It’s All About Style
Mobilizing Purpose and Possibility with Transformative Leadership

Dr. Cory Dobbs, The Academy for Sport Leadership
Coaching Maxim:  Leadership demands we make decisions that define who we are and how we interact with others.

We often talk about a leader having a “style” of leadership, a distinctive way of thinking, feeling, and acting.  And it is true; coaches do have a style that shapes who they are and what they do.  The relationship between style and leadership is expressed as a systematic process in how a coach gets things done and inspires his or her players to be their very best.

Over the past decade I have watched many coaches in action and have detected a distinct difference between two dominant leadership styles.  There are many ways to describe the leadership habits of coaches, but it appears to me that as leaders most fall into one of two categories—drivers or builders.   Drivers tend to be what leadership experts refer to as transactional leaders while builders fall pretty naturally into the category of transformational leaders. Drivers and builders have two very different leadership mindsets and skill sets.

Drivers are generally after impressive achievements, especially the attainment of fame, status, popularity, or power.  Not that there is anything wrong with that, as Jerry Seinfeld would say.  Drivers view success to be mastery of the technical and tactical aspects of their sport. Builders commit to their calling and enjoy the human development side of coaching.  For them, significance is found in contributing to the lives of their players.  It’s not that they don’t want to win; it’s simply that winning includes building self-confident people who will succeed away from the playing field.

Coaching is a major factor in any team’s success.  Most players recognize this.  They’ve been coached since they were tots playing in youth leagues.  And for the most part they’ve believed in and trusted their coaches to teach them to play the game while instilling life skills and personal values.  However, many adults reveal years later that they learned little from coaches they encountered in their student-athletic experience.  Generally, the coaches that fail to have a long-term impact on student-athletes are transactional leaders.  Many former student-athletes view their experience as being a pawn in the game of student-athletics.

Transformational leaders (builders) do more with and for their student-athletes than transactional leaders (drivers).  These leaders tend to empower student-athletes with challenge and persuasion and actively engage in supporting and mentoring the holistic development of their players.  Transformational leaders seek to inspire their followers to commit to a shared vision of how student-athletics can enhance their lives.  For the transformational leader the sport situation offers an opportunity for the participant to learn such life skills as perseverance, character development, relationship building, and goal attainment.

Transactional leaders, on the other hand, are those that prefer to set up simple interactional exchanges or agreements with their followers, often investing little in building relationships.  They manage players through the use of carrots and sticks—offering a reward (usually playing time) for a desired behavior.  These leaders are those that often use the maxim “the bench is my best teacher.”

This is a prime example of contingent reinforcement—you do “X” and I’ll give you “Y.”  A transformational leader, while certainly not shy to use the bench as a learning tool, would not view the bench as a teacher—that’s a role they cherish.  The transactional coach keeps his or her distance from the athlete, preferring to have a “distant” relationship.  Some coaches will fake the relational process, but the lack of authenticity is quickly recognized by the student-athlete.  The transformational coach is more likely to spend time building relationships with players and showing them he or she cares.  Their mindset is that people aren’t going to care about you and your concerns unless they know you care about theirs.

Transformational leaders don’t do this just to be nice, they understand it to be an effective and appropriate way to deal with young and developing student-athletes.  Building relations is not a road block to success as many coaches find that because they show they care about the person, they can ask for and demand more performance.  Think about it.  Are you more likely to extend yourself for someone you care about or someone you don’t like and care for?

Coaches do many things.  They inspire and motivate, they teach and instruct, and they set an example.  More than anything else, however, coaches help the student-athletes make sense of some of life’s most important lessons.

Over time many coaches move from a driver dominated way of coaching to that of a builder.  Take for example Westmont College men’s basketball coach John Moore.  “Coaching and teaching is more meaningful for me today than it was eight to ten years ago,” said Moore.  “It is more significant because of the kinds of things that are important in coaching.  Someone once said to me, ‘You don’t have a philosophy of coaching until you get to 15 years as a head coach.’ I discounted that originally, but there was a point for me, and it was in that 15-year range, that I realized that I had a philosophy of coaching – that makes it more meaningful for me and more meaningful for my players.”

Being a driver, a transactional leader, can be very effective in producing immediate results.  However, the constant pounding and intimidating of your student-athletes will reduce the motivation of most student-athletes.  Student-athletes prefer to be guided and seek motivation from the collaborative process of coaching.  Even the most self-motivated player will lose their drive if you don’t provide them with positive reinforcement and a sense of worth.

Transformational coaches appeal to players by working with the athletes to create a compelling and collective purpose; a purpose beyond individual ambition that enriches the possibilities of each team member.  By valuing both relationships and results, a builder’s influence leads to higher levels of trust, empowerment, and community.

For builders, the real definition of success is a life and work that brings personal fulfillment, lasting relationships, and makes a difference in the world in which they live.

Are You a Driver or a Builder?

Drivers  / Dominant Leadership Style: Transactional	Builders / Dominant Leadership Style: Transformative
Put results first. Relationships are subordinate to results, a means to an end.	Put people first.  Relationships are priorities to producing results.
Make the decisions. Drivers like being decisive and in control.  Drivers set the agenda.	Stress team capabilities.  Builders want to build systems and talent.
Possess a controlling spirit.  They feel if they can control people, they’ll maintain absolute authority.	Get others involved.  Builders seek input from other coaches and value input from players.
Resort to more regulations.  Drivers use rules and regulations to enforce compliance.  Drivers want things done their way.	Let solutions emerge.  Builders don’t try to tackle every problem knowing that some problems solve themselves.
Crack the whip.  Drivers keep pressure on for accountability.  Come down hard when goals aren’t attained.	Take a long-term focus.  Builders assemble players, programs, and processes.
Take a short-term focus.  Drivers tend to focus on the day’s or week’s results.	Are mission driven. It’s the mission that sets the priorities.
Focus on “what” have you done for me lately? Enough said.	Are servant leaders. What’s my contribution?  Builders possess a mental model stimulated by a “What can I contribute to the lives of my players” approach to leading.
Get “in your face.”  Drivers thrive on confrontation.  “My way or the highway”.	Embrace empowerment. Builders work to prepare others for leadership roles.
Are more critical than positive.  Drivers find it difficult to accentuate the positive.	Support identity of team. No two teams will ever be the same.  Builders see value in the diversity of personalities.
Power trip.  Fear giving away power.  Empowering student-athletes to become team leaders is not a priority.	Vision is the main course, not an appetizer.  Builders weigh the costs of today’s decisions on  tomorrow.
Span of vision.  Concern is for results today regardless of costs tomorrow.

 

About the Author

Dr. Cory Dobbs is a national expert on sport leadership and team building and is the founder of The Academy for Sport Leadership.  A teacher, speaker, consultant, and writer, Dr. Dobbs has worked with professional, collegiate, and high school athletes and coaches teaching leadership as a part of the sports experience.  He facilitates workshops, seminars, and consults with a wide-range of professional organizations and teams.  Dr. Dobbs previously taught in the graduate colleges of business and education at Northern Arizona University, Sport Management and Leadership at Ohio University, and the Jerry Colangelo College of Sports Business at Grand Canyon University.

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Coaching for Leadership: How to Develop a Leader in Every Locker. ($24.99)

 

The Academy for Sport Leadership 

Noticing a Mighty Oak in the Tiny Acorn

Cory Dobbs, Ed.D., The Academy for Sport Leadership

One thing I know is true: everyone I meet has more learning and doing capacity than I am aware of, just like the mighty oak hidden in every tiny acorn.  My work with The Academy for Sport Leadership has led me to conclude that a shared leadership system is far more productive than the hierarchical model embodied in the traditional team captain model.  I call the participative model, which rests on the practice of mutual learning, the Team Leadership Model.

The Team Leadership Model promotes the processes of team leadership and team building as growth opportunities.  It advances the assumption that all members have the ability to inspire others, to reflect on their actions, to increase self-awareness and to leverage their relational capabilities and build positive, impactful relationships.   

At the heart of the leader in every locker framework is the core belief that every student-athlete has the ability to learn and develop leadership skills.  The transformational coach encourages every student-athlete to reach into their reservoir of beliefs about what is possible for them to accomplish when engaging in learning how to lead and team build.  When the student-athlete does this they come to believe that more is always possible.

The coach with the ability to see more than a small capped nut will always be rewarded.  More importantly, his players will grow in ways that can only happen in the right environment.

Teams that I’ve worked with that have utilized the team leadership framework—a leader in every locker—have enhanced interpersonal activity and collective effectiveness in the four domains of team sport—the physical, intellectual, emotional, and social domains.   The essence of the leader in every locker model is that student-athletes learn to teach and learn in an interactive way so everyone grows individually while expanding the technical and the relational capacity of the team.

The Team Leadership model creates an environment in which members are accountable not just to the coach, but to the team as a whole.  This sounds good to coaches, but very few actually practice the Team Leadership concepts.  The reasons coaches balk at the idea of Team Leadership—leadership from every locker—is that, in general, they are either hooked on control or of the firm belief that leaders are simply born which leads to the conclusion that leaders are in short supply.

Some coaches will admit this, many won’t. The old way of thinking is comfortable and less time consuming.  But, let me say again, my research strongly suggests the traditional captain mode is very limited.  The team captain model as practiced by most coaches is a sink or swim proposition.

When you choose to make leadership and team building skills and abilities for all players a priority, not only do you increase responsibility and reliance on one another, you change how your student-athletes interact as leaders and followers.

Okay, lift the hood.  Kick the tires. Compare the assumptions that undergird the two models.

The Two Major Leadership Frameworks Traditional Team Captain Model (Rank-Based)     VS.                Team Leadership Model (Peer-Based) Starts from a position that leadership is exclusive; leaders possess the “right stuff” Starts from a position of leadership as inclusive; everyone is invited to lead self, others, and with others to create individual and team well-being Fixed mindset; leadership can be learned to some extent, but mostly a unique genetic endowment   Growth mindset; basic and advanced qualities and skills can be cultivated Scarcity mindset   Abundance mindset   Grounded in leadership as a “power” position   Grounded in leadership as an “influence” position   Hierarchical command and control over others   Peer-based influence as a source of strength   Performance oriented   Participant- oriented   Leader accountable to coaching staff; invested in pleasing coaches   Leader acts from deep sense of responsibility and accountability to others   Leadership learning “passed” down to future leaders   Individualized leadership development   Followers are recipients of an act of leadership   Followers are central to any act of leadership   Leader-centric (focus on person)   Leadership-Centric (focus on process and context)

About the Author

Dr. Cory Dobbs is a national expert on sport leadership and team building and is the founder of The Academy for Sport Leadership.  A teacher, speaker, consultant, and writer, Dr. Dobbs has worked with professional, collegiate, and high school athletes and coaches teaching leadership as a part of the sports experience.  He facilitates workshops, seminars, and consults with a wide-range of professional organizations and teams.  Dr. Dobbs previously taught in the graduate colleges of business and education at Northern Arizona University, Sport Management and Leadership at Ohio University, and the Jerry Colangelo College of Sports Business at Grand Canyon University.

NEW RESOURCE

Coaching for Leadership: How to Develop a Leader in Every Locker. ($24.99)

 

The Academy for Sport Leadership 

The Academy for Sport Leadership’s underlying convictions are as follows: 1) the most important lessons of leadership are learned in real-life situations, 2) team leaders develop best through active practice, structured reflection, and informative feedback, 3) learning to lead is an on-going process in which guidance from a mentor, coach, or colleague helps facilitate learning and growth, and 4) leadership lessons learned in sport should transcend the game and assist student-athletes in developing the capacity to lead in today’s changing environment.

 

by Cory Dobbs, Ed.D., The Academy for Sport Leadership

 

In 1953 New Zealand mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary and his Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Mount Everest—the first to do so.  Conquering Everest was and is one of man’s greatest challenges.  The grinding mental, emotional, and physical aspects of the climb along with intellectual problem-solving are the heart of the challenge.

In 1996, Rob Hall and Scott Fischer led a commercial expedition team attempting to climb Everest.  Hall and Fischer were considered expert climbers, both having scaled the summit of Everest.  The two highly talented climbers were hired by a motley crew of inexperienced hikers who made the trek to Nepal to attempt the climb under the guidance of the esteemed Hall and Fischer.

Jon Krakauer, a journalist, was a member of the climbers joining Hall’s team.  As it turned out, Krakauer ended up chronicling a tragic expedition in which five people lost their lives, including Hall and Fischer.

The two leaders, very experienced and somewhat arrogant, “rightfully” behaved authoritatively.  Both Hall and Fischer issued and demanded adherence to their rules for a safe and successful climb.  Krakauer recorded a self-confident Hall reminding his team “I will tolerate no dissension up there.  My word will be absolute law, beyond appeal.”

One team member recalled, “Rob had lectured us repeatedly about the importance of having a predetermined turnaround time on summit day…and abiding by it no matter how close we were to the top.”

Knowing the descent from the summit to be perilous, the leaders invoked a two o’clock rule.  The Sherpa’s, guides and clients all understood that if a climber had not reached the top by two o’clock in the afternoon of “summit day” they were to obey the order and turn around and abandon their bid for the summit. Yet Hall and Fischer would go on to ignore the safe-guard and not retreat down the slopes upon the clock hitting two.

Fischer kept climbing, though exhausted and suffering tremendously, touching the top at 3:45.  He continued to climb, every step perilous to his declining health, though he would never let any of his team to do so under similar conditions.

Krakauer’s book of the expedition, Into Thin Air, exposes the autocratic nature of Hall’s leadership.  Hall had a pecking order and no one was to question his decisions.  As Krakauer recorded, “Passivity on the part of the clients had thus been encouraged throughout the expedition.”  And the Sherpas and guides too were afraid of Hall’s rebuke, unsure of the consequences of displeasing him.

The Idiosyncratic knowledge and unique skills of Hall and Fisher were not enough to overcome the blizzard they encountered on their way back to Camp IV. Having scaled Everest they were in grave trouble.

The vulnerabilities inherent in self-reflection lead us to develop mechanisms to bypass or minimize the embarrassment or threat that we might experience when we scrutinize our thoughts, feelings, and actions.  My sense is that both Hall and Fischer never really had to answer to anybody but themselves, believing self-reflection to be something for the other guy.  After all, why do you need to question your assumptions and behaviors if you’re successful? And the more successful, the less likely you are to self-reflect.  Bragging of their conquests and boasting about their track records led them to believe they were above their own rules—those were for the novice.

I’ve seen it time and time again, coaches that dismiss the practice of self-reflection tend to create cultures that turn out to have unintended and unpredicted side effects that degrade the environment.  These coaches fail to recognize or respond to value conflicts, often violating their own standards.  It is striking that many coaches choose to overlook the practice of self-reflection.

Thankfully what you do is not a matter of life and death.  However, deep inside your coaching bubble you might just find walking your talk difficult at times.  Contrary to the popular thought that all coaches are grounded in reality, it ain’t always so.  Like Hall and Fischer we all have times we simply ignore our rules.

Here’s where the rubber meets the road: the following seven questions require you to turn off the noise for fifteen minutes daily and sink your mind into your walk and your talk for the day.  If you are serious about self improvement, just like you ask your student-athletes to be serious about improvement, then adopt this process as a daily routine.  Learning to lead ourselves, just like leading others, is a truly a life-time project—our own Mt. Everest.  My guess is that after a solid month of performing this after action reflection you’ll seamlessly work your way into doing reflection-in-action.  Remember, reflection is all about growth and development—yours and your players.

Daily Self-Reflection Questions

 

What did I say I would do today that I didn’t do?

What did I do today that will affect team cohesion?  (positive and / or negative)

How did I relate to the players today?

What did I do today that is not something I’m proud of doing?

How did I lead the players today?  Coaches?

How did I follow the players today?  Coaches?

Based on what I learned today, what will I do tomorrow?

 

To find out more about and order Sport Leadership Books authored by Dr. Dobbs including Coaching for Leadership, click this link: The Academy for Sport Leadership Books

About the Author

Dr. Cory Dobbs is a national expert on sport leadership and teambuilding and the founder of The Academy for Sport Leadership.  A teacher, speaker, consultant, and writer, Dr. Dobbs has worked with professional, collegiate, and high school athletes and coaches teaching leadership as a part of the sports experience.  He facilitates workshops, seminars, and consults with a wide-range of professional organizations and teams.  Dr. Dobbs previously taught in the graduate colleges of business and education at Northern Arizona University, Sport Management and Leadership at Ohio University, and the Jerry Colangelo College of Sports Business at Grand Canyon University.

 

NEW RESOURCE

Coaching for Leadership: How to Develop a Leader in Every Locker. ($24.99)

Teams need leadership and guidance. Players want and need leadership from their coach. Here are 10 thoughts regarding leadership and character building for you to consider when leading your teams.

A Few Thoughts on Ethics and Leadership

Cory Dobbs, Ed.D., The Academy for Sport Leadership

The following is an excerpt of an interview conducted by Dr. Cory Dobbs, President of The Academy for Sport Leadership.  Dr. Dobbs interviewed ethics experts Ann Tenbrunsel (Professor, the University of Notre Dame) and Max Bazerman (Professor, Harvard University). This interview took place following the release of Bazerman and Tenbrunsels’ bestselling book, Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What’s Right and What to Do About It.

When confronted with an ethical dilemma, most of us like to think we would stand up for our principles. But we are not as ethical as we think we are. In Blind Spots, leading business ethicists Max Bazerman and Ann Tenbrunsel examine the ways we overestimate our ability to do what is right and how we act unethically without meaning to. From the collapse of Enron and corruption in the tobacco industry, to sales of the defective Ford Pinto and the downfall of Bernard Madoff, the authors investigate the nature of ethical failures in the business world and beyond, and illustrate how we can become more ethical, bridging the gap between who we are and who we want to be.

1. Jim Tressel, the former Ohio State University football coach, resigned as a result of his failure to properly handle an NCAA violation committed by one or more of his players. How does the process of ethical fading apply to coaches?

We know from our research that when decisions are made in environments that are heavily sanctioned ethical fading is much more likely to happen. In one study, individuals were asked to make a decision involving ethical implications. Half of those participating were in a “no sanction” condition – they were told there would not be any monitoring or sanctions of the behavior. In some sense, the decision to do what was right was up to them. The other half were in a “sanction” condition in which they were told that there would be monitoring and sanctions of the decisions. We found that 55% who made the decision in the no sanction environment saw the decision as an ethical one whereas only 20% saw it as an ethical decision in the sanction environment. How you see the decision is important because it is related to an ethical choice: of those that saw it is an ethical decision, 94% behaved ethically; of those who did not see it as an ethical decision, only 44% behaved ethically.

We have seen the athletic environment increasingly characterized by regulation and the accompanying monitoring and sanctioning of decisions that comes with that. This in turn leads to more ethical fading, meaning that decision makers in this environment are less likely o ask the question “What is the right thing to do?” and instead focus on “What is the probability I will get caught and what is the cost and how does that compare to the benefits I will see from not-complying?”. In this type of environment, whether or not a decision is ethical or right is not considered; rather, there is a cost-benefit calculation which determines whether it makes sense to comply or defy the NCAA rules. If it too costly to defy, compliance results but if the benefit is large enough, compliance goes out the window.

It is also quite likely that motivated blindness played a part in Tressel’s decisions. Motivated blindness describes the tendency for individuals to not notice the behavior of others when it is in their best interest to not notice. In the steroid scandal in Major League Baseball, there were many people—the commissioner, the owner, coaches, the player’s union—who should have noticed the rapid changes in the players and the sudden onset of record-breaking performances. Why didn’t they see what now seems obvious? They didn’t notice because of the benefits they received by not noticing. Steroid use increased power, power led to more home runs, home runs boosted attendance and attendance meant more money for all involved. These benefits blinded those involved to the problems they preferred not to see.

Similarly, Tressel was most likely motivated to not see the NCAA violations committed by his players because it was in his best interest not to see them. By not seeing them, he didn’t have to sanction his players, his players were happier, and life in the Athletic Department was much smoother. This motivated blindness was driven in part by the larger environment in which Tressel was rewarded. Tressel was rewarded for winning games, not prosecuting his players. He responded well to those rewards.

2. Why is an adoring public able to quickly forget such wrongs?

The fans are able to forget these transgressions for the same reason they are committed – motivated blindness. Loyal fans don’t want to know or contemplate anything but positive attributes about their team. We know from research that our brain codes the information that is advantageous to us and doesn’t code information that is disadvantageous to us. For example, if you ask married couples what percent of the chores they do, both spouses will say they each do about 75% of the chores, which can’t be true. Each one of them remembers what chores they do (cook, laundry, yard work, transport children) but doesn’t code what their spouse does. Similarly, fans code what is advantageous to them – the statistics that support their love of the team, the charities their player support, the negative behavior of players on opposing teams—but don’t code what is disadvantageous to them—the NCAA violations, a coach who bends the rules, the negative behavior of a favorite player.

3. How might an insider help a coach identify an ethical blind spot?

It is not clear that it should be an “insider” who helps the coach identify ethical blind spots. Insiders fall prey to motivated blindness just like fans, owners, and athletic directors do. An outsider who is not motivated by the standings of the team or a close relationship with the coach is probably in the best position to see the ethical traps that can bring a coach to disgrace. Framing decisions as ethical decisions, “what is the ethical implications of this decision?’ or “what is the right thing to do” will help reduce ethical fading. The reward system for the coach also needs to be closely examined. If the coach is only compensated (monetarily or otherwise) for a team’s performance and the way in which that performance is ignored, it is a safe to predict that the coach will focus on team performance and use any tactics to get there. Those responsible for structuring and implementing the reward system have to take responsibility for the outcomes of that reward system and for their own motivated blindness.
This is not to say that the coaches are not responsible for their unethical decisions for ultimately they are and they must be held accountable for those decisions. But if effort is also directed toward understanding the psychology behind bad decisions—including ethical fading and motivated blindness—and the way in which the environment actually encourages them, teams can avoid the tarnish that comes with unexamined unethicality.

About Dr. Cory Dobbs and The Academy for Sport Leadership 
To find out more about and order Sport Leadership Books authored by Dr. Dobbs including a Leader in Every Locker that this post was taken from, Click this link: The Academy for Sport Leadership Books