By Dawn Redd-Kelly

Sam Shweisky, the head men’s volleyball coach at Princeton University, is in a unique position.  He’s the head coach for the men and the assistant coach for the women’s program.  I wondered if that gave him a more in-depth outlook on the role of assistant coaches.

So what makes a good assistant coach?  Of course we want someone with knowledge of our sport and, logistically, we want someone who we can rely on to attend practices and competitions when they’ve said they could. Those are just the basics, there is more.

3 qualities of a great assistant coach

1. Loyalty.  We’re all looking for that assistant coach who is proud to wear our school’s name on their shirt.  The person who understands the traits we look for in representatives of our institution and is willing to fall in line with those expectations.  Someone who’ll stay around for a reasonable amount of time and who will support us behind the scenes.
2. Common voice.  Speaking of supporting us, a great assistant supports their head coach with the athletes…no matter what.  I’m not saying you can’t have heated debates as a coaching staff behind closed doors.  Hopefully your assistant coaches feel comfortable voicing their opinion and you, as head coach, have created an atmosphere where divergent opinions are welcome.  But once your players are around, we’re all singing from the same hymnal.
3. Nurturing.  The head coach doesn’t always get to be the nice guy.  Sometimes we have to point out the inconsistencies between team goals and effort level in practice, sometimes we have to bench a player, sometimes we have to have hard conversations.  That’s when the great assistant coach steps in to make sure the athlete can see their way to success, because sometimes, those tough conversations can cloud their vision.

4 ways to manage assistant coaches

1. Give them a role.  Whether you’re lucky enough to have full-time assistants or you’re making it work with part-timers, they should know their value to the team.  It’s good for them and the team will respect them more if they have a designated role.
2. Coaches meetings.  Have regular meetings or check-ins with your assistants to make sure you are all on the same page.  It could be that you’ve decided that, as a staff, you’re going to be tough on your team, or that you’re going to focus on only one correction for a particular time period.  Whatever it is, everyone’s got to know what’s going on.
3. In game responsibilities.  The beauty of assistant coaches is they are a set of willing extra hands.  Depending on the level of support at your institution, your game day responsibilities could be great.  Maybe your assistant has to help set up your game space, or set up the camera so that the game can be filmed, or do stats.  During the game, give them at least one thing to do during warmup and in game…those responsibilities will make them feel useful and needed.
4. Ask for feedback.  My assistant and I speak after each practice, even if it’s just for a few moments.  We talk about what went well and what didn’t, what we need to keep working on, and personnel issues.  We’ve both been known to say, “feel free to say this is crazy, but…”.  Having a great assistant coach as a sounding board is priceless.

Join me in a series of interviews with successful coaches. I believe what we learn from our coaching peers can be applied to our teams, our recruiting efforts, and how we behave as professionals. These interviews will be less Q & A and much more philosophical in nature, keep coming back to see who I’m talking to and what they’ve got to say!

 

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.

By Dawn Redd-Kelly

I’ve done it all when it comes to team captains. The team picks. The coaches pick. A combination of both of those. I’ve even gone without captains. I believe in team leadership and the athlete’s ability to manage each other and keep each other motivated through the normal highs and lows of a season.

But how do we stack the deck in the favor of team captains who will, you know, actually be good leaders? According to How To Build A Team That Works by Tony Robbins, there are some things we can help our teams look for when voting and characteristics our captains can aspire to once they’re voted captain.

Some questions we can prep our team with before they vote for captains:

Can they do the job?Do they have the respect of their teammates? Because if their teammates aren’t willing to follow them…can they actually be called a leader?
Will they do the job well long-term? No matter the sport, the season is long. No matter how well your team is doing, you’re going to have some downs that go along with the ups. No matter how motivated the team, they’re going to have flat practices. Can your team captains help the group through the tough times?

Are they the right team fit? I talked before about personality types and how important it is to know your team’s dominant personality and what it could be missing. If you’ve got a strong group of leaders who aren’t keen on getting the younger athlete’s opinions, you may want to stack the deck for your more collaborative personalities.

Here are qualities of good team leaders:

Envision an Outcome:Can they help the team come up with season goals and keep the group on track? A lot of us coaches think this is all up to us, but I’d disagree. We’re not with our teams more than we’re with them. We need the captains to help us here!

Understand Others:Here I go beating the personality type drum again, but this is crucial. People are different and respond to situations differently. Our team leaders can help us with team conflicts by understanding this dynamic.

Inspire Others:I’ve had players who inspired their teammates through their words, they could get everyone fired up for conditioning…which is almost a miracle. And I’ve had athletes who were inspirational without opening their mouth. They basically shamed everyone into working hard because they worked so hard.

Understand Themselves: I don’t want captains who are pretending to be someone they’re not. For example, you don’t want your quiet leader trying to lead a rallying cry at game time. They’ll be stressed out and they won’t come across as believable to their teammates. My general advice for captains is, “Do you”, with the caveat that they’re doing all of these other things.

Giving our athletes the tools they need to be leaders worth following has got to be a top priority for coaches.

 

 

This article is provided by InnerDrive, a mental skills training company

Can setbacks ever be a good thing? Sir Winston Churchill noted that that “failure is not fatal”, but for many students, mistakes are equated to social suicide. Something to avoid at all costs. This fear of failure can stop them for stepping out of their comfort zones. So what does the research say? Was Churchill right? Is there life after failure?

Why is it a mistake to get too low after a failure? Because if managed correctly, there are six ways that failure can actually help:

A LEARNING OPPORTUNITY

A recent study found that children are very accurate at judging how their parents perceive failure. For parents who view failure as a big bad event, as a judgement on your ability and something to be avoided, their children were more likely to have a fixed mindset (which is the belief that intelligence and ability are set in stone and can’t be improved). This mindset is linked to avoiding and rejecting feedback as well as coping worse with transitions

Research on teenagers has found that those who are motivated by learning and mastering a subject, compared to those who are extrinsically motivated by rewards, display higher levels of emotional control before an exam. As well as this, they have higher levels of confidence and achieve better grades.

Students with this mastery orientation are more likely to view setbacks as an opportunity to learn and improve. A painful but valuable speed bump in the road. Those that are motivated by social comparison (i.e. status) or outside rewards are more prone to stressful and negative reactions to failure.

RESILIENCE AND DETERMINATION

In a fascinating study, researchers interviewed gold medal Olympic champions about how they developed the resilience needed to succeed in their sport. Many of them identified that their road to success has not been simple nor straightforward, but that they had to come to view their setbacks as opportunities for growth.

At the time of a setback, this can be difficult to appreciate, as emotions are often running high. This can cloud judgement and impair learning. This is especially true for teenagers, as their brain works differently to adults. Once the dust has settled, asking yourself questions such as ‘what would I do differently next time?’ and ‘what have I learnt from this experience?’ are good starting points to use the setback in a more positive way.

MOTIVATION

There is an oft-used phrase by elite athletes after a failure. They say, ‘Minor Setback? Major Comeback’.  Though unpleasant at the time, failures often provide a very strong boost to someone’s motivation levels.  The well-known Michael Jordan video bellows gives a great illustration of this:

There are no guarantees that a setback will make someone more motivated. Their personality, the group norms and their environment will all play a factor in how they respond. What is not in doubt, is that for some, the setback will imprint on them, helping them drive themselves on to a higher level than previously experienced.

DEVELOP COMPASSION

Recently, researchers have found that people who suffer more adversity show more compassion to others. This makes sense when you think about it. If you know how failure feels when you experience it, you are probably more likely to empathize with others when they experience setbacks.

The authors of this study do note that their findings only show a correlation with adversity and compassion, and that one does not necessarily cause the other. However, they suggest this is probably the case as it ‘chimes with other related research’, where for example, those who experience for suffering ‘show greater altruism and sympathy for disaster victims’.

ASK FOR HELP

Although it shouldn’t take a setback for someone to ask for help, it often does. In the previously mentioned study on Olympic champions and resilience, researchers also found that accessing the support and advice of people around you is a key way to help develop resilience.

This one of the reasons why successful people often build a team around them. Asking for help is frequently seen by many teenagers (often boys in our experience) as a sign of weakness. Nothing could be further from the truth. If we can help educate them on how and when to ask for help, they will likely reap many of the benefits.

MAKE THE FINAL ACHIEVEMENT EVEN SWEETER

Experiencing lows can really help you appreciate your highs. As Sir Winston Churchill also said, ‘success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm’. Someone’s success at the end of their bumpy road makes all that enthusiasm worth it.

It is interesting to note that many Olympic gold medalists do not even medal at their first Games. It takes years of experience, setbacks and training to achieve ones dreams. But when that success is reached, it feels all the more sweeter because of it.

FINAL THOUGHT

Failure is not something to strive for but it is something that can be learnt from and used effectively. These are key skills that we can teach students. There is a great quote that says ‘real failure is someone who has blundered but not cashed in on the experience’. By teaching them how to cash in on the experience, hopefully we can help them develop skills that aid resilience, motivation and learning, and therefore reduce the chances of them making the same mistakes again in the future.

By Dawn Redd-Kelly

Sometimes social media gets a bad rap for being a time sucker, which it can be. But most times, I find good stuff there.  Whether it be a good leadership article, a timely motivational quote, or (like this time) a great tweet from team building expert Jeff Janssen.

How can we be successful coaches?  Or maybe a better way to put it is how can we measure, at the end of the season or school year, that we’ve been successful?  Janssen has some ideas.

9 requirements of success:

1. Purpose: Why do you coach? As I mentioned in my another post, loving the sport isn’t your purpose (it’s your passion)…why do you coach? Why do you have player meetings?  And stress about your practice plans? Why do you watch so much film? What is my why?  I believe that athletics creates better humans (I’m biased, I know) and I believe us coaches equip our athletes with the tools they’ll need to make the world a better place and I’m honored to have a part in it.
2. Passion: Do you love your sport? Is there a fire in your bones for it?  Then that will translate over to your players and they’ll be infected by your zeal.
3. Perspiration: I feel like this is obvious, but you should be working hard, Coach. Like, really hard.  You’ve got to work hard to create relationships with your players.  You’ve got to work hard to know the different personalities on your team and how to motivate them.  You’ve got to work hard to keep your team chemistry balanced.
4. Plan: How will you handle the inevitable quarrels between teammates? How will you handle having to bench a starter?  How will you prepare your team to be clutch at the end of a competition?  How will you make sure they’re ready for post-season?
5. Patience: Can you wait for your “potential player” to bloom? Can you try different ways of teaching your leaders how to lead? Can you trust the process?
6. Persistence: I think it’s a great idea to write down your coaching goals. That way, when you hit the inevitable speed bump, you won’t be moved.
7. People: Coaches don’t succeed alone. We need mentors and assistants.  We need recruits to buy into what we’re saying.  We need families who support the coaching staff in the background.  We need an administration who’ll advocate for us.
8. Principles: Do you want to be a win-at-all-costs coach? Do you want to sacrifice your values in order to win more games?  I think a coach’s goal should be to win with honor.
9. Perspective: My guess is our definition of success will change as we grow as coaches, as we gain a bit more life experience, and as we’re humbled by our profession.

It’s hard to feel successful.  It requires a lot of work.  Let’s get ready to put the effort in so that we can be whatever our version of success looks like!