This post is also found on The Coaches Toolbox, a collection of resources for coaches of all sports

By Cory Dobbs, Ed.D.

“A team is not just a collection of individuals.  When everyone clicks into place, a team is truly a community, a tightly knit fellowship.” 

Many coaches are expert tacticians, strategists, and teachers of techniques.   Few are adept at building teams.  I mean high-performing teams.  Think Seal Team Six.  The elite fighting force, the team that captured Osama Bin Laden.  Sure, your team may master an offense or a defense, but it’s a fact that most teams don’t reach an elite level of teamwork.  To do so requires a deliberate and intense effort to building the team.  As a researcher I’ve studied hundreds of teams and can only conclude few teams, won-loss records aside, ever achieve an elite level.  Study after study of elite teams, like Seal Team Six, continue to reveal it’s not the personnel but processes that lead to an elite level team.

Take a moment and re-read the quote above.  I’ve purposefully left off the name of the author.  I did so out of respect for his work, but I do find this quote to be lacking in terms of action-ability.   Most coaches and players unknowingly live by a “click or clash” framework of relationship building.  That is, some people just click together while others clash with one another.  And it’s rarely explicit, but very implicit—teammates prefer to go along to get along.  Not in elite teams.

At its most dynamic level a team is a system, a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim of the system architects.  This differs from the most basic level of a team as a collection of players.  When the process of team building becomes more strategic, the calculus changes.  A laissez-faire approach changes to a more direct and deliberate approach.  Relationship building becomes the central focus.  Relationship is everything.  When you see the process of team building as social system, then the integrity of every interpersonal interaction is essential to developing an intensive teaming capability.

I’ve uncovered, through wide-ranging research and practice, twenty principles and concepts and isolated eight “roles” that are necessary for building elite teams.  Yes, I’ve cracked the code to building high-performance teams.  High-performing teams make deliberate teamwork their focus.

The Teamwork Intelligence approach is a disciplined way of thinking about and building a high-performing team; it involves discussing teamwork as both a system and a set of processes.  This allows us to explore the context in which teamwork occurs, the characteristics of the coaches and players, individual and team values, experience, the timing of events, the history in which teamwork is embedded, and how teamwork intelligence plays a role in individual and collective successes and failures.   Teamwork intelligence delves into team work as a process and as a way to understand the person (both players and coaches) embedded within a system.

To think about teamwork as a system, we need to consider the inputs, such as training for teamwork intelligence, the process, which we can describe as the system and the context in which the players and coaches interact, and the outcomes, which are the levels of motivation, performance, and well-being of players and coaches.   To leverage the process of teamwork intelligence I have designed five building blocks that must be operationalized:  (1) the four dimensions of team building and the associated eight roles of teamwork; (2) the three mindsets of a team player; (3) the three layers of a team player; (4) the five core concerns of every team member, and (5) the five forces of performance-enhancing relationships.  By optimizing these five components—the teamwork intelligence system—we are able to enhance each individual’s vital force and, in turn, the collective force of the team.

SO, WHAT IS TEAMWORK INTELLIGENCE?                   

Teamwork Intelligence is the purposeful and intentional relational process of team members together raising one another to higher levels of motivation, collaboration, compassion, and performance.  It’s deceptively simple: in order to build a high-performing team you have to create the conditions for team members to commit and unify—to coalesce into a single organism.  Such oneness is not inevitable; it is forged methodically and deliberately.
WHY IS TEAMWORK INTELLIGENCE THE SMART THING TO DO?

A significant aspect of teamwork intelligence is knowing the expectations one should have of one’s teammates.  One of the most significant expectations is that of high-level ownership with the purpose of each player investing in the development of a high-performing team.  Through expectations and collective achievements, identification, loyalty, and trust are built.  The goal and expected outcome is the development of the team’s full potential.

Extreme Ownership is a central concept of Teamwork Intelligence.  Teamwork Intelligence is not only about teaching student-athletes how to comply with a set of rules and procedures; it is about recognizing the profound difference between compliance-based behavior and values-based performance.  Extreme Ownership is about creating a culture in which every team member is committed to performance excellence and team member wellness based on personal commitment to the best interests of the team.  Extreme Ownership occurs when student-athletes own their personal learning and performance as well as team learning and performance.

Teamwork Intelligence generates higher levels of autonomy, extra effort, commitment, performance, and satisfaction.  High performance is what the student-athlete wants to do, not because it brings personal glory, but because they feel a sense of extreme ownership of the team.  The extreme owner is all in as a team player and willingly goes all out for the team.

I’ve seen enough to validate the claim that knowing what to do can lead to higher levels of doing.  However, I’ve also observed far too frequently a high degree of learned helplessness.  Student-athletes have, for the most part, grown up in a sport system in which they prefer to wait for the coach to take corrective action, to “instill” motive and values, and basically avoid taking responsibility for the building of the team.  This is why elite teams are emphatic about deliberately building a team and insistent on teamwork intelligence.

Teamwork Intelligence provides a framework for seeing interrelationships of the elements of the team system rather than static “snapshots” that tend to distort the differences between a mediocre team and a high-performing team.   Teamwork Intelligence provides a set of principles and includes a set of specific tools and techniques (such as role clarification provided by The Eight Roles of Teamwork) for building a high-performance team.  Investing in the development of relationships will pay off.

Okay, so are you willing to invest time, energy, and resources into developing an elite team?  If so, get started as soon as possible.   Explore the principles and practices The Academy for Sport Leadership has discovered and developed and teach in our Teamwork Intelligence Workshop.

 

To find out more about and order Sport Leadership Books authored by Dr. Dobbs including Coaching for Leadership, click this link: The Academy for Sport Leadership Books

 

About Cory Dobbs, Ed.D.

Cory Dobbs is the founder of The Academy for Sport Leadership and a nationally recognized thought leader in the areas of leadership and team building.  Cory is an accomplished researcher of human experience. Cory engages in naturalistic inquiry seeking in-depth understanding of social phenomena within their natural setting.

A former basketball coach, Cory’s coaching background includes experience at the NCAA DII, NJCAA, and high school levels of competition.  After a decade of research and development Cory unleashed the groundbreaking Teamwork Intelligence program for student-athletics. Teamwork Intelligence illuminates the process of designing an elite team by using the 20 principles and concepts along with the 8 roles of a team player he’s uncovered while performing research.

Cory has worked with professional athletes, collegiate athletic programs, and high schools teaching leadership and team building as a part of the sports experience and education process.  As a consultant and trainer Dr. Dobbs has worked with Fortune 500 organizations such as American Express, Honeywell, and Avnet, as well as medium and small businesses.

Dr. Dobbs has taught leadership and organizational change at Northern Arizona University, Ohio University, and Grand Canyon University.

Thanks to Hudl’s Reports page, head volleyball coach Zoe Bell is able to drive team development by integrating video with data.

Volleyball and stats go hand in hand. Every match there are coaches on the bench tracking kills, blocks or digs. For some, those stats are enough. They can take that information, share it with their team, and move onto the next match.

Others are taking that data a step further. It’s great that your outside-hitter had 16 kills in a match, but what was their hitting percentage? How effective were they during the match? Linking those key statistical outputs to data can elevate your team.

Zoe Bell, head girls volleyball coach at Ardrey Kell High School (N.C.), uses the link between video and stats to see what led to the outcome, allowing Bell and her staff to make the necessary adjustments. “I can see every dig, and then it would show our defensive positioning. On the other hand, I can see every kill by the other team which could show us, maybe we weren’t in the right spots,” she said.

It also gives them the ability to use video to explain situations to their players. “You have kids that are verbal learners and some people that need to see it,” she said. “Maybe somebody’s hitting percentage is a lot better than somebody else’s, and then I can make that switch. Then visually I can show the girl, ‘This is why you’re playing time is not as much as it used to be.’”

The ability to see the video with the stat works both ways. It gives Bell the opportunity to teach, but it can give the athlete an avenue to express what they see during a match. That relationship is essential in building trust and opening lines of communication.

“If I have a kid coming in and I want to show them their hitting percentage was negative, we can go in and see what happened in that match,” Bell explained. “Maybe I didn’t transition out or maybe they were all bad sets.”

 

With data sorted into rotations, Bell can quickly identify what could be causing particular issues, and make adjustments on the fly. Even further, Bell can see the serving and hitting percentages for the rotations, the blocks and assisted blocks, as well as errors.

“Maybe I flip flop some people, maybe I switch my outside hitters, maybe it’s who I have side by side,” Bell said. “Maybe we’re not passing well in that rotation and that’s causing us to lose points and so maybe I have to change that. Or maybe if rotation three is our worst rotation I’ll start rotation four.”

With Hudl, Bell can use the reports page to see all of those outcomes, and help her team prepare for their next opponent. Join coaches like Bell in seeing what the power of stats can have on your team.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coach Zak Boisvert has put together some notes on the coaching philosophy of Alabama Football Coach Nick Saban. I hope the notes can have a positive impact on your program. All coaches can learn something, regardless that he coaches a different sport.

PROCESS

“We’re not going to talk about what we’re going to accomplish, we’re going to talk about how we’re going to do it.”

“We don’t talk about winning championships, we talk about being champions.”

-“I’m tired of hearing all this talk from people who don’t understand the process of hard work—like little kids in the back seat asking ‘Are we there yet?’ Get where you’re going 1 mile-marker at a time.”

-“The scoreboard has nothing to do with the process. Each possession you look across at the opponent and commit yourself to dominate that person. It’s about individuals dominating the individuals they’re playing against. If you can do this…if you can focus on the one possession and wipe out the distractions…then you will be satisfied with the result.”

-“He says ‘the grind’ a lot. The things you have to do so you can do what you want to do. Like play for the national championship. All the workouts. Spring ball. All the practices, summer workouts, and things like that.” –Alabama LB E. Anders

-“Focus on the play like it has a history and a life of its own.”

-“Success doesn’t come from pie-in-the-sky thinking. It’s the result of consciously doing something each day that will add to your overall excellence.”

-There’s no mention of titles. Instead, his message has been that the way to win a championship is to concentrate on what you’re doing today, and try to build on that tomorrow.

-“It’s not the end result. Don’t think about winning the SEC Championship. Don’t think about the national championship. Think about what you needed to do in this drill, on this play, in this moment.

That’s the process: Let’s think about what we can do today, the task at hand.”

-“If you don’t get result-oriented with the kids, you can focus on the things in the process that are important to them being successful.”

DARE TO BE GREAT:

-“Being the absolute best isn’t natural. You must bend your entire life around being great. Beat the urge to rest after you’ve achieved a taste of success.”

-“Once you get good, you need a total disposition about being better than good. Now the challenge is to be the best and that’s a never-ending process.”

CULTURE:

“We don’t have one individual on our team that can make our team great, but we can have one individual who could destroy the team chemistry by making bad decisions and destroy all the things we’re talking about.”

-“Team chemistry begins to surface in the summer. True leaders start to emerge. You start to see the core buy-in that everybody has in terms of how they go about what they do. For the first time, the responsibility becomes theirs instead of somebody else’s. You start to see what the team might be.”

-“He does an outstanding job of getting everybody on the same page and making sure that they understand ‘Look, you’re going to buy in or you’re going to become irrelevant.”

-“You’ve got to be responsible and accountable and be able to do your job. There’s a way you have to do it in terms of the effort, the toughness and the intangibles and dependability you have and discipline you have in carrying out your responsibility. And I, quite frankly, think when you have a critical mass of players on your team that think like that, they don’t really want other guys that don’t think that way to be out there with them.”

Five Day-to-Day Goals

1) Respect and trust your teammates
2) Have a positive impact on someone else
3) Dominate your opponent
4) Be responsible
5) Act like a champion

PARABLES:

“If I put a 2-by-4 on the ground and asked you to walk across it, how many of you guys could do that? You could all do it, because you’d focus on the board. But what if I took the same 2-by-4 and it put it 10 stories up, stretched between 2 buildings? Then it’s hard to focus on the board, because you’re focused on your fear of falling. Focus on your goals. Don’t be distracted by your fears. Concentrate on the 2-by-4 and we’ll get it done.”

“Discipline is not punishment. Discipline is changing someone’s behavior.”

Four Components of Leadership

Engage: You HAVE to make it about them because they don’t see it like we do. Get over it, youth have changed.

Inspire: Why does every coach think that everyone wants to be great? Human condition is to survive, to be average. IT IS SPECIAL TO WANT TO BE GREAT. You cannot expect your kids to want to be great. We’ve had success here at Alabama because we don’t assume people want to be great and we’ve put a system in place that makes it uncomfortable unless they’re choosing the path that will make them great. We don’t assume they will do it on their own. It’s up to us to inspire/put a system in place to make people want it.

Influence: Thoughts, Habits, Priorities. Influence these 3 (IN THAT ORDER!)

Impact: How do we impact them? How do they impact each other? Peer intervention + peer pressure.

“Nick has unique ability to make everyone in the building single-minded in purpose. There’s nobody in there that isn’t doing something to try to win.” –Bill Belichick

“Everything for us goes back to trust and respect. Trust and respect the principles of organization, trust and respect each other.”

“He puts a structure in place that covers all areas from ankle-wrappers to play-callers. Everyone is held accountable. It’s a system where people know there’s a standard, an expectation that you’re there to meet.” –Major Applewhite

“You have to challenge people to do things a certain way and it may be more than what they expect from themselves. You have to re-enforce positive performance when they do it, but you also have to confront them to do it correctly if they don’t do it that way. And there’s a balance in there.”

SELF-DISCIPLINE:

“Everything you do, everything you have, everything you become is ultimately the result of the choices you have made. You have the power to direct your life. How will you use it? What’s your choice?”

You have to have discipline to do things on your own. There’s not always going to be someone to make you do it. You have to have discipline to do it yourself.”

MOTIVATION

“I don’t care what you did yesterday. If you’re happy with that, you have bigger problems.”

MENTAL TOUGHNESS

“Mental toughness is a perseverance that you have when you can make yourself do something that you really don’t feel like doing. You don’t really feel like getting up, but you get up. You don’t feel like practicing today, but you practice. And, even in difficult circumstances and difficult surroundings, you can stay focused on what you need to stay focused on. So it really is a mental discipline to be able to
stick within whatever circumstance you are in and continue to persevere at a high level and not let other circumstance affect how you perform.”

“I will not allow my players to put their hand on their knees or show in their faces they are tired going into the fourth quarter. If they do, they are going to get their butts whipped. If they do that, they are showing the other team they can be beat.”

“The mental toughness training was geared toward showing players that their minds were as important to football success as their bodies.”

“Every day you come to practice, you get better or you get worse. You’re not going to stay the same and it’s all going to start with how you think. How you think will determine the mental intensity you play with. Without that mental intensity, we cannot improve.

“There are 3 intangibles that take no athletic ability that aids a player in being responsible for his own self-determination. Those 3 intangibles take the most time in coaching in my opinion. Those intangibles are effort, toughness, and assignment.”

“I think the things that it takes to be successful are the same regardless, whether it’s passion, commitment, hard work, investing your time in the right things, perseverance, pride in performance, how you think in a positive and negative way, the discipline you have personally—you have to make choices in your decisions.”

MISCELLANEOUS:

“He doesn’t obsess over national championships, he obsesses over trying to push people to be better. He thinks if he can do that, the wins will come.”

“You don’t dominate someone the first play, you do it the 70th play. You need to sustain.”

“Make all your decisions based on winning.” (#1 thing Saban learned from Chuck Knoll)

Locker room sign: “Don’t Come Back Until You’ve Improved”

“Be relentless in the pursuit of your goal and resilient in the face of bad luck and adversity.”

“The one thing our program is based upon is finishing. Finish games. Finish your reps. Finish your running. Finish practice strong. Finish the fourth quarter.” –Alabama OL Will Vlachos

“Don’t look at the scoreboard. Whether you’re ahead or behind shouldn’t affect how you participate.”

“Teaching is the ability to inspire learning.”

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

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

There is always a huge gap between the birth of a dream and the achievement of that dream.
–Put Your Dream To The Test

Every team starts out the year with high goals…things they’d like to have accomplished by season’s end.  What every team does not have is the desire, tenacity, and motivation to keep pursuing the goal when (cliché alert!) the going gets tough.  Let’s discuss how to keep our teams and our athletes on track in this third of a three-part series (click here to read parts one and two) while examining the last five questions from the book, Put Your Dream To The Test by John Maxwell.  I believe that guiding them through this goal setting process can help them to accomplish individual and team goals put them on the path to having a successful season.

The People Question:  Have I Included the People I Need to Realize My Dream?
“Convincing others of the significance of your dream can happen only if you are convinced of the significance of your dream.”  This question is for people who need to build a team around them in order to be successful, but our athletes come with a ready-made team!  Now all you’ve got to do is remind them that the goal can only be accomplished through daily work.  Everyone’s fired up at the beginning of the season, but what about when you’ve suffered a heartbreaking loss, or midterms are kicking their butts, or it’s just harder than they thought?  That’s when we can remind them that they’re not alone and that they’re in it together.

The Cost Question:  Am I Willing to Pay the Price for My Dream?
“All dreams are outside our comfort zone.  Leaving that zone is a price we must pay to achieve them.”  What’s the price, you ask?  Criticism: what if one of your players thinks that she can be in the WNBA and has decided to make that one of her goals?  When she tells people, they may try to dissuade her from pursuing that goal…not to be mean or negative, but in protecting her feelings.  Fear: using our same example, that’s a big out-of-her-comfort-zone goal…and it’s scary.  If she’s not willing to work through being afraid that she’s bitten off more than she can chew, then she should get a smaller goal.  Hard work: athletics is hard work on its own.  Adding a big, huge goal heaps a whole lot more work to their plate…are they willing to pay that price?

The Tenacity Question:  Am I Moving Closer to My Dream?
“The only guarantee for failure is to stop trying.”  Your athletes have to be finishers, not just starters.  It’s really that simple.  As Dory from Finding Nemo says, “just keep swimming.”  Don’t quit, don’t give up.  As long as they keep putting in work everyday, their goals are getting closer and more real.

The Fulfillment Question:  Does Working Toward My Dream Bring Satisfaction?
“If you want the pursuit of your dream to be sustainable, it needs to bring you satisfaction.”  Maxwell says that there’s a gap between stating the goal and achieving the goal…and it only gets bigger with a larger goal.  If your athletes appreciate the process of working toward a goal, they will discover how tough they are.  And that toughness will serve them well and keep them from wavering.

The Significance Question:  Does My Dream Benefit Others?
“Start doing what is necessary; then do what is possible; and suddenly, you are doing the impossible.” I think the answer to this question is two-fold.  For the individual, the team will benefit from their goals.  For the team, future teams will benefit from the current team’s goals.  And I just love this quotation!  If our athletes and teams just do what is necessary…at least they’re working toward the goal.  What is necessary?  Coming to practice and working hard, supporting their teammates, and giving their all in each and every drill at each and every practice.  And if they do what is possible, then they’ll challenge themselves…because how do they know what they’re capable of or what is possible for them if they don’t try new things?  If they do what is possible everyday, all of a sudden those things that they thought were impossible are possible.  And they just keep pushing the envelope and keep getting better and those goals are getting closer and closer.

That’s the end of our goal setting series and I hope you found at least one thing that you can put into action with your team right away.  Every team and every person will have different goals, but we coaches can have one plan to guide them along that goal setting process.

 

 

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.

 

Optional Blurb: What once started as a recruiting tool became a full-fledged coaching weapon for Pilipa’a Club Volleyball.

Do a quick Google search and you’ll find the distance between Hilo, Hawaii and Los Angeles, California is about 2,500 miles. Expand that search to any city that has a collegiate volleyball program and that number grows drastically.

An ocean separates the small island town from the lower 48, and it can make recruiting difficult to navigate. In a hyper-competitive space like club volleyball, everyone is competing for the eyes of scouts, so getting in-front of coaches on the tournament trail is priority.

“When you live in Hawaii, and any tournament travel that you do is long distance, it adds quite a bit of cost,” said Chris Leonard, one of the coaches at Pilipa’a Volleyball Club. “We travel once or twice a year to give our kids the chance to play against some of the best teams in the country, and hopefully give them an opportunity to be seen by college coaches, but that’s not enough.”

Most colleges outside of the elite have tight recruiting budgets. Some can’t justify traveling to see certain players halfway across the world. In spite of the obvious distance obstacles, Leonard and the club make it a point to bridge the gap between college recruiting and the players that play for him by opening doors. “[Hudl] gives our players an opportunity to be seen by coaches year-round,” said Leonard. “It has opened opportunities for discussions with collegiate programs that would not otherwise be able to see our kids play.

“I don’t want to make it sound like a huge thing, but Hudl is a part of that process for our kids to be seen. It’s difficult to say it’s only because of Hudl, but I do think it’s an important part of what we do.”

Over time, however, Leonard saw that video could be so much more to his coaches and players.“I’m at the point where I’m trying to use Hudl now as a coaching tool and as a recruitment tool for our players,” said Leonard.

“Hudl has become more valuable for me each year that we’ve used it.”

Implementing review sessions at the individual and team levels has helped his players elevate their game. Coaching individual technique in the scope of the team’s overall play can be difficult, especially when you can’t see what went on during a specific point in a match. “The analytics give us insight that was previously unavailable while the the tagged video captures many teachable moments for our athletes,” said Leonard. “It allows us to generate comprehensive playlists of just about every aspect of the game for our team and individual athletes to review.

“It’s a tremendous learning tool, and we’re preparing our kids to play at the next level.”

Click here to see their film session and goal setting meeting

What began as a recruiting aid has become an integral part of the clubs day-to-day process. “It’s provided opportunities in video that once upon a time were only available to large collegiate programs or international programs, and made it accessible for a small club like ours that doesn’t have big financial resources to work with,” said Leonard.

Hudl is doing great things for volleyball and I would highly recommend them if you are looking to make your club, high school or collegiate program better.”