Mission

One of my favorite stories about having clarity of mission and a shared purpose involves JFK visiting Nasa (although, depending on where you read it, this story may or may not have actually happened. But it illustrates a great point.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy visited NASA for the first time. During his tour of the facility, he met a janitor who was carrying a broom down the hallway. He introduced himself to the janitor, then casually asked the janitor what he did for NASA. The janitor replied “I’m helping put a man on the moon, Mr. President.”

The point is that everyone at NASA, regardless of role, was on the same mission. They shared the same purpose. It’s a great thought process for any high-achieving organization. What are we all doing here? What is our mission? I think we all try and take care of the support people who help our programs on a daily basis - managers, equipment room, managers, and bus drivers. We want to make sure they feel like they are a part of the team. But do they know the impact they have on the mission?

When I was at Rhode Island College we used to host a big time recruiting event in our gym every year in February. It was always on a weekend when we played away so they could have the gym all weekend. One year we were playing up at UMass-Boston and a bunch of coaches I knew were in Rhode Island to watch the tournament. One of them was asking around to see if I was there, and he had a conversation with someone who worked in our equipment room.

Our equipment guy told him we were up in Boston but would probably be back by 6, we had a game. And he asked if we won the game, and our equipment guy was like “I’m sure they did. They are a championship team. You should see the way they play. They really compete for each other. They are very hard to beat.” He went on to talk about how much respect he had for our staff and players and how well respected our program was on campus.

When I saw my buddy he pointed him out and was like “I don’t know who that is, but that guy is definitely on board. He is all in on you guys.” That made me feel pretty good.

The mission and the purpose of your program should be shared by everyone involved with your team, even in a supportive role. Define what the mission is - what are you trying to accomplish - and make sure everyone knows it. And it should involve more than just “winning championships” because winning is a moving target. Of course we all want to win, but if your purpose is just a result it will be shallow. You can’t control the outcome, only what you put into it. Our guys talked about winning championships, but I reminded them the result depended on a lot of things out of our control. So when we talked about championships we talked about being at a championship level every day, not just winning or losing.

“Championship level, everything we do.” That became our mission. That’s what we were trying to do. And it was shared by everyone. You want everyone on board with what you are trying to do.

Find a simple and accessible mission for your program, that sets a high standard for all of your daily habits, and make sure everyone around your team knows what it is. A clearly defined mission for all is an integral part of elite, sustainable success.

Commitment To Loyalty

Does your loyalty to a specific player or players impact the decisions you make for your team? I’ve been guilty of it as a head coach. I don’t know if it’s just “loyalty” to a player, or if it’s simply that I liked certain players and wanted to see them succeed. I felt because of the way they operated every day they deserved success. But that doesn’t always translate to the best decisions for the team.

This is from Admired Leaders on how loyalty to a person can undermine what’s best for the organization.

However, loyalty can undermine a decision critical to the health of the enterprise. When leaders factor in loyalty to people in their decision-making, they are often seduced to think differently about what is best for the team or organization. They justify a bad or poor decision by elevating the loyalty they have for a particular person affected by that choice. 

Unfortunately, no matter how virtuous loyalty to others is, when it comes to major decisions, allowing loyalty a big seat at the table will likely produce a poor choice. 

I’ve always been skeptical of loyalty as a critical factor in personal or team success. I just feel like it’s a moving target, and a definition that can be manipulated to fit a certain narrative. I understand the value of being loyal to people who you can trust, and people have have been really good to you. But when does that loyalty run it’s course? When I’m running a team, I have to be loyal to that team over any individual. Well, the reality is their are many decisions that are in the best interest of the team, that come at the expense of an individual who has been very loyal to you.

In my second year as a head coach at Rhode Island College, one of our returning seniors got hurt in the pre-season and couldn’t practice. He was a former first-team all league player, someone who struck fear in the rest of the coaches in the league. He had played for me as a junior and had a solid year, and we won 19 games. But coming back for his senior year he was hurt, and we had a sophomore who had played some as a freshmen and was very talented. The sophomore got the time when he was out, played very well, and our team had success - getting off to a good start and beating a division I team in the pre-season.

When the senior came back from his injury, what was I supposed to do? Give him his job back? Some of our discussions as a staff and with players on the team that I spoke with revolved around being “loyal” to the senior. So does loyalty mean as a veteran you get to keep your job forever? From his point of view, he could say he deserved my loyalty, because it fit his narrative.. But what if I thought the team was better off with him coming off the bench and the sophomore in the starting lineup? My job was to make the best decisions for the team, and I’m glad I’ve always been a little cold-blooded in that regard. The word loyalty just doesn’t resonate with me the way it does for many others, because I don’t really understand the blurred lines between loyalty and actually making the right decision.

(Friendly reminder, kids, when a coach says “you won’t lose your job to an injury,” that’s all well and good. But you might lose your job to the kid who is playing well while you are injured.” That’s just how team sports work).

I have been guilty of making the wrong decision, however, because of the way I felt about someone. There are certain players you just love and you expect to have success, and you keep giving them chances. You’ve got to fight that feeling as a leader. Make your decisions based on what is best for the organization. Loyalty may be a value that is important to you, but it shouldn’t lead you down a path of bad decision making. Figure out what your team needs, make the call based on that, and deal with the personalities separately.

Coaching Without Fear

“The opposite of fear is not fearlessness, but commitment. The highest form of commitment is an unparalleled focus on action rather than emotion.” - Laird Hamilton

It’s natural to think about the result. Every decision you make in a game can have significant consequences and affect the outcome. But the emotion that comes with that outcome can cripple your ability to make a decision.

I’ve felt it many times as a head coach. If I take him out, what if they go on a run? If we switch to zone, I don’t want them to hit a three. I have to put my veteran guys back out there, I don’t trust the freshmen. A big part of coaching decisions is assessing risk and reward, but if you are thinking too much about the results, you’ll never take the risk. You have to learn to make bold decisions to be great.

I love the above quote because I think it encapsulates the approach you need to have as a game coach. You don’t have to be fearless. You can have some apprehension about a negative outcome that might come from a decision. But you can’t let that emotion impact the right decision. That’s the challenge.

Your focus should be locked on what you need to do to win the game, not how you might feel if you don’t. The more you think about action and take away emotion, the more comfortable you’ll be with making a brave decision. It helps to prepare without emotion. Think about the scenarios you might face in a given game and what the best approach is for your team, and do it in a quiet moment by yourself. Make those decisions when you aren’t feeling the emotions of the game and you aren’t worried about a negative result. Preparing yourself mentally will allow you to make a brave call when needed.

Coaching without fear is not easy. The results are real, and it’s natural to think about what might happen. But prepare yourself ahead of time for the scenarios you might face, and think about the right decision for your team. When the time comes, take the emotion out of the decisions - as best you can - and think about the action necessary to help your team.

Developing Trust

Trust is an essential element of a high-performing team. But it takes a lot of time and a consistent approach to develop. Trust doesn’t come about just because you say it’s important. Trust is something built, more through what you do than what you say to your players.

When there is a power imbalance, as there is between a player and coach, trust starts with one question. Would you do it for me? Meaning, whatever it is you are demanding out of your players, would you be willing to do the same? Of course, you don’t have to do what your players ask of you as the coach. But to get them to trust you, they have to see that you’d be willing to do the same. That you are putting in the same amount of time, that you have the same work ethic, that you are willing to sacficie the same way you are asking of them.

Between the player and the coach, the question of trust might come down to “Are you making the same commitment you are asking of me?” As a coach to really earn their trust you have to model the behavior you want to see in them. Not only is it setting the right example, but it’s part of the foundation of trust for your team. They have to see it in you, so when things get hard and they don’t see a lot of reward, they believe you are in the trenches with them. They’ll trust you with the hard stuff when they see you are making the same commitment to the team.

What you do is so loud, they can’t hear what you say. You can talk to your team about the importance of trust all the time. But they need to see how you operate and the commitment you are willing to make for them in order for trust to fully develop.

The Other Team

Preparing for your opponent is important, but how much energy do you spend on the other team? Every minute you spend focused on the other team takes time away from developing your own players. I think many of us are guilty of spending too much time worrying about the other guys.

With the technology we have available today we have all the information we need on our opponents at our fingertips. It allows us as coaches to feel fully prepared and leave no stone unturned. But a lot of that is really about making us feel better as coaches, and not necessarily what our guys need to be successful. Our scout tapes get longer, we have more film sessions, we go over more plays. It makes us feel great to be really prepared, but we can also clog our guys minds with too much information.

“A cluttered mind equals slow feet.” - Stan Van Gundy

We spend a lot of time worrying about other teams running up the score, pulling their starters out when they are up, or pressing when the game is decided. I just don’t think it’s a valuable use of our mental capital. We spend less time working with our own players and building our team, and a lot of time worrying about stuff we cannot control.

Your players know exactly what your priorities are based on what you emphasize. They know if it’s about them or the other team. They thrive with the attention you and the staff give them to make them better. They love to feel that you are investing everything you can into them, to make them great.

Scouting and preparation are very important. Your kids absolutely want to know what the keys are to win and how to stop the other team. But the amount of time you invest in them versus the other team has an impact. Don’t get caught up too much in everything the other guy is doing. Invest as much as you can in your players and you’ll get better results.

Overweighing Loyalty

How important is loyalty in the decisions you make?

From Admired Leaders on loyalty:

Leaders sometimes make decisions they know are wrong. Even though their experience, values, and instincts confirm the decision is exceedingly bad, they go ahead and make it anyway. 

They talk themselves into the idea that they are doing the right thing, all the while knowing they aren’t. They willfully commit to a decision that will likely blow up and potentially destroy their credibility. Why would leaders, even good ones, make such a choice? 

That’s what happens when leaders overweigh loyalty to people when making a critical decision. 

Loyalty is a virtuous value. Leaders who are loyal to those they lead display a commitment that builds trust. Knowing a leader is loyal creates a sense of security and reassurance. Team members and colleagues reciprocate that loyalty by protecting the leader from unfair criticisms and advocating for the ideas the leader believes in. 

Over time, loyalty allows leaders and team members to reaffirm their mutual commitment in the face of bad or challenging times. Loyalty is a wonder drug for preserving strong relationships. 

However, loyalty can undermine a decision critical to the health of the enterprise. When leaders factor in loyalty to people in their decision-making, they are often seduced to think differently about what is best for the team or organization. They justify a bad or poor decision by elevating the loyalty they have for a particular person affected by that choice. 

Unfortunately, no matter how virtuous loyalty to others is, when it comes to major decisions, allowing loyalty a big seat at the table will likely produce a poor choice. 

To make matters worse, everyone looking from the outside knows exactly what is going on. They conclude the leader is incapable of making a sound decision because of their attachment to a particular person. This conclusion undermines confidence in the leader and exposes them as biased and partial in a way that damages their long-term credibility. 

The best leaders always elevate what is best for the organization, the clients or customers, and the team before they consider their relationship with any particular team member.  While this is an exceedingly hard thing to do when loyalty is a primary value of a leader, as is often the case, it is what the job requires. 

The next time you observe or read about a decision that seems so obviously bad that is unfathomable why a leader made such a choice, consider that loyalty to a person probably warped the decision-making process. 

Do your best to commit more highly to what is best for the enterprise over what is best for any particular person when it comes to your own decision-making. Loyalty is a principled and noble value. But when it comes to making major decisions, loyalty will likely confound your thinking. Try not to let it.

The More I Listen

The more I listen to may players, the better I get as a coach. When we first get into coaching we think we should be talking all of the time. We think coaching is telling the players what to do. We coach them, and they play. They have to listen to us.

The reality is we aren’t training players to do what they are told. We should be training them to solve problems. If I knew when and how every situation was going to happen on the court, I could tell my players exactly what to do. But that’s not how sports work. We should be training our players to make the right decisions at the point of attack.

If we are going to do that, we have to listen. How am I going to know what my player saw, and why the made the decision they did, if I don’t ask them? I want to know what my players see, so I can understand why they made the decisions they did.

If I really want to get a pulse of my team off the court, I need to hear from my players as well. The idea that they should always be listening to me. just doesn’t work. I’m always amazed how much I can learn about my team by listening to my players. You will be as well, if you take the time to ask the right questions and actually listen to the response.

Solitude and Leadership

One of my favorite leadership reads ever, from William Deresiewicz, addressing the Plebe Class at West Point in 2009.

As a leader, are you just creating hoop jumpers? Are you allowing the room for your team leaders to think for themselves? Are you willing to be alone, to separate yourself, to come up with your own leadership approach?

Incredible stuff in here. One of the best.

Solitude and Leadership

Teaching Leadership

How do you teach your players to be better leaders? If leadership is important to the success of your team, you need to do more than complain about it. You better recruit it or teach it - or both.

Define it - Do you just talk about leadership with your players, or do you actually have a definition of leadership? Define what leadership means to you and make sure your players know exactly what that definition is.

Make sure it fits the context - Leadership is situational and contextual. Make sure it fits you and the ethos of your program. What worked for John Wooden at UCLA might not work for you at St. Mary’s High School. It has to fit who you are.

Connect it to behaviors - Your players will understand your leadership approach if it is connected to behaviors. Point out the specific behaviors that are examples of the leadership you want, and make sure everyone knows it. They need to know what leadership looks like.

Figure out who’s curious - The best leaders are curious about their teammates. They are capable of doing their job while they are thinking about others. Those are the players who can have the biggest impact as leaders. Don’t force a specific type of leadership on players who aren’t comfortable with it.

Give them space - Let them lead. Define it, show them the behaviors, and give them the room to take ownership. So often we complain about a lack of leadership on our teams when we aren’t giving them the opportunity to lead. If all we do is tell them what to do, they are going to do what they are told, and then wait for the next command. That’s following, not leading.

The Leadership Void

Every year in the off-season I have conversations with different coaches about the leadership on their team. Inevitably, the coaches who have had a bad year, bring up the fact that there team didn’t have great leadership. While this may be a defensive reflex for coaches (“it wasn’t me, it was them"), my response is usually to ask a question - if your team didn’t have great leadership, what were you doing?

Poor leadership is often used as a reason for failure. Leadership is pretty abstract and contextual, so it can just be a convenient excuse. It’s hard to pin down what bad leadership really is, we just know that the results weren’t good. But ultimately the head coach is responsible for the leadership on their team. If the players aren’t providing great leadership, then it had better come from you.

If leadership is so important to winning and losing, what are you doing about it? Are you recruiting it, or are you teaching it? Because if it impacts your results, you better find a way to improve the leadership on your team.

As I’ve grown as a coach and studied leadership more, I’ve felt there is a leadership void. Not just on basketball teams, but in a lot of organizations. There are countless people in leadership positions who don’t seem to understand leadership - so they can’t necessarily teach it or improve it. I think we end up with poor leadership because we don’t really get what great leadership is - and therefore who should be in leadership positions.

The best trial lawyer at a law firm isn’t necessarily skilled enough to be the chairman of the firm. The best sales person in a business may not have the right skill to run the company. The best player on a basketball team might not have the right mentality to lead the team. Great accomplishments and achievements don’t mean you are ready to run the company.

Define leadership for yourself and understand the context of your situation - what does your team need at this moment from a leadership stand point. You may have a couple of guys who aren’t key players but have great leadership qualities. You may not have anyone who is really comfortable as a leaders - and that means you have to take on that role.

Think about what leadership means to you, what your organization needs, and then determine who has the skill and approach to provide the right leadership. It may not be the best player or highest performer. There is a leadership void because we don’t put the right people in leadership positions.

Trust Within Teams

For me, the single most important element of a consistent, high achieving team is trust. I’ve coached some elite teams where you could literally see the way they trusted one another when watching them play. There are a lot of elements that go into great teams, and a high level of trust won’t automatically make your team great. But I’m convinced you won’t be great without it.

Trust is one of those intangible factors that is hard to evaluate and measure. Chemistry, sacrifice, competitive edge - there are a lot of these “soft” factors that we don’t always define for our players, yet we consider them essential for great teams. I think we often look at these factors through the wrong lens. We feel like they are important elements of a great team, and they are what helps make a team great. We assign these factors to our teams as a reason why the basketball works.

I think it’s the other way around. The basketball is what leads to these factors and helps create elite, sustainable success. Joe Torre used to say that “winning creates chemistry, chemistry doesn’t create winning.” We think that teams that trust each other (and have great chemistry) play basketball the right way. I think teams that play the game the right way develop trust and chemistry.

You can’t just take your guys to dinner together or let them all go to a movie together to create trust, chemistry or any other intangible factor you’d like to see in your team. That stuff is created on the basketball court, with the level your players are willing to compete for one another. When guys play hard every day, sacrifice for one another, and communicate at a high level when things are hard - all of the things that go on in practice every day - that leads to trust. And trust can help create chemistry.

The way your kids play for one another every day - that is where trust comes from. They don’t have to all like each other. But if they are willing to lay it on the line for their teammates every day, trust will develop.

Trust comes from the way you compete every day, not the other way around. You don’t compete for one another because you trust each other. You trust each other because of the way you compete for one another.

Ethic of Accountability

This was a great post from Admired Leaders about an “Ethic of Accountability.”

It’s valuable to look at it through the prism of being a coach. Do you hold yourself “completely accountable” and “take ownership of everything” as the leader?

When your players aren’t vocal enough do you put it on them? Or is there something you are doing that keeps them from being comfortable speaking up?

Do you look to external factors every time something goes wrong? Is it the players, the officials, or the lack of support? Do you only look internally when things go right?

A lot to take away as a coach here.

Great leaders are different in subtle ways. They present themselves differently, ask questions others don’t ask, and balance short and long-term goals masterfully. Perhaps most distinctive about them is the view they have about responsibility. Over the course of their lives, they have created an ethic of accountability for themselves.  

For leaders with this ethic, whatever happens always starts with them. They immediately take responsibility, not the blame, for whatever outcome, reaction, or result that occurs. They accept and own any outcome, asking what they did to contribute to it, or what they could still do to change it. This powerful ethic of accountability changes everything about who they are and how they lead. 

Leaders who hold themselves completely accountable and take ownership of everything in their world naturally behave differently. They are rarely accusatory or seek to blame others. Instead, they look for solutions and remedies to issues and problems that usually start with them. 

Take, for instance, the common dilemma of team meetings where members don’t speak up or offer their candid views. A leader with a strong accountability ethic immediately points to themselves and presumes they have some role in the reticence the team displays.

They ask themselves what they can do to promote more openness and honest contributions by team members. Perhaps, they should take a seat that is not at the head of the table, or run the meeting by only asking questions, or refrain from offering their views too early in any discussion. They search for answers that begin with them and avoid the temptation to blame the problem on the team members, presuming they lack courage or are introverted by personality. 

Leaders and team members who have developed an ethic of accountability stand out, especially in comparison to those who have developed the opposite worldview. Some people always look to external factors for whatever goes wrong and point to themselves only when things go right. They are full of excuses and justifications and wear them like a shield of self-defense. This stunts personal growth and development and makes leadership credibility nearly impossible to attain. 

In contrast, those with an ethic of accountability presume they play the central role in whatever happens in their world, even when their contribution is objectively minuscule. They know that looking inward at what role they have played changes the way they lead in a powerful way. They see this ethic as a reason why people respect them and look to their leadership as a path forward in any situation. 

As it turns out, an ethic of extreme accountability may be the most formidable weapon a leader can have.

The Last Lesson

Fifteen years ago - so hard to believe it’s been that long - on the Monday after Thanksgiving in 2008, I was getting ready to head down to practice at Rhode Island College when my cell phone rang. At RIC my office was in the Recreation Center, across campus from the Murray Center where we practiced and played, so we had to actually get into our cars and drive down to the Murray Center for practice. As I walked out of the Rec Center towards my car, I looked at my phone. It was my Dad calling.

It was odd that my Dad would call at that time, because he knew we practiced late in the afternoon. I had a lot going on getting ready for practice, so I let the call go. I’d give him a call back after practice. I got in my car and started driving down the Rec Center, and my phone rang again. It was my Dad calling again. I figured maybe he just had to ask me a question about something so I picked it up.

It’s hard to describe the feeling you get when your caller ID says “Dad” yet the voice you hear when you say hello is one you don’t recognize. My insides felt hollow. I was sitting at a stop sign waiting to make a right turn when I heard “Detective with the Tampa Police department.” My father had recently bought his retirement home in Tampa. “I’m very sorry to inform you…”

My father had been found by his cleaning lady, dead of a heart attack. He was 63 years old. Just like that, my father was dead. I was too stunned to know how to feel.

I drove down to the Murray Center, parked in the parking lot, and called my brother. I got his wife, who said he was not feeling well and was sleeping. I told her he had to wake him up. When he came to the phone I just said “I just got a call from the Tampa Police department. Dad’s dead.” They had picked up my Dad’s cell phone and looked at his text messages. I had texted him the day before to let him know Providence College was in Anaheim in a tournament, and their game was on TV if he wanted to watch it. He never got the text. The Tampa Police did.

I went inside the Murray Center, totally stunned, and told my AD. I went into the gym and gathered my players who were warming up before practice, and told them. It seemed weird that I told my team before I told anyone else in my family, but I had to let them know I wasn’t going to be at practice. I called my girlfriend – now my wife – and can still hear the shock in her voice.

I went home and called my brother again, and we started calling family and close friends. The feeling is hard to describe, it’s like being in a daze. I was shocked, stunned, empty, yet there was a lot of work to do. We had to let people know, to start thinking about arrangements. Throughout all of it, as bad as I felt, I had this one overriding feeling: Lucky. It’s still hard to explain how I felt that way in that moment.  I had a great relationship with my father, and I just felt lucky to have had the relationship I did with him for 36 years. I still feel that way to this day.  As stunned as I was, I just kept thinking about how lucky I was, and I guess that helped me get through that day somehow.

My father was very successful. He grew up in Parkchester in the Bronx and had to work hard to get to college. He attended Iona College just North of the City, joining the Marine Reserves to help pay for school, and started a career in business upon graduation. He took a job out of school with KPMG, one of the big accounting firms in New York City, and ended up spending 38 years with the company. By the time he retired he was a senior partner with a big office on Park Avenue. He was very actively involved at Iona College, his alma mater, as the President of their Goal Club, as well as their Alumni Association. He joined a golf club in Westchester and served a stint as the President there. He served on a number of different Board of Directors for different organizations.

My father’s wake was a few days later on Castle Hill Avenue in the Bronx, the neighborhood where he grew up. He was still a working class kid from the Bronx, but he had worked his way into being very well off and connecting with some very successful people. It was overwhelming to see so many people show up to pay their respects. Whenever your in the situation where someone close to you has a death in the family and you feel like your not sure what to do, just show up. That’s what you do. You show up. It really helped my brother and I to see so many people who cared about and had been impacted by our father.

The wake was a who’s who of powerful people. College President’s, executive VPs, high-powered attorneys, wall street millionaires. It made my brother and I feel very good to see so many of my Dad’s friends and associates. The line was long and it took a couple of hours to see everyone.

Towards the end of the night a man walked in who looked a little out of place. He was wearing a baseball cap and a pair of khakis with a golf shirt and a rumpled jacket. He had a work ID badge hanging around his neck, looking very blue collar in a white collar crowd. I noticed him as soon as he walked in, and I didn’t recognize him. He didn’t talk to anyone, he just waited on line and made his way up to our family to pay respects. He shook my hand and simply said “I’m so sorry for your loss. Your father was a great friend to me.” I said thank you, but didn’t ask him who he was. After he got through the line, he went and sat in the back in a chair by himself. I noticed he said a few words to a few of the people from my Dad’s office. Then he got up slowly, put his cap back on, and started to walk out.

I wanted to talk to him before he left, but I hesitated because I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable. I didn’t want him to think that I was stopping him because I didn’t know who he was. I watched him walk out the door of the funeral home and head back down Castle Hill Avenue – past a number of car service Town Cars ready to take some of the attendees back into Manhattan. He put his cap on and walked back towards the 6 train.

This man was on my mind all night. Before everyone left, I asked one of my father’s work associates if they knew who he was. I thought I had seen him talking briefly with some of the people from my Dad’s office. It turns out he did work in my Dad’s office – in the mailroom. He delivered the mail to my Dad’s floor of his Park Avenue office building. He would sort the mail for my Dad exactly how he wanted it. He would bring my Dad his coffee with the mail in the morning, make sure he had an umbrella when it was raining, call down to make sure my Dad’s car was ready in the garage when he needed it.

My Dad had asked him what his name was, befriended him, and developed a relationship with him. He asked him about his family. He found out he had two young kids in catholic grammar school.  He’d buy them Christmas gifts so they had nice toys under the tree.  At different times when things were a struggle, my Dad had helped out by paying the tuition for his kids so they could stay in the school in their neighborhood. He helped out the family whenever they needed something over the years, and he, his secretary and the family were the only ones who knew about it. I had never met the man or his family.

When I learned about this, I couldn’t hold back the tears. This man had gotten on the 6 train in Midtown Manhattan and taken a one hour subway ride to Castle Hill, then walked the six blocks to pay his respects, to say “I’m sorry for your loss” to two sons he had never met. He didn’t know us, and hardly knew anyone at the wake. He certainly looked a little bit out of place. But he knew my father, and considered him a friend.

I still think about him all of the time. I can still see him putting his hat back on and slowly walking up Castle Hill Avenue to the Subway station. He spent at least two hours on the subway and waited at least 30 minutes in line just to pay his respects. I didn’t even know who he was, nor did my brother.  We would have had no idea if he didn’t show up.  But he made the trip anyway.

I am very lucky to have had the relationship I did with my father, to spend the time with him that I did. I’m also very proud of the way my Dad lived his life. He made a lot of money and traveled in circles of very successful people. But he was always the same person, the kid who had worked his way out of the Bronx. He had no sense of entitlement about him. I learned so much from him, simply from the way he lived his life and how he acted towards others, even those he didn’t know. He treated everyone with dignity and respect and went out of his way to help people who needed help.

That night, that moment, that man who showed up to pay his respects for my father made me think about how I live my own life. Do I treat everyone with the same respect? Am I courteous and genuine to everyone I meet, regardless of their circumstances and what they can do for me? Do I give people the benefit of the doubt if they are struggling with something, not knowing what might be going on in their life? Do I show the right amount of gratitude in my daily routine?

How do I treat the people in my “mail room?”  We all have people in the mail room in our life. How do we interact with those people? Do we treat them with respect and go out of our way to make sure they are comfortable? Do we think about what we can do to help them? Or others who might not come from the same background that we do?

What am I doing every day in my life to make sure, when it’s my time, that the guy in my mail room is going to show up for me?

That was the last lesson my father ever taught me.

Leadership Instincts

I liked this take from Admired Leaders on leadership instincts.

Natural leaders use a combination of life experiences and core values to create their leadership “instincts.”

Where do Leadership Instincts Come From?

We often refer to highly effective leaders, especially those with less experience or background, as having great leadership instincts. In our estimation, they seem to know things we wouldn’t expect them to know. More importantly, these people land on a good or right answer seemingly without much effort. They are instinctively good at leadership, or so we believe. 

Technically speaking, an instinct is an intuitive way of assessing and acting on a situation or problem. Instincts are thought to be baked into the biology, family history, and personality of those who possess them. We are hard-wired to have instincts. We don’t develop or learn them. 

Which is why leadership is not a place where they exist. This is not to say we can’t use instinct as a metaphor and explain the prowess of a given leader as having a hidden clairvoyance that enables them to see things others don’t. Perhaps no better word exists to explain why some leaders inexplicably make quality judgments and decisions quickly and without much effort. 

But, when it comes to leadership, what counts as instinct is actually a very definitive recipe of two ingredients: past life experience and core values. 

Our past life experiences allow us to see what is important in a given situation and what will likely unfold. The more experience we have, the more insight we carry forward when assessing situations, problems, and people. When we’ve seen this movie before and we know how the story ends, then we have a big leg up on those who haven’t. 

But experience alone doesn’t allow leaders to land on so many right conclusions. There needs to be a second ingredient that binds past experience to decision or action. When it comes to leadership, that ingredient is values. 

All the best leaders are value-driven people for a reason. Values enable us to emphasize what is important in any given situation and how to elevate its significance. Decisions steeped in values can never be fully wrong, and the best leaders know that; therefore, they apply them religiously to every judgment and decision they encounter. 

While the rest of us attempt to deconstruct the many facets of a situation or person, great leaders always begin their examination from their core values. This guides them directly to what matters most and how any action is likely to align or impugn those values. 

When leaders combine deep, past experience with core values, something magical happens. They operate from what looks like instinct. They quickly and “instinctively” reach a conclusion without the need to hash out the arguments or explicate much of the data. By applying their values and experience to any situation or problem, they aren’t seeing things others don’t, but rather they focus everyone’s attention on what is an obvious answer.

Much of this process is done subconsciously, of course, hence the metaphor of “instinct” to explain what is not easily understood. Leaders who want to improve their leadership instincts only need to spend the time to know what they value and then gain more meaningful experiences to give them an edge in seeing what is possible and likely.

While the latter can take a lifetime, the best leaders constantly search for experiences from which to learn. Neither activity is instinctive and never will be.

Wisconsin Volleyball

‘We’re scientists right now’: Wisconsin volleyball’s unconventional path to success

An excellent article from Brian Hamilton in The Athletic about the approach of Wisconsin volleyball Coach Kelly Sheffield, who never played the game.

“If I didn’t ask questions, I wouldn’t be where I am right now.”

WAUNAKEE, Wis. – A few hours after practice begins with players juggling tennis balls and Def Leppard rattling through the gym, a little while after serving groups are divided into Packers fans and non-Packers fans, Kelly Sheffield sits in a wine bar and describes his first office as a college volleyball head coach. This was at Albany. He shared space with rakes, shovels and snowmobiles belonging to the grounds crew. He assumes his computer was the first one ever made. For the first home match, he scrubbed net poles wearing his suit. Thirteen people showed up.

This audience, on this Tuesday night, is into it. It should be. We’re a short drive north of Wisconsin’s campus. Also it’s $100 a head to get in.

“B.S. and Bourbon” is the event, with part of the proceeds redirected to volleyball NIL efforts. Storytelling is required, and Sheffield cycles through his library of hits. How he inherited the school’s “party team,” as he puts it, and somehow it reached the NCAA championship match that winter of 2013. How he schemed to get air conditioning installed in UW Field House. How he ticked off the Big Ten and television networks with a tweet about coverage. How Waunakee police once pulled him over because he was following his young daughter in his car near a park and someone called in a suspicious driver.

People laugh between sips, but there’s a gasp, too, when the guest of honor jokes that he can’t talk about his playing career because there isn’t one. It’s a seminal fact, and yet, wildly, news to some patrons: Sheffield runs a volleyball powerhouse having never competed in the sport. How their coach has performed that bit of alchemy, how he’s become a filter-free advocate for the game while building a team positioned to chase another national title, is essentially a mystery to them.

He doesn’t need all night to explain that part.

“If I didn’t ask questions,” Sheffield tells the crowd at Red & White Winebar, “I wouldn’t be where I am right now.”

As of Thanksgiving week, the total is 559 wins in 22-plus seasons across three jobs, including 18 appearances in the NCAA Tournament. Wisconsin volleyball has reached five Final Fours, and Kelly Sheffield has been on the sideline for four of them. It was four straight Big Ten championships until a loss at then-No. 16 Purdue on Friday put a fifth out of reach. This stopped being quirky a long time ago. Actually, this isn’t even the first time a head coach with zero playing experience has led a volleyball leviathan, nor the first time such a coach has received a paycheck from this particular school. John Cook — the head coach in Madison from 1992-98 — checks both boxes, and he’s bringing unbeaten No. 1 Nebraska to town on Friday for a rematch of a five-set epic played on Oct. 21.

Still, this is the first time a historically competitive program has a coach with a national championship trophy displayed on an end table, and it’s a little preposterous that “18-year-old 8th grade cross-country coach” is one of the first lines on his resume. To boot, the Badgers run a system used by only a small fraction of the country’s 300-plus programs, while occasionally doing circus tricks before practice or watching Monty Python clips or singing along to Earth, Wind & Fire in the film room. (On the 21st of September, naturally, after Sheffield hand-wrote the lyrics on the dry erase board.)

Because he didn’t come up in thrall to the sport’s conventions, Wisconsin’s coach sees things eclectically. He doesn’t believe there’s a limit to discoverable answers in the game. Think like a scientist, Sheffield tells his team, over and over and over again. “Sometimes you’re testing things out and it’s not always going to be perfect,” says junior Anna Smrek, the Badgers’ 6-foot-9 – that’s correct, 6-foot-9 – middle blocker/right side hitter. “It’s kind of like a hypothesis. You’re working things out. It’s not your statement yet, right?”

It’s the fun in the 53-year-old’s fascination with volleyball — “Every match, there is a path to winning, and I’m obsessed with trying to find that,” Sheffield says — and it is perhaps only exceeded by how he fell into it.

He grew up in Muncie, Ind., and the extent of his volleyball experience was putting a cutout of a ball on his head and cheering for a Burris High School team that was in the midst of winning 21 state championships in 35 seasons. He was a student at Ball State when a former high school classmate called to ask if Sheffield had seen her boyfriend at a bar the previous night. As it happened, the former classmate was coaching Burris’ junior varsity team. As it happened, Sheffield was a single college guy. So he offered to help, should help ever be needed from someone who knew next to nothing about the sport.

His first year was 1989. The team went undefeated. He’d plunged into Muncie’s volleyball incubator at peak temperature. “I loved the techniques,” Sheffield says. “I loved the tactics, I loved the systems. I loved the challenge of not knowing, but the chase of trying to know.” As he added duties with Munciana Volleyball Club, he visited any practice he could, from high school teams to Rick Majerus’ basketball workouts at Ball State to the college’s marching band rehearsals. He filled legal pads with exacting details: names of drills. Where the coach stood. The words coming out of his or her mouth. He would spend three hours at the Ball State student union writing a two-hour practice plan. He hit against a wall, again and again, to teach himself good hand contact so he could input balls properly in practice and actually get things done.

He bartended at night and obsessed on coaching during the day, working any camp or clinic that would have him. “This wasn’t about a career at all,” Sheffield says. “I was having a blast.”

After Sheffield worked a Bowling Green camp during his mid-20s, then-Falcons coach Denise Van De Walle recommended him to longtime Houston coach Bill Walton for a limited-earnings position. Sheffield worked Walton’s camp and then interviewed for the gig. His first impression was … not great. Walton asked Van De Walle why she sent him this loser who ordered a Diet Coke instead of a beer. “He called me up and said, ‘I don’t want to hire you, but Denise is making me,’” Sheffield recalls. He packed his car in two hours, drove 20 more, and made the second workout of two-a-days in the summer of 1997, the start of a new path worth a tidy $12,000 a year.

But then, all along, Sheffield has felt like he’s getting paid to do something he’d pay someone to let him do. It satisfies the competitive urges of a guy who wants to bet on which elevator will open first, or which grocery store line will move quickest. It feeds a compulsion to figure things out. The closest Sheffield gets to explaining it: He was once the youngest Eagle Scout in Indiana history. And then someone put him in charge of a college volleyball team.

“If you’re going to start something,” Sheffield says, “let’s fricking go.”

Which means questions. All the questions. Like the time at Dayton he wondered why the band didn’t show up for volleyball matches, and the response “Well, it never has” wasn’t good enough. “Kelly does not have the bias of experience to keep him from reaching high,” says Wisconsin associate head coach Brittany Dildine, who has been on Sheffield’s staff since 2009.

How else to explain those first frenzied months in Madison in 2013? Sheffield interviewed in a suit he borrowed from his brother-in-law, ran out of gas during the move from Dayton and inherited a roster with four future first- or second-team All-Americans … but not a lot of direction or discretion. The Badgers had missed four straight NCAA Tournaments. One of the first team meetings lasted three hours. “We had to learn to be tough,” says Wisconsin assistant coach Annemarie Hickey, who was then a senior. “It was very, ‘What we’re going to try to do is hard,’ and he laid it all out in front of us.”

That group reached the national championship game as a No. 12 seed, losing to Penn State. The bar hasn’t lowered since.

Instant success, for the head coach whose career started in the equivalent of an equipment shed. It’s ironic only if you weren’t in that Chevy Tahoe on the road from Dayton to Madison long ago. Somewhere along the way, Dildine thought of a very important question.

“Well,” she said, “what are we going to do at Wisconsin?”

Her boss looked at her, incredulous.

“What are you talking about?” Sheffield replied. “We do what we do. We just do it there.”

Three days after coming up irritatingly short in the most-watched regular-season volleyball match ever — that five-set inferno at Nebraska that  delivered 612,000 viewers — Wisconsin fills its film room and a very matter-of-fact discussion meanders to the concept of trust. If you’re in a place where you’re trying to do too much, the head coach says, you’re losing trust. Doesn’t matter if the gym is a kiln and it’s so loud the vitriol merges into one endless, thrashing soundwave.

We do our thing, he says. We do our thing and we’re good enough.

Wisconsin volleyball’s thing, basically, is a miasmic flow of ideas adapted to, and executed by, extremely versatile and talented players. There is structure. But there is no permanence. Only the time being, until the next thought. It’s what you get a decade into the Kelly Sheffield experience, with a roster built to fulfill his wildest dreams. “I would never want to be inside Kelly’s brain,” Hickey says. “I think it would be exhausting. But that’s what makes him so good at what he does.”

Wisconsin works because it can change. In every way.

Smrek was a competitive dancer until she was 14 years old. Setter Izzy Ashburn played three sports in high school. (She also dropped band after one year.) Middle blocker/right side hitter Devyn Robinson played basketball before dropping it for volleyball and also ran track. The positional pigeonholing prevalent in youth volleyball? It all but vanishes here. Smrek never trained on the right side until the day Wisconsin coaches floated the notion. Robinson, similarly, was recruited as a middle and added the hitter training on arrival. Ashburn came in as a setter and has been deployed as a defensive specialist, a hitter, a middle and a passer before returning to setting the last two seasons.

Julia Orzol was, well, bad at diving when she got to Wisconsin. Split her chin on the floor three times one preseason. Dildine, at one point, took Orzol to a pole vault pit and threw balls for 45 minutes as Orzol laid out for them. And in that Oct. 21 match against Nebraska, Orzol shifted from outside hitter to libero. “If you go back and watch some of her digs, she was Superwoman,” Dildine says. “And none of those were digs she was making even two weeks (before).”

No idea is beyond a try. “Putting us in spots where we may be uncomfortable,” Robinson says, “is where we grow.”

The result is freedom to do what many others won’t. Midway through 2022, Sheffield had a quasi-radical thought. He had excellent setters in Ashburn and M.J. Hammill. He had outrageous size with Smrek and 6-foot-7 middle Carter Booth. He had elite hitters in the 6-2 Robinson and 6-4 Sarah Franklin. He surmised he could get more size at the net and more firepower on the floor if Wisconsin switched from the ubiquitous “5-1” rotation to a “6-2” system, which required a timeshare at setter.

It wasn’t a light bulb flickering on. It was a dozen alarm clocks going off at once. “People right away were like, you’re crazy,” Ashburn says. “Why are you even trying that?” Sheffield estimates maybe 5 percent of 300-plus Division I teams employ the “6-2.” He believes Southern California was the last team to win a national title running the system, in the early aughts. Wisconsin? Lost in five sets to Pittsburgh in the Elite Eight a year ago and has won 24 of 27 matches this season. The offense ranked No. 2 nationally both in hitting percentage (.310) and blocks per set (3.01) entering the penultimate weekend of the regular season.

During a European exhibition tour last summer, Sheffield suggested Ashburn and Hammill take turns running matches in a 5-1, just because. They declined. It wasn’t who Wisconsin was. “No questions, no selfishness — just find the flow of the game individually and together and communicate,” Ashburn says. “It really is an advantage to have another setter’s eyes from the bench, letting you know what they’re seeing, or what success they’re having.”

Sheffield concedes none of this happens without what he describes as a “paradigm shift” at Wisconsin; a robust, uncompromising commitment to resourcing volleyball. It began with the air conditioning and getting the wasps out of the Field House roof. Then came a new locker room and a new floor and a new scoreboard. Now Wisconsin charters to road games. Mindfulness coaches are a text away. Last offseason, the Badgers received Oura rings and weighted blankets and pads that change the temperature of their beds as part of a program-wide sleep study. “How it is here,” says Franklin, who played two years at Michigan State before transferring in, “is not even close to how it is at other schools.”

All volleyball programs would like more stuff. Fewer enjoy the institutional imperative to procure it. “Each year (Sheffield) looks for things we can dive into deeper,” associate head coach Gary White says. “If something new comes out, we’re like, could we build that into our program? How do we benefit from this information? We’re always looking for that.”

Which brings us to 4:26 p.m. on a Tuesday in October, and the pop-up lab inside UW Field House.

“We’re scientists right now,” the head coach tells his team.

The Badgers are well into the season, but what feels like solid ground always floats on something more fluid. Today’s test subject is tempo. Wisconsin hits with sufficient speed at the net and the back row. Sheffield thinks his team goes slow in the middle of the floor when it doesn’t have to. He wants his hitters to be athletic and accelerate, which requires a different kind of feed from the setter. And this requires everyone to rehearse the scenario repeatedly while communicating about where the ball is or should be.

Nine minutes in, Sheffield hits pause. It’s not quite getting there. He lines the hitters up single-file. One by one, they approach and swing. No traffic. Just timing and mechanics and discussion. The experiment, reduced to its core elements. “Some places are like, no matter what our hitter’s percentage is, we’re running this tempo, and that’s it,” Hammill says. “In those moments, it’s very collaborative to what’s going to get us the best results.”

It’s the serious work amid the dodgeball contests and “Anchorman” clips and team field trips to see Bruce Springsteen in Zurich at the end of that Europe tour. The science juxtaposed with calculated madness.

That alchemy, though, is in the moments when it’s hard to tell the difference.

Like tennis balls juggled to hone hand-eye coordination. Or the one preseason Sheffield wanted to see less spin on sets, and he had Hammill and Ashburn set balloons. They thought it was ridiculous. It worked. Of course.

“He’s just a big kid,” Franklin says, “who knows volleyball really well.”

These days, yes, sometimes the big kid acts up. He has his reasons.

On March 19, 2022, Kelly Sheffield sent a couple tweets.

A year and a half later in a wine bar, Sheffield recalls the visit from a Wisconsin administrator provoked by these thoughts. ESPN sent a message. The Big Ten reached out. The Big Ten Network did, too. Not happy, he was told.

So be it, Sheffield replied.

“You’re willing to be patient for an amount of time,” he says, “and then let’s cut the crap.”

These aren’t his questions about how to elevate college volleyball. These are his demands. His career, after all, is a mockery of barriers to entry. People pay money just to hear him talk. Shoppers recognize Franklin, the ebullient team-leader in kills, at Plato’s Closet and ask for pictures. To Sheffield, it’s not random. It’s proof of concept.

Just like 92,003 fans watching a volleyball match played in a football stadium at Nebraska in August, the largest crowd ever to watch a women’s sporting event. A couple of weeks later, Wisconsin played Marquette at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, and the 17,037 attendees set an NCAA record for largest attendance at an indoor regular-season match. And, what do you know, in late October, Wisconsin and Minnesota played the first volleyball match broadcast on FOX. Big gets bigger. Presumptions shrivel.

In fact, Sheffield adds, within 48 hours of Wisconsin’s gripping first tilt with Nebraska, officials from Lambeau Field reached out about hosting a volleyball match.

The coach wants assurances of a sellout. A plan to make it an epic experience for fans and the teams. That’s what Sheffield sees, even if others can’t yet.

If everyone can make that happen? Let’s fricking go, he says.

Do What You Are Good At

Understanding your role. I’ve talked a lot about how that terminology can limit your players, and limit your ability to know what they are good at. I recognize I’m in the minority here when it comes to coaches. It seems like most of us want our players to “know their role,” and on good teams you even hear a lot of players talk about knowing their roles and how important it is to success.

Your role is to help our team win. That is everyone’s role. Do things that are going to help us have success. If you are a good 3-point shooter, you should be looking to shoot threes. If you are great at getting downhill, you should be driving to the basket. If you can help the team by sharing the ball or get to the glass, then get to it.

I think for a player learning his role is just about self-evaluation. Understand what you are good at. If you are honest about what you are good at, you can figure out how to help the team. Figure out what you are good at, and do those things a lot. That will help us. And that will give you an important “role” on our team.

As a coach, I’m not going to define a specific role for you. But I am going to help you understand what you are good at. I never want to limit a player or put him in a box and say “you are a defender and a rebounder,” because a lot of the time players will surprise you with what they can do.

Figure out what you are good at, and do that a lot. That is your role.

Curiosity

The best leaders are curious about others around them. The leaders on great teams are genuinely curious about their teammates, and their teammates success. They also have the ability to do their own job while also having the mental capital to think about others. Not everyone does, which is why not everyone is a great leader in the traditional sense. Certain players can only focus on their own job to be able to get it done, and that’s okay. They don’t have the mental space to think about what’s going on with their teammates while also handling their job.

When you are looking for your best leaders, look to those who are curious about what is going on around them. Find the guys that can handle their own business and still understand what’s going on around them. Great leaders are curious about their teammates. That is the first step in making their teammates better.

The Best Teams…

I’ve been a part of:

• Embrace the value of practice

• Play for each other

• Have great perspective

• Compete at an elite level regardless of circumstance

• Are genuinely curious about each other

• Handle losing

• Listen without responding

• Take ownership

• Show vulnerability

• Don’t take themselves too seriously

• Confront bad behavior

• Don’t always get along

• Understand sacrifice

• Love playing together in the off-season

• Are in great shape

• Have different personalities

• Challenge each other as players

• Challenge me as a coach

• Understand the value of being a great teammate

• Don’t sweat the small stuff

• Trust each other sincerely

• Speak up

• Handle the spotlight

• Play with joy

• Are not afraid of conflict

• Love being a part of a team

• Set their own standards

• Hold each other accountable

• Understand our culture is their behavior

• Ask questions

• Confront me when I need it

• Refuse to let one another down

• Would give anything for one more day of practice together

“We’re Here Because of the One’s That Love Us”

Terrific stuff from Matt Rhule of Nebraska Pre-Game.

“Leadership is Solving Problems”

“Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.” - Colin Powell

I would say leadership as a coach is not just solving problems, but teaching people how to solve problems. In a big picture sense, you always need to solve the problems that are impacting your organization. But once we get to playing games, we can’t solve the problems anymore. They have to solve the problems.

Are we teaching them to solve the problems themselves? Finding a balance in practice between how much you stop, talk and teach versus letting them play through mistakes is challenging. Colin Powell didn’t have that luxury. But the more hands on we are as coaches, the more we are inhibiting their ability to solve the problems themselves. And with 5:00 to play in a tie game, they need to solve the problems themselves.

Ask them questions in practice instead making loud, declarative statements all the time. When someone commits a turnover ask them “What did you see there?” and let them explain it to you. There’s a big difference between that and “Stop turning the ball over!” You are giving them a chance to process what happened, think about what they saw and figure out a better way to make the right play, instead of simply being judged on the result. When you yell at them to stop turning it over you are making it very clear what the problem is, but you aren’t giving them a road map on how to solve the problem.

I think effective coaches at times have to get comfortable with practice being sloppy and chaotic. Not to say you should stop coaching, but understand even if it doesn’t look great and things are erratic your players are getting used to an uncomfortable environment and how to figure things out. If you stop practice every time something bad happens, they aren’t learning to navigate it. They are learning to stop doing bad things.

Don’t just solve the problems for your players. Teach them to be problem solvers. The more ownership of the process they have, the better your team will be.