This article is provided by Coaches Network

By Dr. David Hoch, CMAA, CIC

To make an athletic team the best it can be, there needs to be synergy between the head and assistant coaches. In many cases, a school’s athletic director is the decision-maker on hiring assistant coaches. But the head coach should play a vital role in the process.

Here are areas to consider when choosing among candidates:

Try to identify individuals who bring different strengths, backgrounds, or expertise to the program. If you are more of a defensive guru, for example, you may want to add someone with experience on the offensive side. This provides better balance and will ultimately help prepare your athletes.

On a similar note, look for someone who can provide needed qualities to the overall effort. If you are loud and demonstrative, for example, it might be good to have an individual who is more subdued and will be a calming presence for the athletes. Or, if you lack organizational skills, it would be good to have an assistant who has no problem submitting eligibility forms and completing end-of-season reports.

Determine if potential assistants will be loyal and fit into your coaching philosophy. While it is good to get new ideas and input from your coaching staff, once a decision has been reached, a unified front has to be maintained with athletes and in public.

Put at the top of your list those individuals who are dependable and committed. It is absolutely essential that assistants will always be on time for practice sessions, staff meetings, and scouting assignments. While an occasional emergency may develop with any person, assistants have to meet their assignments and commitments in order for the team to function successfully.

Definitely look for assistant coaches who believe in and will support the concept of education-based athletics. While striving to win is a vital part of athletics, the growth, development, and welfare of the student-athlete is ultimately much more important. Assistants need to be positive, nurturing, and supportive.

Bring aboard only those individuals who can serve as role models to students. All coaches need to exhibit sportsmanship and serve as positive examples.

Whatever the hiring process is at your school, make sure you have input into the final decision. Determine all candidates’ strengths and weaknesses and think about how each might potentially fit on your staff and within the school community. Also, don’t forget to check with former head coaches, supervisors, and colleagues of these individuals in order to gain additional information and perspectives.

This article first appeared on The Coaches Network. (Reposted with Permission)

Core values are the foundation of what you do and why you do it. They are anchoring principles that ground you to what’s really important and guide you toward success. They are what you stand for no matter what your circumstances may be or what your win/loss record is. Core values serve as a guide because they are non-negotiable. They serve as the essence of what your program stands for and they are expected to be shared by everyone. Core values are central to your program and the decisions leaders make should revolve around them.

Every good coach and leader understands the importance of core values as a guide through the ups and downs of sport, and more importantly, developing character in young men and women. Yet, despite the critical importance of core values, many athletic programs have core values that are not clearly defined, left unstated, too flexible, and in some cases, there are no core values at all. Sadly, too many athletic programs have core values that are only an afterthought. They are not discussed and implemented, and coaches falsely assume their athletes will just pick up on these values and apply them. Without a clearly defined set of core values, many teams struggle to handle the difficulties of sport because their values change based on what’s convenient in the moment rather than a stable bedrock of guiding principles. As a result, leadership is often inconsistent, there is little accountability between teammates, and the potential to build character through sport is lost.

As a coach and leader, developing and communicating core values begins and ends with you. However, because core values are central to team success and character development, it is vital to involve your team in determining them, making them visible, emphasizing them, and using them as a guide for your program’s daily decisions and actions.

To begin defining your program’s core values, consider the following categories of core values. Have a meeting with your team and staff. Ask yourself and your team: What do we value about …

Being People of Strong Character
Effort and Commitment
Having a Positive and Productive Attitude
Being a Good Teammate
Competing Relentlessly.

As you discuss and work through defining your core values, give your team a chance to share or write down their responses to the previous question(s) and write them out on a white board, chalk board, or poster board. Once the responses are written down, place them into three categories:

Stay: The majority of the group agrees the value is important and will be a core value.

Example: “RESPONSIBILITY: We will be responsible for our actions. No excuses!”

Combine: Two or more values that are similar can be merged into one, overarching value.

Example: Poise and maturity can be combined into “COMPOSURE: We will control our emotions and decisions on and off the field.”

Cut: The majority of the team agrees that the idea does not have enough relevance or support to be a core value.

Once your team has developed five to 10 core values it’s time to put them into action. Here are a few ways to make your team’s core values part of its daily commitment to progress and success.

1. Post your core values in your locker room.

Create a constant reminder of your core values by posting them in the locker room, weight room, and your coaches’ offices. This doesn’t have to be anything fancy, only consistently visible.

2. Have every member of your team and staff memorize your core values.

To help embed core values, have your team members and staff memorize the core values. Be sure everyone in the program can recite the core values at a moment’s notice.

3. Emphasize one of your core values with each week.

Make a full week all about one of your core values. Before the first practice of the week, discuss the core value that will be emphasized that week and why it’s important. After each practice that week, recognize those that committed to and best exhibited that core value.

4. Recognize your core values when you see them on and off the field.

Call out your team members and staff when they exemplify the team’s core values. Catch them “doing good” and use them as an example for the entire team. Don’t be afraid to stop practice for a minute to point out how hard someone is working or when someone is being a great teammate.

5. Incorporate your core values in your highlight videos.

Be sure to include core values in your highlight and video sessions. This is a great way to show what your core values look like and to recognize those committed to them. It’s also a great way to show why core values are important even if the result of a play or a game isn’t what you want. These highlights are about doing it right.

It will be easy to stick to your core values when everything is going well. It’s easy to preach core values when your team is winning, everyone is healthy, and team chemistry is good. Sticking to core values becomes more difficult when you’re on a losing streak, you’re faced with setbacks, and your athletes may not be doing the right things on and off the field. As previously mentioned, core values begin and end with you. When you bend and break your core values, you run the risk of losing respect and trust with your team and you send the message that short-cuts are okay. Stick to your core values. They are an invaluable resource to build more mentally tough athletes and develop character in those around you.

Raymond Prior is one of the country’s top peak performance professionals, and has nearly a decade of experience educating athletes and coaches about building mental toughness. Prior works with athletes, teams, and coaches at professional, Olympic, NCAA, amateur, and youth sport levels. His clients include professional athletes, Olympic Gold Medalists, individual and team National Champions, National Coach of the Year Award winners, individual and team Conference Champions, and more than 100 NCAA All-Americans in a variety of sports. For more information on Raymond’s consulting, visit www.rfpsport.com, or contact him by email ([email protected]) or phone (505-235-4486).

by Stephanie Zonars, LifeBeyondSport

At the What Drives Winning Conference, Florida softball coach, Tim Walton, referenced a TED Talk by business leader, Margaret Heffernan.

In it, she cites research by evolutionary biologist who studied productivity using chickens. William Muir devised an experiment to find out what would make chickens produce more eggs.

Chickens live in groups, so he selected an average group and left it alone for six generations.

Then he created a group from chickens that were individually the most productive— “super chickens.” With this group he selected only the most productive from each generation for breeding.

His findings?

After six generations group 1 was doing fine. Healthy chickens and increased egg production.

After the same time span, only 3 chickens in group 2 were still alive—they had pecked the rest to death.

The highly productive chickens in group 2 only achieved their success by suppressing the productivity of the rest.

Heffernan’s contention is that we tend to run organizations, teams and even countries using the “super chicken” model—one in which success is achieved by choosing superstars and by giving the most talented or brightest individuals all the resources and power.

And the result is the same as with the chickens—aggression and dysfunction and ultimately inhibited team productivity.

You’ve seen this with sports teams built on the uber-talent of a few athletes.

There’s nothing wrong with having elite athletes on your team. But if you don’t find a way to create strong cohesion between ALL team members, you diminish the team’s ability to reach its full potential.

What can help you develop that kind of team cohesion?

Heffernan shares another study done by MIT researchers in which groups of volunteers were given tough problems to solve.

They found that the most successful groups were not those with 1-2 members with exceptionally high IQs, nor the groups with the highest aggregate IQ.

The highest performing teams had three commonalities:

1       they showed high social sensitivity (empathy) to one another

2      they gave relatively equal time to each other (no one dominated the group and no one passively rode along—all participated)

3      they had more women on them 🙂

The researchers learned that social connectedness separated the best performing teams from the rest. [Tweet That!]

Heffernan teaches that social connectedness naturally results from a culture of helpfulness where individuals understand that they don’t need to know or be everything, because they are around people who are good at giving and receiving help.

It’s an environment where, when things get tough, individuals have social support and know who to ask for help.

But a culture of helpfulness won’t happen unless people get to know one another.

In other words:

get to know each other → culture of helpfulness → social connectedness

All this together is called social capital.

And social capital—the reliance and interdependence that builds trust—is the key to creating high performing teams.

It requires time to develop social capital. It doesn’t develop with a one-hit-wonder like a retreat or team building workshop at the beginning of the season.

Don’t get me wrong—that helps! It’s just not enough.

One company, for example, synchronized coffee breaks so that employees had time to get to know one another.

The result? Profits increased by $15 million and employee satisfaction saw a 10% rise.

That didn’t happen overnight, but it happened.

The time you invest in creating opportunities for your team members to get to know one another is not a waste. It’s an investment that will reap rewards!

Avoid super chicken syndrome by making time this summer to collect ideas and develop a plan for offering ongoing opportunities for your team members to get to know one another next season.

What motivates people is the bond, loyalty and trust they develop between each other. What matters is the mortar, not just the bricks. —Margaret Heffernan

Margaret Heffernan: Why it’s time to forget the pecking order at work

About Stephanie Zonars

Stephanie Zonars helps coaches build and maintain winning team cultures through her business, Life Beyond Sport. Teams at Penn State, Notre Dame, West Point and over 60 other schools have built stronger trust, communication and teamwork through her workshops. Stephanie spent three years on staff with the Penn State women’s basketball team, assisting the team to back-to-back Big Ten Championships. She’s also the author of three books.