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Ben Horowitz on Culture
Ben Horowitz is the author of What You Do Is Who You Are. I really liked this paragraph on culture.
Your culture is how your company makes decisions when you're not there. It's the set of assumptions your employees use to resolve the problems they face every day. It's how they behave when no one is looking. If you don't methodically set your culture, then two-thirds of it will end up being accidental, and the rest will be a mistake.
Developing Your Presence
I've written before about presence. Presence is the ability to command a room. It is a confidence that you have as a leader that engages the people in front of you, and keeps them engaged while you deliver a message. Not everyone has great presence about them, and not everyone is a head coach. For some it's natural to their personality, probably forged through their experience and education. But if it doesn't come naturally to you, there are ways to work on your presence.
Presence is different for everyone. It can be based on your personality. John Belein has presence. So does John Calipari. And Steve Kerr. But I'd say the type of presence they have are all very different. Presence isn't just standing in front of a room and speaking loudly. There is much more to it.
How can you work on your presence as a leader?
Know Your Craft
Confidence is a huge part of your presence as a leader, and confidence comes from knowing your craft. You have to study the game. You have to know clearly in your own head what you are trying to do, how you want to do it and why it matters. Any moment of hesitation in front of your team cuts at your credibility as a leader.
This doesn't mean you are always going to be right. But you have to know what you are talking about and be able to explain it clearly.
Preparation
Have a specific plan in place for practice every day. Know how you want it to flow, and the key things you want your team to get out of it. Think about the message you want to send, and prepare how you want to deliver it. You don't have to speak into a mirror before practice like you might win an Oscar. But jot down the key bullet points you want to get across and rehearse in your mind how you are going to deliver them.
Eliminate Crutch Words
In your preparation, make sure your message is clean. Take note of crutch words that you use, words that give you time to think about what you want to say next. For me, it was often "Okay" or "Alright." When talking to my team in a huddle I'd say "We've got to do a better job in transition defense, okay, we need to sprint back and guard the ball, alright, make sure we are matched up..."
The crutch words take away from your message, and show some indecision in your delivery. You want the message to be as clear and concise as possible. Have someone record your huddles one day in practice or a game. Notice the crutch words that you use, and work hard to eliminate them.
Deliver The Message
The best presenters and public speakers in the world will tell you to focus on one person in the group, and deliver them one message. Look one person in the eye and say, "We have to a much better job with our half-court execution." Then focus on another person and deliver the next message. "Everyone has to know what we are running coming out of the huddle."
The way you deliver the message is important regarding the confidence your team has in that message. One person, one message keeps them all engaged, and the message has an impact. If you scan the crowd while you talk continuously, you aren't connecting with anyone, and you will lose them quicker.
Pace
The pace of your message is also really important to your presence. If you are talking 100 miles per hour you will appear scattered and unprepared. It's certainly okay to have a sense of urgency when you deliver the message. But speak at a pace where they can hear you, and absorb the message. If you deliver the message to quickly you'll miss your mark.
Connection
What is your relationship like with your team away from the court? How much time do you spend with them individually? The connection you have with your team is essential to getting the most out of them, and part of that is your presence as a coach. If they really believe in you, and feel like you have their best interests in mind, they will want to hear your message. They will engage, and give you a break if you get a little quick or confusing. Your connection to your players helps your presence in front of them.
Humility
Coaches lead the world in taking themselves too seriously. Don't do it. Great leaders are humbled, and no matter how successful they are they don't make it about themselves. Leading with an ego is a quick way to turn your team off.
Honesty
Direct truth-tellers have a natural presence about them. Great competitors want to hear the truth, even if it's difficult to hear. When they know you are going to shoot it to them straight, you'll have them at attention. It seems simple, but it's a mistake many leaders make. Speak the truth to them at all times, and they'll want to listen to what you have to say.
Are You Mentally Tough?
There are a lot of definitions of mental toughness out there. The one I prefer is simple, and comes from Jack Clark, the Rugby coach at Cal-Berkeley. Mental toughness is "the ability to move on to the next most important thing."
However you define it, mental toughness is about handling everything that is happening around you - good or bad - and still being able to perform. It's overcoming adversity. It's handling failure. Handling success. Fighting through fatigue. Executing under pressure. Staying focused. Handling the emotions that come with intense competition. Communicating properly in an intense environment. You can put 1,000 different things under the umbrella of mental toughness. But I don't think anyone would dispute one thing - it's important to be successful.
However you describe or define mental toughness for your team - and you should definitely define it - think about whether you exhibit those characteristics as a coach. I see plenty of coaches who think mental toughness is important. But when I look at the coach's behavior, it doesn't look like they are exhibiting the characteristics of mental toughness.
How do you react to a bad call, a turnover, or poor execution as a coach? Do you exhibit the behavior you want out of your players when they make a mistake? I see a lot of coaches with demonstrative emotional reactions to a bad play who then preach to their team about bad body language. If you are going to be the body language police, start with your own behavior.
How do you communicate when things aren't going well? Are you calm and composed, or are you emotional? Think about how you want your players to communicate in the heat of the action. So many coaches jump all over players for saying the wrong thing or using the wrong tone when things aren't going their way. But that isn't the behavior they see from the head coach.
I see plenty of coaches who spend the entire huddle during a time out screaming at their team, or a specific player, about the mistakes they just made. Yet their message in practice is "move on to the next play." You can't expect your team to be mentally tough and move on to the next play when you don't do it as the coach.
Mentally tough players don't make excuses. They take ownership and do not complain about the stuff they can't control. But that isn't always what you see from the coach. We harp on the bad calls in big spots. We say stuff like "we just have to make a shot." We use the phrase, "This isn't why we lost, but..." and then give an excuse as to why we lost. Coaches make plenty of excuses, because it's a way of self-preservation. When you do, expect your players to do the same.
Pick the most important elements for you and your team that define mental toughness. Then take a look at your own behavior as a coach. The "do as I say, not as I do" approach doesn't work. Rationalizing bad behavior by saying stuff like "I'm just fighting for you guys" and "I'm only trying to get the most out of you," doesn't work either. The players can see right through it.
If you want a mentally tough team, exhibit those behaviors as a coach. If you can't handle it, don't be surprised when your players can't either.
To Lead Is To Live Dangerously
To lead is to live dangerously, because when your leadership counts, when you lead people through difficult change, you challenge what people hold dear – their daily habits, tools, loyalties and ways of thinking – with nothing more to offer perhaps than possibility. Moreover, leadership often means exceeding the authority you are given to tackle the challenge at hand. People push back when you disturb the personal and institutional equilibrium they know. And people resist in all kinds of creative ways that can get you taken out of the game, pushed aside, undermined or eliminated.
- “Leadership on the Line”, Heifetz & Linsky
The Four Emotional Markers of Mental Toughness
Sports Psychologist Jim Loehr has described “the four emotional markers of mental toughness:”
Emotional Flexibility – The ability to handle different situations in a balanced or non-defensive manner. Emotional flexibility also speaks to the skill of drawing on a wide range of positive emotions–humor, fight spirit, pleasure.
Emotional Responsiveness – You are emotionally engaged in the competitive situation, not withdrawn.
Emotional Strength – The ability to handle great emotional force and sustain your fighting spirit no matter what the circumstances.
Emotional Resiliency – Being able to handle setbacks and recovering quickly from them.
I Have A Dream
Have you ever watched the full speech? It's only about 17 minutes. Incredibly powerful.
Tom Seaver's 301st Win
I loved this paragraph from Bill Madden's new book Tom Seaver, A Terrific Life. The first chapter is all about the day of Seaver's 300th win, towards the end of his career, when he pitched for the White Sox at Yankee Stadium. Madden, the author, kept prodding him about what, in retrospect, stood out most to Seaver about that game.
"You know what?" Seaver said. "Winning three hundred games in the major leagues is a great achievement. But does anyone know what I did in my next start? No? Well, I won my three hundred first. I went back to work and said, "This game is as important as the game five days ago." I'm more proud of three-oh-one than I am of three hundred. There's such a motivation for three hundred. And I respected the game enough to understand that the next one is just as important, if not more so, than three hundred. Because it makes a statement. I loved it."
Deserved or Earned
"Deserve ain't got nothing to do with it." - Prop Joe, The Wire
I've had a lot of conversations with players over the years about playing time. I try and be as direct, honest and open as I can about how to earn playing time with my teams. For us, it was always three things - compete, produce, and be a great teammate. We would define those values as behaviors for our guys and get specific, so they knew exactly what it took. I didn't want any confusion about how playing time was earned. But the main point was just that - it was earned.
Often the conversations with players involved something like, "Coach, I feel I deserve a chance to play. I'm at practice every day, I work hard, just like the other guys. But they are playing, and I'm not." The word deserve always bothered me in that context. The implication is "I'm here practicing just like everyone else. Why don't I get a chance to play?" It's as if there are minimal requirements, and once everyone meets those requirements, everyone gets to play.
My response is always, "You say you deserve a chance to play. But how much playing time have you earned?" Deserve to me implies a low standard where everyone gets a chance. But this isn't the YMCA. You didn't sign up for youth soccer, where everyone who shows up to practice deserves a chance to play. Just because you read the book and completed the assignments, doesn't mean you deserve an A. You deserve a grade. You earn an A.
When it comes to playing time, I'm not that concerned with what you feel you deserve. Playing time is earned, just like an A in history class. You complete the requirements, but you also do a great job with them - better than the other people in the class. As far as playing time goes, I'm with my man Prop Joe. Deserve ain't got nothing to do with it.
You have to earn the right to get on the floor. There are 15 guys on the team, and only five get to play at a time. Odds are, some of them aren't going to play at all. I'm sure those guys were at practice too, and in many cases they were giving their all. We don't call time out with 10 minutes to go in the game to get the guys who deserve playing time on the court. This isn't summer camp. We aren't playing the Lakers for first place after stations. If you wan't to talk about playing time, come to me with why you think you've earned playing time. Don't come to me with what you think you deserve.
As coaches we have to do a better job of making the standards clear, and communicating them. This is where many coaches get into trouble. We don't want to paint ourselves into a corner, or we just don't think about it that deeply, so we don't define the standards for playing time. As I said for us it was three things - compete, produce, and be a great teammate. We defined what that meant in behavioral terms and we celebrated and rewarded that effort. When someone was the first to dive on the floor for a loose ball, that was competing. We celebrated it with the team, and the guys who did it consistently were rewarded with playing time - or else I'd lose credibility.
Many coaches just want to play who they want to play - the guys who they think are the best players. So they don't define anything as far as playing time, reserving the head coach card to make those decisions. This is what leads to unrest with the guys that aren't playing. Sure, they want to play, but they also want to know what they have to do to play. They want a fair shot. Once we started to define our standards very clearly for our teams I had very few conversations with players about playing time. If the standards are clear, a player has to be able to come and tell me he's earned the right to play. And when the standards are clear, the players know. Even though they all want to play, they aren't going to come to you with a beef when they know other guys have been better than them based on your standards. If they can't look their teammates in the eye and say they've earned the right to play based on practice, they probably aren't coming into your office.
It's also not as simple as just meeting the standards and doing them well. You have to do them better than the people who are playing in front of you. You can compete your ass off, produce, and be a great teammate, but still not do those things quite as well as your teammates. Elite teams are a meritocracy. I've had plenty of conversations with guys where I tell them they are doing what we expect of them in practice every day. The problem is, other guys are doing it better. Until they can defend, rebound, score, guard and compete better than the guys in front of them, it's going to be hard for them to earn playing time.
I may be nitpicking with linguistics with the definition of deserve and earn. In many contexts they can be used as synonyms. But when it comes to playing time, deserve connotes some entitlement. I'm participating just like everyone else, so give me a chance. It's not as strong as something earned, not when it comes to playing time. There are a lot of people who deserve to play. Fewer guys who've earned the right.
As a player, don't come to me with what you think you deserve. Playing time is earned.
Your Leadership View
On a recent podcast I heard Luke Bobilak talking about leadership, and how it's important to change your perspective as a leader. Leaders should imagine they are at a dance, he said, and should split their time evenly between the dance floor and the balcony. It's a perfect analogy and something leaders should think about when examining and evaluating their organization.
Your view impacts what you see every day, so as a leader you have to be aware of your viewpoint. We spend a lot of time on the dance floor, especially as basketball coaches. The majority of our time is in practice, on the same level as our players. That is the view we are used to. Yet it's not one that allows us to see everything.
In the simplest of terms, you can't see everything at practice. If you are focused on block outs and the defensive glass, it's hard to see who is getting back in transition. If you are locked in on your offensive execution, you don't see the defensive rotations the same way.
The same thing can happen with personalities. I've often made the mistake often of spending so much time thinking about and talking to the guys on our team who are struggling, that I overlook the guys who are doing the right thing and thriving. I don't step back and look at the big picture - evaluate the entire team, and think about what each player needs. I get caught up on the dance floor - these guys are struggling, they need my attention - and I lose sight of the bigger picture.
Getting up to the balcony isn't always easy as a head coach, or as the defined leader of the organization. You want to be in the weeds. You want to know the pulse of the team, and you want to be the one out there directing traffic. But understand you'll get a different perspective - and an important one - removing yourself from the action and taking a look through a wider lens. Find ways to change your perspective. On the dance floor you can't possibly see everything that is going on. On the balcony, you may not see something as specific but you are less likely to miss something.
If you are lucky enough to have a staff, task them at keeping you focused on different perspectives. Ask about the big picture, and talk about things you may not be seeing day to day. What are you missing? What should you be doing differently? Allow your assistants to take control of the team one day, so you can take a step back and observe from a different vantage point.If you can, bring in someone from the outside to take a look at your team. Get their perspective. Change your view.
It sounds simple, but it's worth thinking about. So much of what you see is based on the vantage point you are looking from. You can get so caught up in the day to day with your team, that you miss some very important big picture stuff. Think about the dance floor and what you might be missing. Spend some more time on the balcony.
Leaders Communicate Perspective
I've often said the one commonality amongst the best players I've coached, and the best coaches I've been around, is perspective. They have an intentional attitude towards their approach to success, and they understand the connection to the big picture.
This is a terrific article from 3x5 Leadership on perspective.
Entitled To Nothing - The Book
To purchase Entitled To Nothing, click here.
Entitled to Nothing is an inside look at a championship culture built with an uncommon approach to leadership. Bob Walsh joined forces with a team of tough, hungry young men to create a level of ownership that led to sustained, elite success. Together they discovered an experience inside a demanding culture that did more than just win basketball games. It had a transformational impact on their lives.
In September of 2005, Rhode Island College, a division III state school in Providence, RI, hired their third men’s basketball coach in as many years. Bob Walsh, a respected Providence College assistant, took over a program at a commuter school with no real identity or history of basketball success. Nine years later Walsh had built a national power, known for their toughness and competitive edge. The Anchormen won 204 games over those nine seasons, including 11 conference regular season and tournament titles. Without an NCAA appearance in nearly 30 years, RIC became one of just five teams in America to play in eight straight NCAA Tournaments, including three trips to the Sweet Sixteen and one magical run to the Elite Eight.
Entitled to Nothing provides unfettered access to Walsh’s transparent style and the leadership lessons applied throughout a championship journey. Along the way, he asked questions that challenged standard group think and the traditional leadership model, leading to new thought processes and behaviors. Walsh offers an inside look at a game plan for sustained success, one that translates to elite performance in any organization focused on team building. Entitled to Nothing will encourage you to discover and refine your own unique leadership approach.
To purchase Entitled To Nothing, click here.
Emotion
Emotion is a big part of sports. The practices and games are intense. The investment level is significant. For players at any level, it's really important. For coaches at the college and professional level, it's their lives. It's hard to be good at any sport without being fully invested emotionally.
Intense competition is always going to bring out a lot of emotion. It's natural for coaches to get emotional as well. Understanding the level of emotion you show as a coach, and how it impacts your team, is important.
If you want your team to control their emotions, then start with yourself. If you show a lot of emotion when you coach, expect your team to get emotional as well. If you are yelling and screaming on the sideline, and your body language is strong, it's hard to get on your team for doing the same (I'd love to see coaches who get upset about bad body language on their team compare it to their own body language on the sideline). If you challenge your team to stay composed, and get on them for being emotional on the court - while you are getting upset on the sideline, you are hurting your credibility.
If you react demonstratively to a referee's call, expect your players to show similar emotion. It doesn't mean you have to accept it or you don't coach it. But it's smart to understand where it is coming from. If emotion is a big part of the way you coach and your program, expect your players to follow that lead. You are going to have to deal with some emotional outbursts.
On the other side, if you don't coach with a lot of emotion, your team may need a jump start every now and then. I learned this as I got more experience as a head coach. I tend to stay pretty composed on the sidelines, because I want my team to do the same. I don't react emotionally to things that happen, good or bad. In the locker room before games, or in the huddles, I don't really get excited. I stay even-keeled and try and talk calmly about the task at hand.
I learned that because of this, my team was rarely emotional. It doesn't mean they weren't excited or didn't get themselves ready to play. They just usually stayed composed and on balance. And I realized because I was rarely emotional, there were times when I needed to get them going. Just like an emotional team can get too emotional and need to be reigned in, a team that is calm and composed sometimes needs a jump start. I had to understand this as a coach.
I realized quickly that my team usually followed my emotional compass. If I found myself getting too involved with the officials, my players would start to lose it as well. And it was hard to get on them for not being excited if I didn't show any excitement myself. I recognized that I was the emotional barometer for my team, and if I wanted something different out of the I had to coach it.
When it comes to emotion, a lot of us take a "do as I say, not as I do" approach. But if you are coaching with passion and intensity on every possession, your team is going to reflect that. And if they get a little too emotional, you have to expect it. It's hard to be an emotional coach and not coach an emotional team.
Steve Francis
Steve Francis has a great story to tell.
https://www.theplayerstribune.com/articles/steve-francis-i-got-a-story-to-tell
The Flow of Practice
When I was in college, our practices had a similar structure every day. We didn't stretch or get loose as a team. Practice started at 4:00, and you were expected to be ready to go at that time. Whatever you needed to do to get ready, you did it before 4:00.
We usually started with a team warm-up drill to get loose, and then we followed with live team drills. Shell drill, transition defense, rebounding, offensive execution - all the usuals for a basketball practice. When the drills were done, usually 30-45 minutes into practice, we'd break up to shoot. We'd do a 9-minute shooting drill, and then everyone would shoot 30 free throws. The shooting served as a bit of a break in the middle of practice.
After the shooting, we'd then go live. Whether it was half court or full court, the live, competitive play came after the drills and the shooting. The last 30-50 minutes of practice was us playing live, and then we'd finish with some pressure free throws and conditioning.
At the time I didn't know any better and I didn't really think about the flow of practice. But the structure worked well. We went hard all practice, but the teaching and the drilling was done first. Then we got a mental and physical break for about 20 minutes to shoot, and we got back to getting after it with mostly full court play.
It was also a structure that made it clear you needed to be mentally and physically ready at 4:00, once practice started. Other than a quick team drill to get moving a bit, there wasn't much build up to practice. You showed up ready to go.
I've learned that one of the biggest adjustments for players when getting to college is getting mentally prepared for practice. You can't just show up and be the most talented player anymore. You need to mentally prepare for the compete level expected of you, as well as the technical aspect of what you are expected to learn. You need to prepare yourself mentally to be great in practice.
As coaches it is our job to structure practice in a way to get the most out of our team. To me, the most important element of practice is our compete level. The intensity we bring to practice is essential to how we get better. To get to the right compete level - and maintain it throughout - you have to be intentional about they way practice is structured.
I've always struggled with when to teach in practice, or when to put in new sets or defensive coverages. I've never been a big 5-0 offense guy. I just don't like lowering the intensity or compete level. I recognize you have to teach and you have to run through your sets. But the compete level is going to drop when you slow things down to teach, so you have to find the best time to do it in practice.
I'm always concerned about getting off to a slow start. It makes sense on one level to do your teaching at the beginning of practice, so that once you ramp up the intensity you don't have to dial it back. But I've found if my team is standing around for the first 15-20 minutes of practice, they become pretty sluggish. It may take a while to get them going.
You can put in new sets and do your teaching in the middle of practice - giving them a bit of a break to slow their heart rate down and catch their breath - but then you have to get them re-started to go live. I've found that when the compete level is really good I want to keep it that way. I don't want to go back to 5-0 or a teaching spot when they are competing at a high level.
You can also do most of your teaching and walk-through stuff at the end of practice, but then you risk losing them mentally after an intense practice. How much are they going to process and remember at that point? Additionally, usually the new stuff you want to teach is stuff you want to see in practice, so you want to get it in before practice is over. But if you are thinking ahead, you can put some stuff in at the end of practice one day and prepare to work on in the next day. That might take too much foresight for many of us to be effective.
It's important to realize that every team is different. Some years you might have a team full of self-starters, and the structure isn't as important. Other years you might have a group that needs similar routine every day to get to the right compete level. You have to get a feel for what your team responds to, and figure out a structure that gets the best out of them.
I've found that mixing up the format of practice is important - despite having the same structure every day in college. Practice can get stale if the guys know exactly what is coming, and it becomes too routine. I generally like to get started quickly and get the team moving. And once they get going it takes some feel to figure out how to keep the compete level where you want it.
Usually we'll plan the teaching before we get going too hard in live play, but that doesn't always work. Some days we want to get right to competing to get our guys used to turning it up quickly. It's all very contextual and I don't know that there is one answer as to how to best structure your practice. But I do know that how you do it and the flow you find is a big part of how much better you will get.
The structure of your practice and the flow that it provides is much more important to how your team practices than you think. Know what you are looking for as a head coach from a compete standpoint and figure out the best way to get there. We have to teach, we have to slow down and they certainly need breaks. But there is a way to do it intentionally, for each team, to get the most out of them.
Team Leadership
Our 2008-09 team at Rhode Island College is certainly one of the best teams I've ever coached. Heading into the post-season that year we felt like we were legitimately good enough to win the national championship (our OT loss to MIT in the first round of the NCAA Tournament might be the most difficult loss I've had as a head coach). We were talented, deep and experienced.
That team was led by four seniors - Bobby Bailey, Cam Stewart, Tirrell Hill, and Kaseem Johnson. Stewart, Hill and Johnson were freshmen in my first year at RIC, and Bailey joined them as sophomore the following year. All of them were significant contributors to our Elite Eight team in 2007, and all will likely end up in the RIC Athletics Hall of Fame before it's said and done.
Bobby Bailey was the Little East Player of the Year in 2009 as a senior. He was a big-time athlete with guard skills who played the wing for us and could guard any position on the other team. He usually drew our opponents best player.
Cam Stewart was a tough, athletic scoring guard who put up 950 points in his college career (an expected run in the NCAA Tournament would have gotten him over the 1,000 point mark). A natural playmaker, Cam was a great shooter with terrific feel for the game who usually came off the bench for us but found himself on the floor in the last five minutes.
Kaseem Johnson was a strong, physical power forward who was a big-time rebounder on both ends of the floor. He could score in the post and finish at the rim, and brought a ton of energy and toughness to our team every day. He was an all-league player who was also very smart and tough defensively.
Tirrell Hill was a scorer who could play the point or scoring guard spot. He was a first-team all league player who scored 1,000 points and brought a competitive edge to everything he did. He loved basketball and loved being in the gym.
We were blessed to have elite talent for our level, as all four of those guys were good enough to play at the scholarship level. They also taught me a lot about leadership.
As I gained experience as a head coach I started to look closely at the traditional leadership model - not only the structure (top-down) but also the definition. That team, with those four seniors, helped me think about leadership in a different way.
None of those four seniors, all of whom were great players, fit the traditional model of what a leader sounded like or looked like.
Bobby was the most talented of the group, but he was quiet by nature. He didn't have a take-charge personality, but cared deeply about his teammates and went about his business the right way.
Cam was also generally quiet, although he was fully invested in the team dynamic. He was more of the type to take control behind the scenes, to decide the team needed a day off in the pre-season when they had been going really hard for a few weeks in a row.
Kaseem was probably the one most willing to step up and speak up, but he had struggled with being inconsistent with is approach early in his career. It took him a while to understand how hard he needed to compete every day, and how to be reliable at times off the court.
Tirrell brought it every day and loved his teammates, but was more inward-focused. Not a selfish player, but he was certainly driven and hungry. He wasn't as curious about the mentality of his teammates as others. He showed up, played his ass off, and produced. He expected the same out of everyone else.
That group didn't have your traditional leader. There wasn't one or two guys that would take charge, speak up and make sure the guys were ready to go. None of them had the consistent vocal presence you would expect out of a traditional leader. They all made us better, were big-time producers and were great teammates. But none of them really had the personality of a traditional leader.
I learned two really important leadership lessons from that group: 1) They all actually were leading, in their own way, to make our team better. 2) It was my responsibility to fill the traditional leadership void and meet the needs of my team - not the other way around.
I'm always struck by conversations I have with coaches who have bad years and claim a "lack of leadership" on their team. I've vowed to never say that as a head coach. My job is to provide the leadership my team needs, and every team is different. Some years I may have to work extremely hard to provide leadership, and other years I might not need to do much at all. It depends on the leadership strengths and weaknesses of the team. But as a coach I'll never use a lack of leadership as an excuse.
A mistake leaders often make is that they expect their team to meet their own needs as a leader, as opposed to the other way around. We try and get the leadership we want to see out of our players, as opposed to getting the most out of them by allowing them to lead to their personality. If your team doesn't have that vocal, energetic leader to get them going every day, then you have to do it. Trying to create that leader within your team when you don't have that personality can prove futile.
I was very fortunate with that 2009 team to have a sophomore point guard - Antone Gray - who is one of the best natural leaders I have ever been around. He's the best leader I've ever coached. So I learned rather than trying to pull traditional leadership out of my seniors, I was better off letting them be themselves and empowering Antone to be a more traditional, vocal leader. I didn't try and force something on my seniors that made them uncomfortable, and in turn they were able to be themselves. This allowed them to appreciate and accept the leadership style of a sophomore point guard.
This is when I really started thinking about our definition of leadership. We came to define it as "making the people around you better," and that was it. Everyone on the team could do that in their own way, and it was required of everyone. So Tirrell Hill could lead by being a great competitor every day and setting the tone on the practice floor. Cam Stewart could lead through intentional conversations and decisions made behind the scenes. Bobby led with his humility and selfless approach. Kaseem was a fierce competitor, unafraid of any challenge and always willing to speak up when it was necessary.
We had a great team that year, easily one of the best I've ever coached. Understanding their personalities and thinking about the best way to get the most out of them made me think about my definition and approach to leadership. Those four seniors were great leaders for us, yet if you watched practice one day you might not see traditional leadership out of any of them. They weren't loud or confrontational with one another, so when the team needed that it came from me. I didn't ask them to fill a leadership void to meet my expectations. I provided them with the necessary leadership the team was missing.
Forcing your team to adjust to your leadership style won't get you very far. Don't be stubborn about your expectations. Providing them with the leadership they need is your job. Understanding the difference, and figuring out what your team needs, is essential to any sustained success.
Process and Results
Can you stand behind a decision you made, even if you don't get the right result? It might be the toughest challenge for a head coach.
I've learned over my years as a head coach - and I'm 100% convinced - that the best way to get the results is to distance yourself from them. But we are surrounded by pressure and our scoreboard is public. It's not easy. But once your decisions are made based on the outcome, your team will come to understand that as well. The process will suffer, and your team will be convinced that the result is key, no matter how they get there.
We often put so much pressure on ourselves to win that we lose sight of the process. When we win a game we see things a little bit differently, and we evaluate the process with a positive spin to justify what we did because we won. It's natural to feel good when you win, but it's easy to lose a clear view of your approach and send the wrong message to your team.
Most head coaches give off a clear signal after a win or a loss. Tone, approach, demeanor is all affected. Remember, your players don't have to hear it to know it. What you do is so loud, they can't hear what you say. If you are joking, laughing and clearly loose after a win, it sends a certain message. If you are pissed off and short with them after a loss, the message is just as clear. The result is what matters. They will know that getting a win is all that matters, and they'll try and take short cuts to get there if they can.
Be aware of your demeanor and approach after wins and losses. Recognize the message you send with tone, and the impact of that message. If you made a change in the lineup and you played pretty well, but you took a loss, evaluate the way you played. If you get a W but the changes you made didn't really click, do the same. Don't jump to conclusions about the decisions you made and the result you got. Evaluate how you played and how your team responded.
We are often a different person after a win than we are after a loss, whether we know it or not. Evaluating the process is hard, because your mind almost always gets influenced by the result. But to get your team to perform consistently at a high level, you have to separate the two. Study the process and build confidence in what it should look like. Your team will see how you operate, and they will follow suit.
Entitled To Nothing - Book Introduction
The introduction to my new book Entitled To Nothing, which you can find soon at entitledtonothingbook.com
INTRODUCTION
ENTITLED TO NOTHING: AN UNCOMMON APPROACH TO LEADERSHIP
On the day I was introduced as the head basketball coach at Rhode Island College in September of 2005, I walked up the steps of the Murray Center headed toward my press conference. I was stopped by a student who introduced himself as Kevin Payette, a senior on the basketball team. School had already been in session for two weeks when I was hired, so the team had returned to school without a head coach.
KP handed me a calendar and said “This is our schedule for work‐ outs, lifting and conditioning. Good luck at the press conference, I look forward to talking to you afterwards.” I thanked him and walked into the building pretty impressed. The players had been running the program on their own in the absence of a head coach. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had just met my first captain.
That day, when I became a head coach for the first time, was also the day I started a master class in leadership development. Like most assistant coaches I had prepared diligently for that moment. I had all the ideas about how we were going to play, what we were going to run on offense, how we would attack on defense and all of the tactical moves I would use to win basketball games. What I didn’t know was that all of it would add up to maybe 25% of my job as a head coach. The majority of my focus would be leadership. It would be learning how to get a group of people aligned to critical behaviors that led to successful outcomes. Coaching was more about leadership than I had realized.
I knew that leadership was important. I had grown up as the captain of most of the teams I played on and I started coaching when I was a junior in college. All good teams needed effective leadership. But I had never actually studied leadership, I just figured you either had it or you didn’t. I took it for granted, as if it was this organic mindset that took over within a team. I never recognized the impact it had on success, or the fact that it could be taught and developed. I would learn to see leadership as a skill and not a rank.
Every day I spent building the program at Rhode Island College was a day in a leadership classroom. I learned that culture – the behavior that resulted from a shared set of beliefs – was the key to success, and the environment I created was the most important part of my job. Our culture was built entirely on our process, the commitment we made to what we did each day, independent of the result. While I originally provided the direction as the head coach, as we learned what it took to sustain success, I understood our players needed to own the process and the results. The culture had to be theirs, not mine.
When I became a head coach, I thought my job was basketball. I learned quickly it was actually to lead, and basketball was simply the teaching tool. My arena happened to have two baskets and a score‐ board. Your arena may be an executive boardroom, a classroom, a conference center or a factory. While the context of our situations might be different, the lessons learned are universal and can be applied to any organization. It is a foundation for success in any walk of life.
This is the story of an uncommon approach to leadership.
The Will To Compete
One thing I think we often overlook as a coach - talent has an impact on our ability to compete at a high level. When we don't play well, we tend to look internally for the reasons, and that makes sense. We want to figure out what we have to do differently to get better. But in a lot of cases the other team has a lot to do with it. A really talented team that competes really hard can take the will to compete out of your team.
In my second year at RIC, we went to the Elite Eight and lost to Amherst, who would go on to win the national championship. I wrote about the game in my upcoming book Entitled To Nothing, which will be published in the next week (EntitledToNothingBook.com).
The Elite Eight (March 10, 2007 – At Amherst)
The next night, I stood just outside the gym as our guys were warming up, listening to the crowd and the music. It felt like the building was going to explode. It gave me a minute to think about what we had accomplished, and how proud I was to be a part of that team. The environment was incredible, and I made sure to remind our guys that they had earned the right to be there. Mentally, we were ready to go; there wasn’t a doubt in my mind.
The only issue was that Amherst was a great team, and they were ready to go as well. They came out and threw the first punch in the first half, playing with a level of toughness and intensity we hadn’t really seen out of them before. We were a bit shell-shocked. We fully expected to go toe to toe with them, but they were all over us. Their talent and size knocked us back a little bit, and they controlled the edge of the game.
As leaders, we are almost exclusively focused on our own group, and rightfully so. But it’s easy to lose sight of external factors that can impact your team. We hadn’t been ourselves, and I was upset about that. But there was a big reason why – it wasn’t that we weren’t ready to play or focused. It was because Amherst was really good. They were affecting our approach, and deserved credit for that. We had to figure out how to handle it.
At halftime we were down by 11 and I wasn’t happy because we hadn’t been ourselves. We let Amherst dictate how the game was being played, and it had affected our compete level. We were playing hard, we always did, but we didn’t have our usual competitive edge. Amherst was controlling that edge. We had defined ourselves with that edge and now we were losing that battle. I needed to snap our guys out of it.
The Way You Deliver the Message
The way you deliver the message – especially when things aren’t going well for your organization – is often more important than the message itself. I’m not really a screamer by nature, and I tend to keep my composure as a coach because I want my team to do the same. Usually when I got after my guys it was a calculated decision, because I felt we needed a spark.
I thought a lot about my tone when I was delivering the message. If I’m always using the same tone, especially a loud one, the message turns into noise. The team will turn it off. There are times when you have to deliver a stern, sharp message and it might be a little louder than normal. That’s okay. But if you aren’t careful about how often you play that card, you can quickly lose your team. Remember, leadership isn’t so much about what you say as it is about what they hear. The message they receive is on you. Be intentional about your tone to make sure your team can hear you.
I knew I had to get to my guys at halftime, so I walked in the locker room right behind them with a forceful tone. “They’re good, fellas! What do you want me to do??? They’re really good. They might beat us. But I’ll be damned if they are going to beat us because we are afraid to compete. That’s not who we are. If they are better than us, we’ll live with that. But there is no way we are going to back down!” My tone was pretty intense, and the delivery was purposely loud. I walked out of the room.
That team was the best team I have ever coached, and we were built on our competitive edge and our toughness. Competing every day was the foundation of our program. Yet, in the biggest game of the year, we didn't have that edge in the first half.
It was pretty clear our guys were trying. And we were playing hard. But there is a difference between trying, playing hard and competing with an edge. We didn't have that edge, not because we didn't bring it, but because Amherst was really good. They were taking the game to us, and they controlled the competitive edge. It wasn't like we backed down, we were just shell-shocked. Their talent knocked us back on our heels.
I can live with the fact that the other team might be better than us. I can't live with the fact that we were afraid to compete. That's why I took that approach at halftime. I needed to wake our guys up, to get us back to being ourselves. Although we ended up losing the game, we came back hard in the second half and played great. We had a chance to win the game late, but ended up losing to a better team.
Laying it all on the line, without fear of failure, is challenging, even for the best competitors. There is no safety net. If you give everything you have, and you lose, you have no excuse. You aren't good enough. You have to get your team willing to accept that. Sometimes the other team is better than you. Sometimes your best isn't good enough. And that's okay. But losing your will to compete is not.
Create a safe place within your program where your team can compete without compromise. Separate from the results, and make sure they know it's okay to fail. Competing at a high level isn't as simple as committing to doing it. It takes a lot of mental toughness. Make it safe for your team to do so and you'll find competitive excellence.