Professionals seek a standard of excellence, constantly improving and incorporating the best knowledge and research in your field in order to get better at what you do every single day.

By John O’Sullivan, founder of Change the Game Project.

“What makes you a professional?”

That was the question Dr. Richard Bailey, Head of Research at the International Council of Sport Science and Physical Education, posed to me and 250 PGA instructors in Orlando this past January at the PGA Youth and Global Summit.

“Does getting paid to do something make you a professional? I don’t think so,” he continued, as he displayed the image above.

“Does belonging to a professional association of coaches or instructors make you a professional?” he asked. “Can’t we do better than that? Don’t we expect more of our professional doctors and lawyers and accountants than to simply be paid for their work or belong to a trade association?”

“No, being a professional is much more. It means seeking a standard of excellence, constantly improving and incorporating the best knowledge and research in your field in order to get better at what you do every single day. That is what it means to be a professional.”

A lot of heads were nodding in the crowd.

“Then we better get to work,” said Bailey, “because when it comes to coaching across the globe, there are far too many coaches who want to be considered professionals in their field, but have no intention of improving themselves or seeking a standard of excellence. They want to be treated like professionals but have no intention of acting like one. This is what we need to change.”

Amen Dr. B! Amen! (click here to listen to our podcast with Dr. B!)

I am a coach. For the past twenty plus years, coaching has been my profession. Yet for far too long, I didn’t act professionally. I got paid. I joined associations. I took my certifications and licenses. But I didn’t look beyond those things. I didn’t seek out more. I blamed my players for not learning, instead of myself for not properly teaching. And then something remarkable happened.

I had my own children. I realized for the first time in my life that there was something more important than myself. I realized the tremendous trust and responsibility that was placed with me by parents who turned over the physical and emotional well-being of their children to me.

I realized I was letting too many of those kids down. It was time for me to become a true professional coach and not simply a coach who got paid. It changed me forever as a coach. It did not make me perfect – far from it – but every day I try and get better. How?

I think about what I missed at practice today.

When players do not learn something, I look first to where I failed as a teacher before I blame the students.

I look for more effective ways to teach.

I try and be a better listener.

I surround myself with coaches who challenge me and critique how I work.

I read books and research on a daily basis.

Do you?

Our goal at the Changing the Game Project is for all coaches to become more professional in our work. That does not mean we all will get paid, but it does mean they get trained and held to a higher standard. Our work is too important.

This article is for those of us who do get paid. This is for coaches who take a paycheck and work with kids and young adults, either on a full-time or part-time basis. Because I look around and I see a lot of non-professionals out there, and you are doing our profession a huge disservice. You are giving us a bad name. You refuse to attend certification or licensing, and never pick up a book or go watch a true master coach at work. Some of you are scaring families and children into accepting everything you say and do, a deity who controls their playing time, their participation, and their future, promising scholarships and “playing at the next level” without even understanding what that means, or caring how many eggs you break in order to find one that does not crack.

We need a higher standard. Parents must demand it. Good coaches must demand it. Athletes must demand it. And administrators must demand it. So what does that standard look like?

When Dr. Jerry Lynch and I work with college teams, we start with two basic questions:

1.     What are we doing now that we need to KEEP doing if we want to be successful in the future?
2.     What do we need to STOP doing that we are doing now if we want to be successful in the future?

These questions seem quite appropriate here. What do we need to keep doing, and what do we need to stop doing, if we want coaching to be a profession?

Here are a few things that I see great coaches doing, that we ALL must keep doing in order to truly be professionals:

–       Be a lifelong learner and master of your craft: the number of NCAA, world and Olympic titles that guests on our Way of Champions Podcast have won is approaching 100, and the one commonality amongst the best coaches is that they are lifelong learners. Peter Vint, former USOC Performance Director, said it best when describing USA Women’s Volleyball Coach Karch Kiraly: “He has a deep curiosity and a relentless pursuit of becoming better.” YES!

–       Be a good listener: This is one quality that all great leaders possess, the ability to listen to their athletes and use what they hear to craft great practices and build great teams. Great listeners are great connectors, and the ability to connect is a core competency of quality coaching

–       Coach the person, not the sport: you don’t coach soccer, you coach Johnnie and Jimmy. Every single person in your group needs something slightly different from you. Some need discipline, and some need a hug, because they never get it at home. Know the difference and relentlessly connect with each person and each athlete. Ultimately, your influence will last much longer than the sport.

–       Intentionally build culture and positive team dynamics: when they ask kids what makes sports fun, three of the top five things have to do with positivity and great team building. Culture is not an accident, it is something that is purposely created. Culture is not an event; it is a process. Great coaches create the positive culture and dynamics that allows athletes to flourish.

–       Engage parents: “Most parents are not crazy: they are stressed,” says Skye Eddy Bruce, founder of www.SoccerParenting.com. “We need to stop using the crazy ones as an excuse to not engage the stressed ones.” YES! Parents are stressed because they are afraid their child is missing out, they are running all over the place taking kids to private this and group that, and it costs money and time. Professional youth coaches build trust, give parents good information, communicate continuously, and give feedback to parents and kids. Your life will be much easier if you recognize parents as partners in the process and engage them as such. A little work up front saves you a lot of work on the back end!

–       Make yourself redundant: as opposed to joystick coaching (see below). I have heard quite a few top coaches say this, and describe how they give ownership to athletes in incremental bits so that they start to hold each other accountable, solve problems on their own, and take ownership of the team. James Kerr talks about this in Legacy, how the New Zealand All-Blacks do this (“pass the ball”). Steve Kerr talks about the Warriors being “the players’ team.” This is tough, but it is how great coaches work. A side benefit is your athletes will be more engaged, more focused, and excited to learn once the focus shifts to an internal locus of control.

–       Understand coaching is about Xs and Os AND Relationships: we speak a lot about winning the relationship game with your athletes, yet sadly far too few coaching courses teach this. Yes, your activities and knowledge of Xs and Os and sport science matters, but it is not sufficient. Your players don’t care how much you know ‘till they know how much you care!

–       Get a mentor, or 6: surround yourself with other coaches in and outside of your sport who will critique you, challenge you, and push you to become better. Film yourself, ask for feedback from players and parents, and if you expect your players to be open to learning, demonstrate that you are as well.

Here are a few things youth coaches must STOP doing if we want to be considered professionals:

–       Demeaning children: I just read this incredible letter from a coach who is dying of cancer. He reflected on how he speaks to the kids, and how he may be giving his last pregame talk. If we are not OK with our words being the last words a child ever hears from us, then those words should never leave our lips. As Coach Russ Powell concludes in his letter, “I simply refuse to make a player feel bad because they’ve missed a penalty, misplaced a pass or lacks natural ability in their game. Now you may read this and dismiss it that’s your choice. The one thing to think about is, you never know when your last team talk will be or the last time you see your child play football. I know that time for me is soon and I want to make it an incredible experience.”

–       Ignoring Parents: who are we to be so high and mighty that we do not let parents know how their kids are doing, where they stand, and how they can help. We need to engage them, not ignore them.

–       Disrespecting officials: treat them with the dignity and respect that they deserve. Just because someone gets $20 a game to officiate does not give you the right to berate them and insult them, especially over an inconsequential call. It is a terrible message to your players, disrespects the game you coach, and is currently driving officials out of sports faster than we can replace them. What will you do when there is no one left to referee?

–       Not letting kids play: there is no game at the youth level that is so important that a player who comes to practices and fulfills the basic commitments of the team should not get meaningful playing time in. None. IF YOU PICK THEM, YOU PLAY THEM. The number of emails I get from parents of children who want to quit a sport they once loved because the coach refuses to put them in, or pulls them after a single mistake, are way too high.

–       Refusing to educate yourself: stop talking about 10,000 hours to mastery as if it is some magical boundary; there is no such thing! Stop isolating skills in blocked practices and then wondering why the players cannot perform them in games and matches Please read the actual peer-reviewed science and the latest evidence on how people learn and how skill is acquired. Stop saying “I have always done it this way” as that is about as unprofessional as it gets.

–       Joystick coaching: let the intelligence be on the field, not on the sideline. Let them make decisions, let them face desirable difficulties, let them make mistakes, and create an environment of learning. If you move every player where he should be and solve every problem the game presents, what then? When do the players get to learn?

Coaches, we need to be professionals. Not simply paycheck collectors. Not simply members of some trade association (though that is a start).

We must be true professionals.

Men and women who seek a standard of excellence in our work every single day.

Men and women who hold each other accountable for that high standard.

Men and women who call out those who do not meet the standard.

Men and women who celebrate those that do.

We are coaches.

We don’t just have a job.

We have a calling, and an immense responsibility.

And that calling demands more.

Coach O’Sullivan is a former college and professional player as well as a high school, club team and college coach. He is offering a FREE video series that is part of his Coaching Mastery program. For more information about gaining access to that program click the link above or in the image below. The video series includes a wealth of coaching education including some motivational and team building ideas used by some of the most successful coaches.

A couple of posts from eloit College Head Volleyball Coach Dawn Redd-Kelly for today.

Eliminate the Negative

You can see the original post here:  Don’t Just Accentuate the Positive, Eliminate the Negative.

Being a great head coach means success in competition.  I don’t know that we coaches can be successful if we don’t manage our team’s culture.  While we certainly have to guide them toward aspirational team goals and show them a template of what a winning culture looks like…we also have to limit the influence of our team Debbie Downer.

How successful leaders eliminate the negative:

1. Bad practices.  Not like, our practices in preparation for a competition, but the things we do all the time…the things that eventually become our culture.  As Aristotle said, “we are what we repeatedly do”, and if we have an athlete who repeatedly displays poor behavior (without correction), then it could become contagious.
2. Stifling processes.  Do you have athletes who don’t buy fully into your vision for the team?  Those folks are stifling your ability to move the team forward.  Does your team have a history of hazing newbies?  That process will stifle your team’s ability to gel and compete in crunch time.
3. Nasty people.  It’s easy to cut the athlete whose contribution your team won’t miss when they’re gone.  But what if your nasty player is your best player?  We’ve got to be willing to challenge that athlete’s view of how their teammates should be treated in order to save our team culture.
4. Negative beliefs.  I think we all worry about the team cancer, the athlete who is killing your culture in the locker room and on the bus.  But I think the person who doesn’t believe in the team’s success is equally bad.  You know the one: “This team killed us last year”, “We don’t have a chance without our really good player who just got injured”, “There’s no way we can win playing this defense”.  *sigh*

A great post over at Leadership Freak was the jumping off point for this post…check it out!

Post #2

4 Ways to Inspire Trust from Your Athletes

You can see the original post at 4 Ways to Inspire Trust from Your Athletes

“If you want to lead others, you’ve got to have their trust, and you can’t have their trust without integrity.”
— How to Be a C.E.O., From a Decade’s Worth of Them

The above quotation could deal with us, as coaches, or help us guide our team leaders earn their teammate’s trust.  Let’s focus on the coaching perspective.

On having integrity:

1. Set a vision. Know your philosophy.  Make sure your athletes know your philosophy. Recruit athletes based on your philosophy.
2. Build cultural guardrails. Coaches are the culture protectors.  We need help with this, of course, and that’s where good team leaders come in…we’re only with our teams a few hours a day, after all.
3. Foster a sense of teamwork. Creating a team first mindset on your team is hard work.  I’ve found that most of my athletes are generally team-minded people…until they’re negatively affected by it.  My solution?  Have your athletes brainstorm normal team problems before they’re a problem on the team.
4. Make tough calls. If we’ve got athletes who aren’t living up to these previously mentioned standards, our team relies on us to step in.  They’re watching us to see if we’ll be who we said we were.  Tough moments on our teams and with our athletes are chances for us to earn our team’s trust.

Accomplishing these tasks with our teams should be an on-going effort, but well worth the energy!

 

This post provided by Training-Conditioning

No one likes difficult situations. But in all likelihood, as a coach, you will come face to face with an unforeseen problem at some point during the season. How you respond is critical.

When it comes to facing complaints, Jenny McDowell, Head Volleyball Coach at Emory University, follows the advice she learned years ago from former University of Georgia Head Volleyball Coach Jim Iams. “He responded to criticism by saying, ‘You might be right,’” she says. “That was a famous Jim Iams line, and it usually ends the conversation.”

Steve Florio, Head Volleyball Coach at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, is careful to follow the adage, “praise in public, criticize in private,” but it took a mistake to learn that strategy. During his first year as Head Coach of the Mastodons, he criticized a player in front of the team on the bus following a game. It ended up compromising his relationship with the rest of his players.

“Even though everything I said on the bus was accurate, it was unfair of me to say it in the forum I did,” Florio says. “As a result, I don’t know if I ever regained a whole lot of trust over the rest of that season. But I apologized to the player in front of the team, and nothing like that ever happened again.”

During tough game-time situations, Florio feels humor can sometimes help. He remembers a match in which Fort Wayne was down zero games to two in a tough nonconference contest prior to the league tournament. During the break between the second and third games, he gathered his players and commended them. “I really like what you’re doing out there—practicing coming from behind,” he told them. “We might have to do that in the conference tournament.”

That witty and unexpected comment helped the Mastodons relax, and the team went out and took the match to five games, losing the final one in extra points. “If you use humor sparingly,” Florio says, “it can go a long way.”

One last strategy involves putting communication on the back burner for a while. Last year, Stephanie Rivera, Head Volleyball Coach at Lutheran West High School in Rocky River, Ohio, announced plans to retire at the end of the season, and that led to some pressure to compile a third straight undefeated record in conference play. One win away from that milestone, the squad entered into hostile territory for a poorly officiated final regular-season game. Players on the opposing team dropped frequent f-bombs on the court and its fans were so inhospitable that the Longhorns needed to leave the gym via a back door after the game.

Lutheran West lost in five sets, as the team struggled with on-court communication and Rivera, in a rare display, lost her composure. The next day at practice, the coach opted to have her players “chill,” she says, hitting the weightroom and carving pumpkins. “We didn’t talk much about that game,” she says. “My players knew how I felt, and I didn’t want to belabor the point.”

That approach worked, as Lutheran West recovered and advanced farther in the playoffs than it had the previous five years. Sometimes, Rivera explains, communicating effectively means knowing when you don’t need to say anything at all.

How can coaches best draw out and utilize the knowledge and insights of their athletes?

This article was provided by Coaches Network

It’s no secret that many coaches seek advice and input from others, whether it be assistants, coaches that they had in the past, or even coaches of other teams. What they might not realize is that the people they should draw most input from on a daily basis are right under their noses—their players. But how can coaches best draw out and utilize the knowledge and insights of their athletes?

In a blog for Hudl, Dan Hoppen explains that athletes have a different viewpoint of the game than coaches, since they are the ones who are engaging in the action on the field of play. This can provide valuable information and ideas that a coach probably wouldn’t be able to come up with. However, Hoppen does stress that coaches shouldn’t take every bit of input from each and every player and apply it to the game directly. For many athletes, it might be hard for them to separate themselves from their own desires or their own viewpoints about what is happening on the field. Instead, Hoppen suggests starting with upperclassmen as many of them can more easily think back on and assess the actions of the team as a whole.

“These players can offer valuable insight on not only their individual matchup, but the tempo of the game, why a play did or didn’t work, and notes on the opponent,” writes Hoppen. “Identify a few older players, preferably captains, and ask for their input. These interactions will offer a different perspective on the game, give the athlete confidence and improve your relationship.”

Another method for gaining athlete feedback is to use video. Hoppen explains that doing this can sometimes make it easier for athletes to distance themselves from the emotions of the competition and see each action more objectively. Another benefit of going back and watching each play on screen, according to Hoppen, is that it can help athletes feel more comfortable coming to you with their insights.

And while many coaches might feel like they don’t have enough time for this in their already hectic schedules, Hoppen says that even taking 15-minutes for a video session can make a difference in creating relationships and trust, as well as help you learn some tips that could help your team excel. No matter how much time you decide to set aside for these meetings, Hoppen suggests asking some specific questions to make the most of your time with athletes.

“Identify certain plays and ask the athlete why they did or didn’t work,” he writes. “What did he or she see that caused a certain set to fail? Did the opponent adjust after seeing the same play a few times? If so, how could the play be tweaked to keep them guessing?”

Last, Hoppen admits that coaches can sometimes become stuck in their ways. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as the style that you utilize on a daily basis is probably one that you have become comfortable with and that you trust to lead the team to success. However, Hoppen also explains that every year your team changes, and with this change comes new attitudes, opinions, and abilities. Sticking to one style of play could hurt the team rather than help it. To stop this from happening, Hoppen suggests using the input of athletes to switch up game play based on the current team.

“Ask your most trusted players what they think might work or if there’s something the team can do better,” writes Hoppen. “You don’t have to make sweeping changes based off these suggestions, but sourcing more information gives you a behind-the-scenes look at what the locker room thinks when you’re not around.”

Click here to read the full article.

This post provided by Busy.Coach

Coaches often have a handful of great ideas about how to improve their program. For many coaches it is difficult to put those ideas into action. Here are some thoughts getting better at following through.

By Mandy Green

I just finished up speaking at the United Soccer Coaches Association National Soccer Convention.

A big thing that coaches were talking to me about this weekend is that they always have a lot of new ideas for how they can work better, but after the initial excitement wears off, they struggle to follow through and take action.

Although you start the day with the best of intentions, of course, you know what happens right? Life throws you a curveball. Maybe an administrator, another coach or somebody on your team stops by for an unexpected conversation.

Or maybe even for you, an addiction to distraction kicks in. Sorry if this sounds a little harsh, but coach, when you allow yourself to get distracted for long enough, you’ve essentially trained your brain to underperform. As a result, you likely struggle from a lack of focus, perhaps an inability to concentrate for long periods of time, and this near constant feeling of being totally overworked and overstretched and overcommitted.

But here’s the deal: if you want to create and contribute and experience extraordinary things in this life — and I believe you do because you are reading this newsletter — then you have to buck the status quo. You have to break cycle of these addictions and really push back against all these other distractions. You need to develop an unshakable ability to follow through on what is most important to YOU.

I mean, just think about it. When was the last time that you really completed a goal that truly mattered to you? When was the last time you set an important goal and you made it happen? I mean, doesn’t it just feel GREAT to check something off your list or complete an important project or say that something is finally DONE?

You see … no matter how enthusiastic we are at the beginning of any new day or with each new project, there’s one crucial habit that makes all the difference in the world: follow-through. And the ability to finish what we start.

As I continue to try to help you decide what’s most important, then to eliminate what’s not important, and to make doing the work that you need to do as effortless as possible, I can tell you without hesitation that THIS ability — the ability to focus on what matters, to finish what you start — has been invaluable to me as a coach, as a business owner … and quite frankly, as a human.

From my own experience, I have found that there are two big problems that get in our way of following through:

First, most of us are working on way too many things at once. We allow ourselves to be pulled in too many directions. Instead of making meaningful progress on a single project that really, really matters, we wind up feeling constantly overloaded and overstretched and get stuck doing maintenance tasks all day.

Now the second problem? Oftentimes we are fuzzy about our outcome. Meaning, most of the time, we’re just working hard and trying to keep our heads above water without a clearly defined, achievable result that we’re working towards.

The good news here is we have the power to fix both of these problems. And when we do, we gain some serious momentum and we train ourselves to become masters of follow-through.

So the very first step is this: we must decide.

Meaning, DECIDE what’s truly most important. And, to be clear — I’m not talking about several things here, I’m talking about choosing just ONE thing. One TOP priority. One single goal.

For you to develop the habit of finishing what you start – you’ve got to be willing to choose ONE important goal or ONE project that you want to get done.

Did you know that the word “decide” comes from the Latin word, “decidere,” which means “to cut off”? So when you decide on one thing, you cut yourself off from everything else except from that which you’ve said is most important.

As it is Sunday and you are hopefully preparing for kicking ass in the office this week, I want you to think about this question: What’s one thing you could focus on (a single project or goal) that, if you finished it, would make a tremendous positive impact on your program and life?

If you’re having trouble committing to JUST one thing, if you’re unwilling to commit to one thing, I want you to remember this: you’re most likely going to be distracted by EVERYTHING.

Shut off your phone, close email and eliminate all distractions. Have a great week!

If you want to challenge yourself to a Busy Coach 30 Day Productivity Challenge this month, go here to get the details.

Email me at [email protected] to let me know how it goes for you. I love hearing all of your success stories of how this is working for you!!!!!

If you are interested in having me help you get your program and staff organized and firing on all cylinders this year, email me at [email protected]

Win the day!