Coaches Toolbox

Assistant Coach Qualities

by

These articles were written by Alan Stein on his Stronger Team Blog.

Assistant Coaches’ Code:

  1. Your #1 job is to make your head coach’s job easier. Be a servant leader. Find what your head coach needs you to do and do it!
  2. Act as if it is your team. You will have your own team one day. Act like it now.
  3. Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. No excuses.
  4. Add value to everything you do, every single day… on and off the court.
  5. Enforce the team’s culture and standards at all times. Protect the locker room.
  6. When you find a problem… find a solution. Your head coach has enough problems as it is.
  7. Be professional. Period.
  8. Encourage and motivate everyone in your program to buy in to what the head coach wants – from players, to managers to other assistants.
  9. Bring energy, enthusiasm and effort every day.
  10. When asked for your input, speak honestly. Don’t be a ‘yes’ man (or woman).

Coaching Absolutes:

    1. Don’t focus on winning (outcome); focus on preparation, effort and execution (process).
    2. Winning is a result of:
      The execution of the fundamentals
      The ability of all players to work in unison… all the time.
    3. A team can only reach it’s true potential if:
      The most talented player is also the hardest worker
      Everyone in the program buys in to the ‘We > Me’ concept
      Each player is in peak physical condition
    4. You either accept it or you correct it.
    5. You play the way you practice.

Alan Stein

ABCs of Success

Here are the ABC’s of success:

A – Adapting, Asking

B – Believing

C – Caring, Challenging, Creating

D – Dreaming, Defusing

E – Engaging, Envisioning, Evaluating, Evolving, Educating

F – Failing, Focusing

G – Growing, Grinding

H – Helping

I – Innovating, Inspiring

J – Juking, Juggling

K – Knowing

L – Leading, Learning, Listening, Loving

M – Mentoring, Mending

N – Networking

O – Objecting, Outworking, Observing

P – Preparing, Pursuing, Pushing

Q – Questioning

R – Reaching, Reading, Resolving

S – Searching, Seeking, Serving, Sharing, Simplifying, Striving, Smiling

T – Thinking, Tweaking

U – Understanding

V – Viewing, Voicing, Valuing, Varying

W – Working

X – Xeroxing (‘copying’ – couldn’t leave X out!)

Y – Yearning

Z – Zigging and Zagging

Now you know your ABC’s… I hope you’ll do these things with me!

Hardwood Hustle Blog
http://www.About.me/AlanStein


Comments

  1. rick says

    Not too sure about all the asst coaches’ recommendations. The best coaches in the world are dictators. ala jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola. Assistant coaches need to first fully understand the head coaches decision making process. That is very very difficult to do. There are so many nuances that assistants do not understand. I am very exact about what they can and cannot do. I discuss extensively. If my team is up by 5 goals I hand them the team and observe their decision making process.

    I encourage a lot of discussion but the decisions are always mine. I try and carry 2-4 assistants. They are, true, head coaches in training. Hopefully.

    Some of the other thoughts were good. It is not the assistant coaches’ team. That one is way off.

    rsf

  2. Tim says

    The problem with #2 is that it isn’t the assistant coaches team or culture. The team and culture belongs to the head coach. It’s the assistant’s job to prepare, recruit, adjust and react to what the head coach wants.

    I agree with Rick, they should be head coaches in-training, but the culture certainly belongs to the head coach.

    • [email protected] says

      Thanks for your input, Tim. I didn’t interpret #2 in the same way you did. IMO, there is no question that the team and culture belong to the head coach. My interpretation of #2 is that the assistant should make his or her current job their primary professional focus and that future head coaching aspirations should take a back seat to the work for their current job. My feeling is that the entire article was written from the perspective that an assistant is there to be an extension of the head coach. It helps me to know how visitors to the site view the posts. Thank you!

    • Patrick says

      Assistants are a part of the programs culture and have to enforce it in cohoots with the head coach. Assistants that aren’t a part of the culture will divide the program.

  3. Patrick says

    Only thing with number two is that you can’t act as if it’s your team but you have to think like it is. I think every head coach should have to be an assistant prior to being hired as a head coach.