THE FORMULA FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE TEAM BUILDING

Dr. Cory Dobbs
The Academy for Sport Leadership

“Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will care.” -Your Student-Athlete

Here’s a simple formula that should provide you a clear way to grasp high performance in the area of team leadership. High involvement plus high commitment equals high performance.

So, what does all this mean for you? Well, high involvement means you need to nurture the involvement of every team member. Did you get that—every team member. Each and every team member needs to engage with the leadership development process by bringing a high level of energy and focus. Only when you have high involvement can you entertain the idea of high commitment. Simply put, if you don’t have high involvement you can’t have high commitment, and if you don’t have high commitment you’ll never see high performance.

If you select only a few team captains you’ve willingly and knowingly chosen low involvement. Those student-athletes not selected to develop as leaders will not care much about the process of leadership development of their peers. They’ll clearly say by actions and non-actions, “Why bother, there’s nothing in it for me.” You’ve chosen not to get them directly involved and commitment comes from being involved.

Those student-athletes you’ve chosen as team leaders might show high commitment to leadership and leadership development. Why not, it benefits them. But you are still left with the reality that you don’t—and logically can’t have—high involvement with only a few chosen participants. Thus, you’ll never achieve high commitment nor high performance.

However, if you choose to involve everyone on the team—a leader in every locker—you have a chance to attain high commitment. By placing leadership practice and opportunities in the hands of every team member, you involve everyone. And depending on the quality of programmatic development you have a chance at achieving high commitment. Ahhh, once you get high commitment it is very likely you’ll get high performance.

This isn’t some mystical process. By deploying a leader in every locker approach your players are highly involved with an opportunity to become highly committed. Your challenge is to get them to willingly invest their minds and heart into the team leadership development process, building skills and competencies that lead to high performance. So, to wrap up this leadership bite here’s the formula once again: High Involvement + High Commitment = High Performance.

Pat Fox – Head Football Coach, Pontiac Notre Dame Prep (MI)
Coach Fox is a football coach. We believe that his message is applicable to all programs and all sports.
The following content is provided by Glazier Drive

The following content is provided by Glazier Drive

Coach Adam Mathieson is a football coach and athletic director. We believe that his message is applicable to all programs and all sports.

By Tiegan Kirkwold

From the Hudl Blog

No prac­tice? No prob­lem. Here’s how play­ers can improve on their own.

All coach­es aim to bring out the best in their ath­letes. But it can be tough to ensure play­ers are mak­ing strides in their devel­op­ment from behind a com­put­er screen. So we com­piled some of our favorite resources for mak­ing progress from a distance.

Mental Training

The only way to improve your serve, swing, set (insert any vol­ley­ball skill here) is through com­mit­ment, hard work and patience. The same goes for the brain. The most suc­cess­ful play­ers choose a pos­i­tive atti­tude, main­tain a high lev­el of self-moti­va­tion, set high, real­is­tic goals, use pos­i­tive self-talk, and deal effec­tive­ly with peo­ple. But these skills don’t hap­pen overnight and they don’t always come naturally. 

Encourage your play­ers to put in the men­tal work now, so they can shine tech­ni­cal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly when they’re on the court again. 

• 5 Keys to Mental Toughness in Volleyball
• The Mental Game of Volleyball
• Mental Training from JVA
• How Olympians Train Their Brains

Strength Workouts

Staying active dur­ing this time will make the first prac­tice back a lit­tle eas­i­er, but it’s also cru­cial for injury pre­ven­tion. The good news is there are a ton of at-home strength and con­di­tion­ing work­outs on YouTube—send your favorites to play­ers to keep them moving.

You can also find ideas on Twitter and Instagram, from core work and weight train­ing to pre­hab cir­cuits designed specif­i­cal­ly for vol­ley­ball play­ers who are hard on their shoul­ders. Or cre­ate your own work­outs, record and upload them to Hudl, and have play­ers mes­sage you when they’ve com­plet­ed them.

Skill Development

Playing vol­ley­ball is kind of like rid­ing a bike — it’s hard to for­get once you know it. But that doesn’t mean you want play­ers to go months with­out touch­ing a ball. So we round­ed up some of our favorite drills they can do at home. The best part? For most of these, all they need is a wall and a ball.

• 10 Solo Volleyball Drills to Try at Home
• At-Home Volleyball Drills (Setting, Hitting, Passing, Blocking)
• Volleyball Drills to Do at Home Without a Net or Court
• Art of Coaching At-Home Drills

Officiating

You know how it goes. The first tour­na­ment is around the cor­ner and you’re scram­bling to train your play­ers on how to keep score, track the libero and be the down ref­er­ee. Use this down­time to get your team trained up so it’s smooth sail­ing once match­es start. 

Not sure how to get start­ed? Here are some ideas:

• Set up a time for your team to watch a train­ing video.
• Contact a local offi­cial and see if they’ll run a vir­tu­al train­ing ses­sion with your ath­letes and coaches.
• When you can, host an intra-club scrim­mage so your play­ers can prac­tice in a low-pres­sure environment.

Recruiting

Now’s also the per­fect time for ath­letes to own their recruit­ing process. Encourage them to do research on col­leges, nar­row down their list of schools, reach out to coach­es they’re inter­est­ed in, and com­pile their best moments into a high­light reel.

We recent­ly sat down with a few col­le­giate coach­es to pick their brains about recruit­ing, high­lights and get­ting noticed. They all had great insights for both coach­es and ath­letes, so be sure to share these with your team.

• Jaylen Reyes from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln
• Natalie Morgan from Loyola-Marymount University
• Dani Busboom Kelly from the University of Louisville

Hudl Homework

If you’ve already nailed the at-home work­outs and drills, switch your focus to video review on Hudl and have your play­ers study their craft. Ask them to watch video of pre­vi­ous match­es and cre­ate a playlist of their top five and bot­tom five plays. They can add com­ments and draw­ings explain­ing why it was a high or low moment. You can dis­cuss these in a one-on-one call and devel­op a plan to address their bot­tom five as prepa­ra­tion for next season.

There are so many ways play­ers can keep improv­ing off the court — whether they focus on pre­hab, learn­ing a new skill or plan­ning their future. For more play­er devel­op­ment ideas and resources, check out our Remote Coaching Guide.

By Tiegen Kirkwold

From the Hudl Blog

We’re all adjust­ing to the new nor­mal this vol­ley­ball sea­son. Here are some tips to help you make the tran­si­tion to remote coaching.

Awkward silence. 

Off-top­ic ban­ter.

Slow inter­net. 

Virtual team meet­ings can be tough. 

“My biggest chal­lenge is keep­ing my girls engaged. We are doing video calls as a team, but it’s tough to get them to do any­thing or talk.” Nate Torvik, Team Indiana Volleyball Club

This is unchart­ed ter­ri­to­ry for every­one. We’re here to help with ideas for your next team meeting.

Host a Virtual Book Club

There are great books on mind­set, lead­er­ship and excel­lence. What bet­ter time than now to hone skills like these?

Step one: Decide on a book. If you (or your play­ers) can’t get to a book­store right now, pick one that’s in stock online or con­sid­er an eBook.

Step two: Come up with a sched­ule for how many pages your play­ers need to read every week and get the first club meet­ing on the cal­en­dar. We also rec­om­mend start­ing a group chat to keep every­one accountable. 

Step three: As you read, share inspir­ing quotes or favorite pas­sages in the group chat to keep each oth­er motivated.

Step four: Have each play­er come to the meet­ings with a ques­tion or dis­cus­sion top­ic. That way, every­one will have some­thing to share.

Group Workout

It can be hard for ath­letes to find moti­va­tion to work out alone. If that’s the case for your team (or even if it’s not), a vir­tu­al work­out might be a good way to hold each oth­er account­able and give ath­letes a sense of accom­plish­ment. Just make sure to put a plan togeth­er before­hand. If you don’t, the pause it takes to decide what exer­cise to do next can mess up your rhythm. 

Pro tip: Take the pres­sure off your­self. Have play­ers flex their lead­er­ship skills by assign­ing one of them to lead each workout.

Play a Game

These next two have noth­ing to do with vol­ley­ball, which could be a nice change of pace. Pick a game or two (like Heads Up! or Houseparty) to put your ath­letes’ com­pet­i­tive­ness to the test — and have fun.

Online Cooking Class

Teaching life skills, being togeth­er and eat­ing good food? Sounds like a win-win-win. Pick a recipe to cook with your team vir­tu­al­ly. Share the recipe and ingre­di­ents they’ll need before­hand so your team can sched­ule a gro­cery pick-up (or Instacart order).

Review Video Together

Matches aren’t hap­pen­ing, but that doesn’t mean you can’t watch vol­ley­ball. Search for a col­le­giate or pro­fes­sion­al match on YouTube. Have your team pick a play­er in the same posi­tion and write five things about what they’re doing well. How does the say­ing go, ​“Monkey see, mon­key do?”

You could also pick a match you uploaded to Hudl and teach your ath­letes how to review film. Remind them not to focus on how awe­some the kills and stuff blocks are, but nar­row in on foot­work and tim­ing as an attack­er, or see if they’re releas­ing too ear­ly from base on defense.

For more ways to com­mu­ni­cate with your team and sug­ges­tions for the best video con­fer­enc­ing, mes­sag­ing and con­tent shar­ing tools, check out our Remote Coaching Guide.