Coaches Toolbox

The following is a listing of all posts in the category of Program Building for our site.

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Coaches and athletes working together to eliminate the stigma of mental health afflictions

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This article was originally published on www.sidelineinteractive.com

This post is a summary of our key takeaways from Volume 2 Episode #85 of The Educational AD Podcast, hosted by retired high school Athletic Director Jake Von Scherrer.  This summary of the podcast episode is posted with permission of Coach Von Scherrer.

You can watch the 35 minute interview on YouTube at this link:  Joanne P. McCallie Interview

Joanne P. McCallie is the former Head Women’s Basketball Coach at Maine, Michigan State, and Duke.  Coach P’s Career Division I coaching record was 628-243.

Since retiring from coaching, Joanne’s new mission is build a foundation and to be a consultant and advocate and messenger through public speaking and writing to reduce the stigma that often surrounds the discussion on mental health.

Our hope in posting this summary of and encouraging readers to listen to or watch the podcast in it’s entirety is to inspire you to do all you can with your team, school, and community to have open discussions of the importance of being attentive to mental health and to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health issues.

She believes that post pandemic, up to 50% of our population have suffered some form of anxiety or depression.  Her cause is not just about manic depression, it is about everyone’s brain health.

 This is not intended to say that coaches can or should offer professional advice regarding mental health.  As coaches, we need to encourage our athletes and work with parents to provide support and encouragement to our athletes to seek professional assistance when it is needed.  And, to encourage all athletes to practice positive habits regarding mental health, just as we encourage positive physical health habits.

Here is a summary of our takeaways from Coach McCallie’s interview on the podcast episode:

A mental health affliction is something that and individual suffers from.   It is a part of who they are, but that affliction doesn’t define them as a person.  No one is “bi-polar,” it is and illness that they suffer from.

As a coach at Michigan State, she began collaborating with professionals in the field of mental health to help improve the mental health of the coaches, players, and support staff in her program.  Along with sports psychologists, they worked together to spin negative perceptions that athletes have of their environment or themselves.

Administrators and coaches need to be proactive and not reactive. As much as possible, therapy needs to take place before there is a mental health emergency.  Administrators and coaches should openly discuss the importance of both physical and mental health.

She motivates players differently depending on the personality and needs of each individual.

Mental health issues are diseases of despair.  With mental health impairment, there’s no intention.  You’re simply ambushed. You can’t defend yourself.

Unfortunately, we can’t prevent all crises that are brought on by mental health afflictions, but you can work very hard to create an environment where a young person might think twice about doing something drastic.  We need to have some discussion about the subject of mental health and they know that there is somewhere to go and someone to see to get help.

Provide the opportunity and encourage anybody who has a question or concern about mental health to discuss it privately with the coach or Athletic Director.  The coach can help by listening and directing the athlete to a trained mental health expert.  The coach is not equipped to help the athlete in the way that the athlete needs.

The coach can still be demanding of that athlete.  It does help the coach to be able to coach the individual better if you understand that they have some issues with anxiety or depression.  The coach can help the athlete find a therapist because any individual with those issues should be seeing a mental health professional.

Another plus to being an advocacy for positive mental health is that If the coach understands the mental health problem, they can more effectively communicate with and collaborate with the athlete’s parents.  Together they can privately come up with a plan that helps the athlete to have a more positive athletic experience.  Confidentiality is extremely important.

As a young person experiencing her bipolar affliction, Joanne didn’t want to approach her parents because she felt so badly about what was happening, was ashamed, and blamed herself.  She felt better with someone who was close and cared about her, but not as close as her parents.  Keep in mind that your athletes may have similar feelings.

Simone Biles, Michael Phelps, and many, many others were still champions while dealing with mental health problems.  Joanne was a Division I athlete and then a highly successful coach while dealing with her own mental health affliction.

We need to spread that message that mental health diagnoses do not mean that an individual cannot be successful in athletics or in any other area of life.  We can still succeed in spite of these diseases.  How you deal with and overcome your issues can allow you to become your best self.

Coach P’s message is that you can challenge yourself to be what you want to be and choose difficult, impactful careers without being intimidated by others or by a mental health disorder.

An example of a written message that Coach shared with one of her players: “There are no promises, but dreaming big is the way to go.  Knowing full well that things may not go your way.  That is the risk we assume for greatness.” This was to an elite student/athlete coming off a severe injury and working to get back to the high level of play that she was performing at prior to her injury.

Coach P did not want her to be satisfied with just coming back from the injury, but to strive to become even better than she was prior to the injury.  Joanne’s purpose with the note was to redirect the athlete’s thinking and get her into a better headspace.  Dreaming for the highest levels is what it is all about.

Coach McCallie  does not focus on the outcome.  She focuses on the process. To go after the highest levels of achievement, you have to commit to the process and commit to accepting the results that your process leads to. And, sometimes things work out, but not in the timeline that the athlete or coach has established for themselves.

Athletic Directors Toolbox segment of the show.  This is a segment at the end of every episode of the podcast where the guest is asked what three things they can she share with the audience that she would put in her toolbox if she were an athletic director starting a new job.

Coach P actually gave us four items for the Athletic Director’s Toolbox 🙂

1. Get to know the people in the athletic department as individuals.  They don’t work for you, you all work together.

2. Be a “coaches Athletic Director.”  Support the program by giving the coach confidence.

3. Dig out the problems before the surface and support the coach.

4. Loyalty is something that can never be underestimated.

Joanne also shared her ideas of best practices for conduction practice for coaches of any sport. (In addition to creating her own success, she had the privilege to learn from coaches such as Tom Izzo, Nick Saban, and Mike Krzyzewski.

1. Every minute of practice is accounted for and planned in advance.

2. You have to practice the way you are going to play.

3.There is no room for generalities.  You must be specific about what outcomes you are looking for in all areas.

4. She has a “Thought for the day” every day to share with her team.

5.  Coaches must constantly ask themselves, how are we going to use our philosophy to better us in practice.

6. The players and the coaching staff must provide each other with positive energy and feed off of each other.

7. In order for your practices to have the best opportunity for individual and team improvement,  the head coach must delegate duties to the assistant coaches and to the players.

8. The coaching staff must make time in practice to nurture one on one personal relationships with each student-athlete.  One on one and team motivations are different and a coach must be able to effectively do both.

9. The feeling of being completely absorbed in practice is a great feeling for both coaches and athletes.

Joanne  is the author of the book “Secret Warrior.” that details her journey as both a student athlete and a very successful coach who continually had to battle impaired mental health.


Developing Inclusive Teams

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This article was originally published on www.sidelineinteractive.com

This post is a summary of our key takeaways from Volume 2 Episode #97 of The Educational AD Podcast, hosted by retired high school Athletic Director Jake Von Scherrer.  This summary of the podcast episode is posted with permission of Coach Von Scherrer.

You can watch the 27 minute interview on YouTube at this link:  Deepjyot Sidhu Interview

Deepjyot Sidhu is the Director of Equity & Inclusion at the Global Online Academy. She is also a former cross country coach.  The discussion today includes dome practical steps that we can take as coaches to be aware of the differences

Whose voices do you hear in your head when you are working with coaches, teachers, students, athletes, or parents?

Those voices are the sum of what you have heard from your mentors–from both your experience as a student athlete and as an adult educator.   They are the what is still with you from how your parents, teachers, coaches, and other leaders from throughout your life who influenced you.

Regardless of our own personal programming and life experiences, we can decide to do our best to make every encounter a good one.  That doesn’t mean to make everything superficially pleasant.  It does mean that we can make our own choices as to how we act during all interactions both in our personal and professional lives.

Some of the athletes that we work with have far more athletic skill than we had.  Coaching is not only about imparting our knowledge to them, but rather thinking about each athlete individually, what they bring, how they are developing, how they are growing.

Equity and inclusion should be a priority for all coaches and athletic administration.  Making it a priority means developing and designing (or better year redesigning) systems, structures, and practices in the interest of equity and equitable experiences and outcomes for all kids.

Key questions that we all need to ask ourselves as individuals and as staffs collectively.  What does inclusion mean?  How do we design for equity?  In part, it means insuring that we focus on every kid as an individual and their individual athletic experience.  It means disrupting neutrality to bring intention to an environment that fosters a culture of belonging for all kids.

THREE Specific actions that ADs and coaches can take:

1) Start by reflecting on ourselves–who we are and what our experiences, where we grew up forms our perspective.  Starting with self is being aware that your athletes are experiencing things that you aren’t thinking about and are not even aware of. We need to be intentional about expanding our perspective and our lenses.  So that we are not inadvertently leaving anyone out

We have points of focus and points that are in our margins.  We need to be more aware of the margins of the lenses that we see the world through.  It will always be true that you will not have experienced everything that your athletes have experienced.  These experiences that your athletes have had or are having are not always physically apparent.

Here is an example that can be extrapolated to our own specific situation.  A coach or teacher has not had the experience or even taken the time to consider what it is like for one of their student athletes to have a close family member serving in the active military.  Because I have not experienced that, I don’t know what it feels like for one of my athletes who is experiencing that in their lives.

2) Prepare for the ongoing–We all know that team building is not a one-time thing that will last forever.  It requires ongoing attention and intentionality.  That same intentionality is required to be an ongoing equitable practitioner.

Consistently giving some sustained thought to questions such as: Who is new to our team that we haven’t designed structures and systems for to support them?  What can we do to ensure equity for them?

3) Prioritize the Impact You Want to Have–When the goal is to eradicate all inequities, it can be so overwhelming that we might want to give up before we get started.

Always remember that we don’t have to be perfect.   We are doing it for our athletes, so it is important to do as much and whatever we can.

When an athlete shows up to your team for the first practice or call out meeting, they are determining in their own mind if they do or don’t fit in with your group.  That conclusion they are reaching is based on their life experiences to a great extent.  That is why it is important that we consciously and deliberately work to empathize as much as we can.

As coaches and ADs what are we doing to promote belonging?

How do we do a better job of finding the balance of the old school wanting athlete’s to be tough and be aware and sensitive to the challenges that athletes are facing?  It starts by reframing what toughness, mental strength, and courage are.  It takes both of those to face up to and publicly admit what you are going through.

Knowing what the limit is and how to navigate that limit.

Pressures are increasing on young people in athletics and academics and that stress impacts areas of their lives such as sleep and motivation which allow them to be at their best.

We need to be more intentional about the circumstances we create for our athletes.  All while being focused on supporting athletes and less focused on forcing them to comply and to meet unreasonable and often unnecessary standards that don’t help with mental health or performance.

Athletes don’t perform in a vacuum at school or in practices or games–they bring their outside life with them every day.

What advice would Deep have for a new Athletic Director?   Have the agency to make every encounter a good one.  You do that by thinking about EVERY athlete, EVERY team, and EVERY coach.

If you are interested in contacting Deep for further information or discussion on the topic of inclusion, you can reach out to her on Twitter or at the Global Online website:

@deepjyot

www.globalonlineacademy.org

You can watch the entire interview by clicking the play link below


A Flawed Reality: When it’s Time to Reflect

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Two years after landing the head coaching position he so badly desired, Coach Jones (not his real name) was quietly fired. The administrative staff realized they’d made a mistake hiring Jones. They weren’t quite sure why he didn’t work out. They did their homework.

Well, enough to consider him a solution to their coaching needs. However, what they couldn’t see is what did him in. After spending a month analyzing Jones, here are the flaws I uncovered:

  • Is overly demanding
  • Doesn’t listen
  • Is intolerant of dissent
  • Takes the credit for success
  • Blames others for mistakes
  • Is untrustworthy—doesn’t do what he says he’ll do
  • Is aloof—seen as arrogant
  • Has a dictatorial style
  • Is abrasive

It’s fairly obvious, after the fact, that Coach Jones has some serious flaws related to interpersonal interactions (he is comfortable with a transactional style of conversation) and relationship building. Nowhere in his flaws will you find a glitch in his knowledge of the sport. He has a great command of the X’s and O’s. But he has some serious team building flaws.

The two primary blind spots that emerged are: 1) his need to be right in all situations, and 2) avoiding accountability to his players and staff. Coach Jones’ “I know” attitude produced such flaws as taking credit for success and his unwillingness to listen. The desire to avoid accountability (to the stakeholders) produced his blaming of others and his dictatorial leadership style and abrasive attitude toward relationship building created cool relationships between him and his staff and players.

The prognosis for Coach Jones is not good. If he fails to discover his fatal flaws his coaching career will never recover. As a prominent coach told me, “We’re pretty good at directing our players to change, but not so great at changing ourselves.”

New to the Second Edition of Coaching for Leadership!

We are pleased to announce a new chapter to the second edition of the best-selling Coaching for Leadership. The chapter, The Big Shift: Unlock Your Team’s Potential by Creating Player-Led Teambuilding, connects the previous edition of this book to its origin, as well as to the future of team sports.

The new chapter sets forth a practical and applicable agenda for change and improvement. The reader is introduced to seven vital elements of change; seven shifts of traditional mental models that lead to the new core principles necessary for creating a player-led team culture. Click here for more information about Coaching for Leadership

About Cory Dobbs, Ed.D.

Cory Dobbs is the founder of The Academy for Sport Leadership and a nationally recognized thought leader in the areas of leadership and team building.  Cory is an accomplished researcher of human experience. Cory engages in naturalistic inquiry seeking in-depth understanding of social phenomena within their natural setting.

A college basketball coach, Cory’s coaching background includes experience at the NCAA DII, NJCAA, and high school levels of competition.  After a decade of research and development Cory unleashed the groundbreaking Teamwork Intelligence program for student-athletics. Teamwork Intelligence illuminates the process of designing an elite team by using the 20 principles and concepts along with the 8 roles of a team player he’s uncovered while performing research.

Cory has worked with professional athletes, collegiate athletic programs, and high schools teaching leadership and team building as a part of the sports experience and education process.  As a consultant and trainer Dr. Dobbs has worked with Fortune 500 organizations such as American Express, Honeywell, and Avnet, as well as medium and small businesses. Dr. Dobbs taught leadership and organizational change at Northern Arizona University, Ohio University, and Grand Canyon University.


Trying or Training: Predicting your own progress and potential

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Trying or Training: Predicting your own progress and potential
Written and contributed by Dr. Chris Hobbs ( Follow him on Twitter @Dr_ChrisHobbs)

Imagine if a friend invited you to play in a dodgeball tournament at the local gym this weekend. For those of you that love the rush of competition and the thrill of whipping an object at total strangers, you’d be all in. You’d show up this weekend, stretch out a little bit, shake hands with your temporary teammates, and go at it. There’s not a doubt in my mind that you would try very hard to destroy others and avoid getting destroyed.

Now image with me if a member of the U.S. Olympic committee showed up at your front door and identified you as the most likely candidate to win the gold medal at the Olympics in the triathlon but in order to tap into your hidden potential, you must start 7-day per week training immediately!

In the dodgeball tournament, you would try very hard and in the triathlon story you would train very hard. Trying and training are two very different things that if we take a moment and think about, I think we’d be more successful in accomplishing important things in our lives.

Try: a short term event requiring maximum effort. The results of trying are usually short-lived and have very little return on your investment.
Train: a preparation for a pre-determined goal that requires regular and sustainable effort. The results usually have a lot of redeeming value and there is a plan in place for how to handle frustration. You simply return to your frustration.

There are lots of things in life that require a good ‘ol fashioned try. You give it your best. However, there are really important things in life that we try too hard and don’t train enough for. What are some of those things? I would put important roles you hold in your life at the top of this list. What would it look like to train to be a better parent, spouse, value-adder at work, or a Christ-follower? Here’s my suggestions…

Reserve a short period of time everyday for your training. For me, this is in the quiet hours of the morning. For night owls, it may be after everyone in your house has gone to bed. For others, they may have flexibility during their lunch break. Early in your training, make it short so that it is sustainable. 10 minutes, added up over 30 days, is a lot of time spent training. As your commitment grows and results begin to show up, adding time will take place naturally.

Track your training. I’ve heard it said that if you aren’t tracking progress, you aren’t making progress. Find a way to track what you’ve done. Journaling, notes on your smart phone, crossing off days on a calendar. Seeing the compilation of your training efforts can inspire you to keep going.

Pick a source for your training. Books, podcasts, websites, blogs, or scheduled phone calls with someone that has made progress in the area you are training for are all sources of training. My son is an avid championship level distance runner. He has recently discovered that reading books about running is a great source of training for him.


Share your training experiences with others. I have found that talking about what I’m training for with others creates a lot of energy. Often, it’s because I find that the person I’m talking to has had or is having a similar experience and that inspires me to keep going.

At different points in my life, I have been frustrated with the outcome of a situation in which I was trying very hard. However, I have found that I deal with frustration in a lot healthier way when it is in an area that I’m training for. I simply return to my training and keep moving forward.

Trying is great for dodging a ball thrown at your head. Training is much more valuable when trying to unlock your potential…even if you’ll never be an Olympic triathlete.

‘Bite Down and Don’t Let Go’ is a collection of writings on being intentional about life in a way that produces great persistence. Read about it more here.

Dr. Chris Hobbs is an educational leader and Director of Athletics at The King’s Academy in West Palm Beach, Florida. He’s earned a few degrees and won some awards. He’s happily married to his high school sweetheart and they have three teenage children. Life is messy and complicated most of the time. You can follow him on Twitter for all sorts of inspirational thoughts and good laughs.


Leadership Lessons from John Wooden

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Leadership Lessons from John Wooden
Dr. Cory Dobbs, The Academy for Sport Leadership

It’s Been Decades Since “Coach” was on the Sidelines but His Commitment to Character is as Relevant as it Ever Was

March is known for its madness. A time when team greatness is revealed. March is also a time when the best baseball players in the world go back to work— fine-tuning the fundamentals of their game. College basketball’s greatest coach was a tour de force for principled leadership and success. Great teams and fundamentals are of vital importance no matter what your endeavor, no matter what time of year.

Do you need proof that leadership is not about style? The legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden suggests that leadership is influence derived from one’s character. For Wooden, the ideal leader is someone whose life and character motivate people to follow. The best kind of leadership derives its capacity from the force of example, not from the power of position or personality.

Much of what passes as leadership today is nothing more than manipulation of people by sticks and carrots—threats and rewards. That’s not effective leadership for the long-term. Authentic leadership seeks to motivate people from the inside, by an appeal to the head and the heart, not by use of command and coercion. Compliance seldom, if ever, leads to authentic commitment.

Wooden influenced players through his character which he displayed in everything he did, from the way he recruited student-athletes to the way he taught them to put their socks on.

For Wooden character is the essential element necessary for great leadership.

Steve Jamison, author of best-selling books on John Wooden and Bill Walsh, has spent the past fifteen years working with Wooden on various books on leadership. He teaches Wooden’s principles to business leaders at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management.

“The reason he resonates with people, relate to him is as a teacher, leader, coach, he was extraordinary and as a person he was even more extraordinary. That’s a tough combination,” Jamison said.

Jamison began working with Wooden to organize and distill his wisdom for coaches and leaders in any industry. At the time he couldn’t find a publisher because most thought Wooden was no longer relevant. As one publisher told him “Coach Wooden is a little dusty on the shelf.”

Character, however, is never a quality to be shelved. Coach Wooden, as Jamison said, “Didn’t seek players who were characters. He wanted players that had character. Character was something that he felt essential to being a good performer, a good leader. Much of the problems we see today we can lay at the foot of leaders that have little character.”

When You’re Through Learning, You’re Through
Coach Wooden practiced life-long learning—as you would expect from a great teacher. Jamison, a leadership expert and educator said, “A lot of leaders get to a position with a lot of authority and power, it’s very easy to become overconfident and arrogant and think you know it all. John Wooden never made that mistake. He was very secure in what he knew but he never stopped learning. Never stopped looking for answers.”

“How willing are you to learn?” Jamison asks. “That doesn’t mean just opening a book or taking a course but how willing are you to challenge your beliefs and the way you do things, examining ways to improve. How willing are you to entertain new ideas? Whatever your level of success, self evaluation is important.”

Jamison said Coach Wooden simply asks leaders “How can you improve if you don’t have the ability to analyze yourself?” Jamison backed up this declaration from Coach Wooden by offering a story that exemplifies his commitment to self-evaluation.


“In Wooden on Leadership, Jamison explained, “ he tells the story of getting to the 1962 semi-finals of the NCAA national championships where UCLA played Cincinnati, the defending nation champs. They lost in the last seconds. On the flight back his assistant coach Jerry Norman says to him ‘coach you know we got some guys coming in next year (Goodrich/Erickson). You know, maybe we should look at bringing in the full court press.’ John Wooden knew what it was, he’d tried it his first two years at UCLA.”

“Maybe it’s time to revisit the press, said Norman.” Wooden, secure in his self, listened to his assistant. The next year UCLA pressed full-court. And the rest, as they say is history.

Wooden on Teaching: The Little Things Make the Big Things Happen
“One of the great abilities John Wooden has and had was his ability to take a complicated issue, distill it, so that, as he said, that ‘little things make big things happen,” said Jamison.
“In my view, what it was that he did to teach leadership, and it’s not complicated, he behaved like a leader. He acted like a leader. The primary teaching tool he used was his own life as an example,” Jamison commented.

Coach Wooden was a proponent of the principle that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. According to Jamison, “John Wooden had an effusive way of letting players know he cared. His practices were ferociously intense. There wasn’t any slack in practice where you could hang out and shoot the baloney. He found time at the beginning when players were coming onto the court to take a moment, to pull someone aside as they were ambling over to the practice and ask about how things were going. ‘How’s your mother.’ ‘How’s that history class going.’ He did this to show his sincere care and concern for his players.”

 

Pyramid of Success
Coach Wooden’s primary teaching tool has been his leadership model as distilled in his Pyramid of Success. Jamison commenting on this influential model for effective living said, “His definition of success isn’t about big, it isn’t about power, fame, fortune, and prestige. For him the highest level, the highest standard of success is making that effort to become the best that you can become whether it is a coach, teacher, student, member of a team.”

Success, as Coach Wooden says, is the peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.