Volleyball Toolbox

Underperforming Players

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By Dawn Redd-Kelly

How do you handle the situation, when a player isn’t performing at an acceptable level.

The Answer:  SCAMPER.   Let’s look at how we’d apply SCAMPER to our teams.

First things first, what the heck is SCAMPER?  The letters stand for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Magnify/Modify, Put to other uses, Eliminate, Rearrange, though I won’t talk about combine or magnify/modify here.

I’m sure we could use this technique with all sorts of problems, but let’s stick with our problem player.

Can we substitute?:  This is the easiest solution to an underperforming player…put someone else in.  Though, if the player is a starter and impact player for our team, keeping her off of the court isn’t a smart long term solution.

Can we adapt to her?:  I worked with a team at a summer camp with a pretty dynamic hitter, though she struggled with slower tempo sets.  The only problem?  Her head coach put her in a position to work only in her weakness and hit those slow tempo sets.  After watching her crush fast tempo after fast tempo ball, we changed the offensive system to work in her strength and she excelled.

Can we put her to another use?: Our players come to us with a certain amount of training in their particular position, but can they do other things?  Would it be better if they played another position?  Until we answer, “yeah, I can put her to another use…right here on the bench next to me”, we’ve got to figure out a way for each player to have a legitimate contribution to the team’s effort.

What can we eliminate?:  Maybe the coaching staff has come up with a sweet offensive plan for the team…they just can’t execute it!  Perhaps it’s time to scrap that plan and simplify.  Is there something going on in her personal life that’s keeping her from performing up to snuff?  We’ve got to help her eliminate the causes of stress if possible.  If nothing works…maybe we’ve got to eliminate more and more of her playing time.

Can our team be rearranged into something else?:  Sometimes we’ll play a team that funnels eighty percent of their offense through a couple of players and I always wonder what they do when those players have bad days…besides lose, I mean.  For that player who has lost their mojo, the coaching staff can restructure the offensive season so that player doesn’t carry so much of the burden.

I got the idea for this post from a Psychology Today article about creative thinking and I can see how SCAMPER could initiate the creative thinking process.  Sometimes the obvious answer isn’t the best option and we’ve got to dig deeper.

This article and other helpful coaching tools can be found at Coach Dawn Writes

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.


Great Coaching: The Secret Ingredient

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By John  O’Sullivan, Founder of Changing the Game Project,   a site that is your one stop shopping for  the latest and greatest information, research, and best practices regarding high performance, motivation, Long Term Athletic Development, fitness, nutrition, college recruiting, and more.

“I just can’t figure it out,” an exasperated coach said to me recently. “One day we are flying around the field, and the next it looks like we’ve never played together before. Why does this happen?”

“Do you think your players lost all their skill?” I asked? “Do you think they forgot how to play?”

“Of course not,” said the coach.

“Too many coaches think that performance is all about X’s and O’s,” I responded. “It’s much more than that.”

Many coaches think that coaching is an X’s and O’s business, but in reality it is a relationship business. The secret to great coaching and a successful performance by one’s team isn’t simply technique, or tactics, or fitness.

In fact, it comes down to a simple formula:

Performance = (Potential + Behavior) – Interference

(I came up with this equation after combining the definition of performance from two highly recommended books, Timothy Gallway’s The Inner Game of Tennis and James Kerr’s Legacy, which details the 2x defending world champion New Zealand All Blacks’ incredible success in rugby.)

Most coaches only look at potential and behavior (genetics, hours and quality of practice, attitude, coaching, fitness, etc.). These are incredibly important components, but they are not the whole equation.

Far too many coaches ignore the second half of the equation, interference.

Think of interference as the static on the radio during your favorite song. You know the song is great because you have heard it before. The lyrics are the same and the rhythm has not changed, but the song is not being heard in its best form. It is not the song’s fault- it is the radio station connection. In that moment you lose faith in the station’s ability to deliver the song in it’s best form. In other words, you no longer trust the radio station.

How does this relate to coaching to parenting, and to developing high-performing athletes?

Trust is the secret ingredient of great coaching.  

It is foundation of all great teams and all great relationships. Players cannot consistently perform their best if they do not trust their coaches, their parents and their teammates, and in-turn feel they are trusted.

Parents cannot give their kids ownership and release their children to the sport unless they trust their kids, and their coaches.

Coaches cannot get the most out of their athletes and teams unless they trust them to perform and earn their athlete’s trust in the process.

Trust is the secret ingredient of athletic success.

As Warren Buffett so eloquently states, “Trust is like the air we breathe. When it’s present no one notices and when it’s absent everyone can see it.”

Doesn’t this perfectly describe the athletes and teams you see on a weekly basis?

High trust teams and athletes are fun to watch, and even more fun to coach. In his excellent book The Speed of Trust,  Steven R Covey discusses the characteristics of high trust teams, such as:

  • Common purpose and values
  • Respect
  • Commitment
  • Resiliency
  • Love which decreases fear
  • Fewer discipline problems
  • Intrinsically motivated athletes
  • Celebrate each others success

In contrast, low trust relationships in sport are easy to spot, because you consistently see:

  • Lack of a shared vision
  • Lack of respect
  • Varying levels of commitment
  • Lots of finger pointing
  • Pursuit of individual goals over team goals
  • A lack of love, which creates fear

Trust amongst athletes, parents and coaches is something that has to be first earned, then cultivated, and then built upon. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. High trust teams consistently do the things that build more trust (and usually more success) while low trust teams repeat the same mistakes over and over as the season falls apart.

Coaches, you must be intentional about building trust among your teams if you want to build programs that enjoy sustained success. Every one of your players needs something different from you and it is your job to seek out how to serve them in order for them to be able to perform at their best ability (see John Wooden’s definition of success) . Some need technique, some need tactics, some need discipline, and some need encouragement. To build trust with each of them you must first spend the time to get to know each athlete. Once you have gained their trust by giving them why they need, only then will those players play their hearts out for you, for their teammates, and for themselves— not because they have to, but because they want to!

How to Build Trust

The critical first step for coaches is to be worthy of trust from their athletes. They must coach the person, not the sport. And they must realize that trust is not solely built upon their ability to teach X’s ad O’s.

In their amazing book Trust Works, authors Ken Blanchard, Cynthia Olmstead and Martha Lawrence outline the four components of trust, the ABCD’s as they call them:

  • Ability: your knowledge and competency to get the job done
  • Believability: do you act with integrity and treat people fairly
  • Connectedness: do you show empathy, love your athletes, and care about them as people first, and athletes second?
  • Dependability: do you follow through on what you say, and hold yourself and everyone else accountable?

In my experience (and certainly this applied to me as a young coach), most coaches believe that reputation, playing ability and previous performance should garner trust. They played the game, they know a lot about the game, therefore everyone should have complete trust in their coaching, their judgment, and everything they do. Those things may get a coach a job, but it won’t be what makes the athlete trust them.

If your accountant was great at math and knew all the accounting laws, but filed your tax return late (lack of dependability), would you trust him?

If your doctor stared at the computer screen the whole time during your visit, ignored your complaints, didn’t care about your ailments (lack of connection), and then prescribed you medication would you trust her?

Of course not.

If you want to see the four components of trust in action, watch this short video of Georgia Football Coach Mark Richt, as he talks with his kicker before an attempt at a game winning field goal.

Can you see how he instills trust? Can you see how he connects, how he follows through on his core values, and more? Can you see how this type of behavior will allow your athletes the best chance at success?

Coaches, we must understand and accept that we will not be trusted, no matter how much we know, until parents and athletes know how much we care,

We must treat athletes fairly, act with integrity, and follow through on the things we say we will do. Those are the ABCD’s of trust that we must earn; there is no way around it.

To conclude, take a few minutes and watch this amazing TEDx talk by Coach Reed Maltbie, on “The Lasting Power of a Coach’s Words.” Reed is one of the brand new members of our speaking team here at the Changing the Game Project, and we are so honored that he will be helping us to bring about important changes in youth sports. His talk is amazing!

Please share this article and Coach Reed’s talk with coaches you know, and with the organizations that your kids play for.

Please help us to restore trust in our coaches, our parents, our athletes, and our organizations.

Only with trust can we build an environment that serves the needs, values and priorities of our kids, and truly change the game.

Coach Sullivan is offering a FREE video series which is part of his Coaching Mastery program which includes motivational and team building techniques used by some of the top coaches in the world. To gain access to his free video series click the link below or the image at the left.

Coaching Mastery


Motivating Female Athletes

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This article and other helpful coaching tools can be found at Coach Dawn Writes

By Dawn Redd-Kelly, Head Volleyball Coach at Beloit College.

A few years ago, I spoke at the USA Hockey ADM (American Development Model) coaches clinic and gave my Motivating Female Athletes presentation.  Over time, the presentation has evolved and I always manage to tailor each talk to the particular group I’m speaking with, but the bones are pretty much the same.

This first section (which is about fourteen minutes) is a place I’ve been doing lots of research lately.  It talks about the socialization of females and begins the conversation about building team chemistry.

I hope you like it and let me know if you’d like to have me speak to your group!  You can check out different topics here.

 


Making a Not to Do List

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By Mandy Green

Mandy is the  Head Soccer Coach at The University of South Dakota.

Even though, she is not a volleyball coach, this article is good food for thought for all coaches preparing to start fall sports practices.

Mandy is also an Author, Speaker, Trainer and Consultant. She has posted many useful tools for coaches of all sports on her site Busy.Coach

All of us fall sports are less than a month away from starting our seasons.  AAAAHHH! So exciting!

I’m sure you have either had or will have shortly a conversation with your staff about your priorities and what you want to accomplish for the season.  I just did this recently by myself and my list ended up being about 25 things that I wanted to work on.

After jotting down my initial list, I then met with my staff to review the list and we circled the top five that were most important to us for this season. As I expected, we initially struggled to narrow down everything, and it took some time to make a decision on what our top 5 would be.

Finally, when we decided on our top five, we next needed to ask “Now what are we going to do with the other 20 things on our list?”

Hesitantly, my assistants responded: “Well, the top five things are our primary focus. The other 20 things are not as urgent, but we can still plan to work them into our practices.”

Sounds like a reasonable answer right?

What I said next surprised them.

“I believe that is a mistake that we have made in the past. I think that everything we didn’t circle just became our ‘avoid at all cost’ list.”

We all have so many things in our coaching life that we want to do and accomplish. Who wouldn’t want to succeed at 25 different things? I learned the hard way that when we chase after 25 things at once with our team, we run the risk becoming a jack-of-all trades, but a master of none.

Items 6-25 on your list are probably all very important things, and things that could make your team better. But when it comes to Items 1-5, Items 6-25 are a distraction.

As James Clear writes, “Spending time on secondary priorities is the reason you have 20 half-finished projects instead of 5 completed ones.”

In my study of high performers over these last few years, avoiding distractions to focus on what matters has been a HUGE key to their success.

What sets apart high achievers is not the number of ambitious things they plan to get done, it’s the ability to avoid distractions in order to focus on accomplishing the things that matter.

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” — Steve Jobs

Creating a NOT To-Do List
We’ve all familiar with creating a to-do list to increase our productivity and that is the first list I want you to create. The 2nd type of list that will jump start our productivity is the not-do list – things we shouldn’t do. By being conscious of what to avoid, it’ll automatically channels our energy into things that we want to do. Doing both hand in hand will maximize our performance.

HOW TO CREATE YOUR OWN “NOT TO DO” LIST

Put away your phone, your planner, your to do list apps, and your timers. Instead, take out a sheet of paper and go through this exercise which will help you make your own Not To Do List.

The steps are easy:

  1. Write down your top 25 goals for this upcoming season.
  2. Circle your top 5 goals
  3. Avoid working on any goal that is NOT circled at all costs

Once you have your two lists, focus all your efforts on dominating your top 5 goals and ruthlessly eliminate the 20 less important goals.

It couldn’t be simpler than that.

Whether you’re looking to bring about progress into your program or you’re seeking a way to simplify your coaching life. Creating a Not To-Do List will help you focus on the projects that matter.

Seeing through on your do-not-do list ultimately may take sheer force of will. Like everything, you will get better with practice.  Jim Collins writes, “The real question is… do you have the discipline to do the right thing and, equally important, to stop doing the wrong things?”

When you get stuck on your not-to-do list, you waste time and end the day frustrated because you didn’t progress on your important top 5 goals.  Make your list and post it where you can always see it to remind yourself of what you should not be doing.  Enlist the support of co-workers to help keep you on track.  If you find yourself doing something on your do-not-do list, get up, walk around, refocus, and then get back after your important to-do list items.  Good luck!

I’d love to hear what makes your list!  Please email me your list at [email protected]


Prioritize Progress

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This article was provided by Busy.Coach, a great source of ideas for the coach that want to improve their productivity

By Mandy Green

So as you are headed back to work after the  holiday break, hopefully you have already set up your plan of attack.  Are you ready to have the best year, best month, best week, and best day ever with your program, recruiting, and career as a coach?

If your response to that sentence was, “yeah right, I wish,” I imagine that your 2016-2017 school year was filled with people, texts, emails, and voice messages begging for your time, attention, and energy.

As you look back over this past year, would you say that you had more wins or losses for you each day work wise?  By winning, I mean did walk into your office with a plan and then you dominated your day by actually getting your most important work done?  I would consider the day a loss if you found yourself giving your time, attention, and energy away freely to anybody who asked for it.  And then before you knew it, your days were gone and you had no sense of accomplishment or progress.

If you are finding that more often than not, your days were on the frustrating side because you didn’t feel like you made any significant progress towards your vision and goals, it goes back at some point to how you are prioritizing things during those days.

How have you been doing in this department? Really think about it. Do you feel like you are proactive and in control of your days or do you just wake up and respond to everybody all day? Obviously as coaches, we have to be available to our team, staff, administration, and recruits, but not as much as you may think or are currently doing.

Today I want to teach you one new way to think about your prioritization. When you do a better job of prioritizing things, I know that you will find that you will start having more wins than losses day by day.

Stop prioritizing the easy.  You know if you are guilty of prioritizing easy if your day feels like there is a whole lot of busy work but you don’t feel as if you’re spending a significant amount of time on work that can make your program better.  I’m sure that you probably intended to do a significant amount of high priority work before you got in the office.  But you think that to get a great start to the day and to build some momentum, you will just get some of the easy things off of your to-list. And then what tends to happen is that you never ever really get around to doing work that will really move the needle for your program.

Coach, you set up your day.  You can choose to do things first that will make a real difference in your program and could change your program for the better in a significant way.  Sure, those other things need to get done.  But choose to do them only after you have spent at least 90 minutes on high priority things.

Stop prioritizing easy, “prioritize progress”.  Things that matter to your program. When you are planning your day, ask yourself, what 3 things must happen today that will get me some real movement forward? I want you to take on something hard every single day. If you do that you will start to find yourself getting a little bit more confident, more momentum, and more into that space where you’ll feel like you are doing things you were meant to do.

For more great ideas to improve your productivity visit Busy.Coach