the biggest thing to think about when joining a company or group, “Do I agree with the goals and with the code?” On the other hand, such a code for a group of friends trying to help each other succeed, a marriage, any kind of mutually beneficial team, as well as for every individual makes a whole lot of sense. Looking at real friendships, good marriages, and successful companies, if they didn’t follow such a code, they couldn’t perform at such a level.

I think keeping both sides in mind gives a really good picture of the dynamics in many relationships and helps one evaluate whether the relationship is a waste or worthwhile one (one that improves the community, the team, and you as person). It also gives a special sense of clarity to working under pressure. I think this is great book, but when reading it one should keep some of the previously mentioned questions in mind as well. I can’t wait to read SalesDogs.