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

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

I’m a huge fan of TEDtalks.  I watch them, I show them to my team.  I think everyone should be watching them.  Well, it turns out that TED has a website with written articles and it’s just as good!  So when I saw 5 ways to build lasting self-esteem, I thought this would be great to talk about in relation to our teams.

Here are some ways we can help our athletes when their self-esteem needs a boost:

1. 1. Use affirmations correctly. “Grit” has been in the news lately as a way to help children succeed, but I think folks of all ages can use it.  For a player who’s struggling with self-esteem, saying “I’m the fastest runner on the team!” won’t ring true and won’t actually motivate or encourage them.  But saying, “Surely, I’ll succeed if I keep running these workouts as hard as I can!”

 

1. 1. Identify competencies and develop them. This one is about digging into a skill they’re good at and keep working at it.  Not that we don’t want to create well-rounded athletes, but we’ve got to give them enough reps (and compliments) at their particular skill that they feel confident…even when the occasional mistake happens.

 

1. 1. Learn to accept compliments. People with low self-esteem aren’t receptive to compliments will have a million reasons why the compliment isn’t true.  Learning to simply say, “Thank you”, will take our athletes down the road to higher self-esteem.

 

1. 1. Eliminate self-criticism and introduce self-compassion. If you’re not helping your athletes with their self-talk, that’s a great area of growth.  The best way to start is just to ask them what they’re thinking when they’re having a bad spell.  Odds are, they’re saying negative things (“Don’t miss this free throw again” or “Please don’t pass me the ball”) instead of gritty things like, “Even Michael Jordan missed some free throws!”

 

1. Affirm your real worth. When this player who needs the self-esteem boost is feeling particularly low, maybe they could even write a list of why they’re good at their sport. As cheesy as it sounds, it forces them to articulate why they do what they do.  An effective spinoff of this strategy is to have their teammates write the list for them.

According to the article, “when our self-esteem is higher, we not only feel better about ourselves, we are more resilient as well, we are also less vulnerable to anxiety, and we release less cortisol into our bloodstream when under stress.”  And those things will help them perform better…and increase their esteem!

 

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.

 

The purpose of this post is not to say that you should run your Parent’s Meeting like this, but just to stimulate your thinking on how you can make your Parent’s Meeting as productive as possible.  It is more than a task to complete on the season checklist, it is an important opportunity to build positive rapport with your athlete’s parents!

The coach/parent relationship is extremely important, and as we all know, is one of the most difficult parts of coaching. I believe that holding a pre-season parent meeting will help to communicate with the parents in mass in a non-confrontational way. After our meeting, we open the practice to parents to watch.

The agenda that I have used for our parent meetings is outlined below

We start off with this quote from Lou Holtz:

I don’t think coaching is about making a million dollars a year. I don’t think coaching is about winning championships. I don’t think coaching is about going to a great school. I think coaching is about helping young people have a chance to succeed. There is no more awesome responsibility than that. I think one of the greatest honors a person can have is to be called ‘Coach.’ ”
—Lou Holtz

WE ALREADY ARE AT A GREAT SCHOOL!

1. Thank you for your attendance and for dealing with our practice times throughout the year—there are seven different practice times and game schedules being played right now.
2. Coaching Staff and attendance for information purpose.
3. Goal #1 for coaches: Establish a life—long relationship with each participant that cannot be broken.
Goal #2 for coaches: Assist in the development of all aspects of the life of the participants. Goal #1 for participants: Have the most rewarding season of his/her career to this point in our sport.
4. Cost to parents

5. Relationship of coach and parents
A. I look forward to a friendly, professional, and productive relationship with every parent.
B. Roles—Play, coach, officiate, support (Each of us should stick to one of those roles ONLY)
C. Please be supportive—“Listen to your coaches about (volleyball, soccer, football, baseball, whatever the sport is)” is the best advice to give. I have an entire program to consider. Over 100 students in grades 5-12.
D. Notebook—please look at your son/daughter’s team notebook that we provide him/her.  It will helps you understand our philosophy
E. Playing time—Coach’s decision and is not negotiable
F. Role in program or program level (varsity, JV, Freshman)—Coach’s decision and not negotiable
G. Strategy—Coach’s decision and not negotiable
H. I will not discuss other players with parents
I. I will talk to you about any other area that can help your child
J. Please support our priorities—again, please see your player’s notebooks.  We put their personal spirituality, family, health, citizenship, and academics as higher priorities than volleyball.  I would rather have him miss practice for a Dr. appointment than to miss a class.  Of course, I would prefer he not miss class or practice, but if a choice has to be made, he would be excused from practice as long as I know ahead of time so that I am not surprised.  I hope it doesn’t happen, but I realize there are emergencies where communication with a coach is not a priority.
K. We ask that you follow the chain of command on all concerns. If your son has a concern that he shares with you, please ask him if he has spoken to the coach about it. We would appreciate your son extending us the courtesy of seeing the coach he has a concern with first. I am not perfect, but I am the coach and it is my job to deal with any problem that affects the program. I would appreciate hearing concerns directly from your son.  I do my best to be someone who is worthy of their trust and respect to be able to approach when there is an issue.
L. Parents may attend practice. However, it is the opinion of our coaching staff that it is not in the best interest of your child to do so.  We feel it puts undo pressure on him, but each child is different in that regard.

6. Administrative Items Web Site Waiver, Prospect Sheet, Code of Conduct
7. Web Site, E-mails
8. Question and answer
9. Food for away games
Varsity and Junior Varsity (Need volunteers)
Freshman Games (Need volunteers)
Other ideas–signs, buttons, pictures, having the team over to your home Please follow our priorities if the players are at your home
10. Locker room tour for parents and watch practice if you are able.

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.