In order to be successful coaches must do more than accentuate the positive. The must eliminate the negative. Here are some tips.
By Dawn Redd-Kelly
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:
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.
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.
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.
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!
Are you tired of walking into practice and seeing lackluster effort from your players? Have you had it with trying to get your female athletes to care about the team as much as you do??
Click here to find out more about Coach Dawn’s eBook: Motivating Female Athletes
Comes with a FREE PowerPoint presentation called Guarantee Your Success: Using John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success To Increase Your Team’s Cohesion.