Standards vs. Rules

In the MIVCA speaking appearance from a couple of weeks ago, I failed to get to some of the points in my outline.  In an attempt to make up for that, this blog will cover some of the points I didn't get to.  This installment will be about the bullet point 'Standards vs. Rules'.

This is a subject I've been asked about a couple of times and also a point I make with those that I'm working with on the construct of their program books.

Most coaches and leaders would agree with the idea that a high level of trust is the cement that the foundation of any high functioning group of people is built upon.  Yet, many say that and then pursue ideas and policies that breed the opposite.  Rules are limitations.  Rules, by their nature, lead teams to feel like they can't be trusted to do right by the organization or team.  This is not to suggest you shouldn't have any rules, but they should be broad and values based.  They should also be enforceable and be enforced on an extremely consistent basis.  If not, all the rest of the rules might as well not exist - no one will know which ones to follow and which ones are BS.

Even a coach as harsh and discipline-based realized this during the course of her career.  Pat Summit in the late 80's/early 90's started to realize that in order to help her team be champions on a more regular basis, she should adjust when it came to rules.  She did this before the craziness of texting, social media and every other influence we, as a coaching community, say changed our players forevermore.  She did this, because humans are humans and ten or fifteen years into her career, she realized it was her job to adapt to them, not the other way around.  On page 208 of her latest book, Sum it Up, Coach Summitt talks about it:

"I also made our team rules fewer and simpler.  I'd learned that if you have one hundred rules, then you have to police them, and kids are going to break them, and that just creates problems.  Better to have a few rules, but strictly enforce them.  I treated them as adults, until they gave me a reason not to, and usually they didn't.  As long as they abided by the rules, I was pretty flexible.  But if they didn't, I could be as tough as any person they'd ever met.  But I also prided myself on being fair, firm, and consistent."

"...But it was my observation that young people wanted discipline, even craved it, because they wanted to succeed.  They wanted an environment of healthy structure, one in which they felt I cared about them and cared that they did things the right way.  Deep down they understood there was a relationship between discipline and success, and they wanted me to show it to them."  Our rules and policies were just another expression of caring.  There is an old saying: 'Rules without relationship result in rebellion.'" 

Standards vs. Rules if I had gotten to it, would have been my plea to every coach in the stands to be very careful about what you put in your rulebook for your team.  Your players often time fail to trust you when you fail to trust them. A quick way to show them you don't trust them is to load them up with a bunch of rules right off the bat.  It's more than just semantics, and I really don't think it matters which word you use.  It's about the concept.  Are we telling our players what they can't do or is one of our main purposes as a coach and leader to show our players what they CAN do?

Remember Coach, the old saying that "we tend to judge ourselves by our intent, but we tend to judge others by their behavior."  A good place to start with your team is to have the generosity of spirit to assume the best of them and to judge them as you tend to judge yourself - by your intent.

Be careful when you set the construct for your team. Be sure to set your standards or rules based on your program's core values and not in reaction to misdeeds done by those before.  Be sure that your rules are consistently enforceable and as simple as possible.  This is the framework upon which trust and team success is built upon.

Make it about the what, how and why - not about the who

There's a trend in college coaching.  I don't think it's totally new and based on conversations I've had in the past few weeks, I know I'm not the only one who has noticed.  The trend is not good, is somewhat dangerous and it's growing.

First of all, I will concede that networking is indeed important.  Regardless of your occupation, it is extremely helpful to grow your sport, business, customer base, etc.  However, networking in college volleyball, as of late seems to be less about sharing great information and having deep conversations about how best to attack the complex job of building a great program than being seen out with the right group of coaches.

Coaching is complex at every level.  Coaching a college sport is insanity run amuck.  Coaches are tasked with the following things:

• Understanding at a deep level the nuances of their particular game
• Having great skill at training the skills associated with executing that game
• In game tactical skills
• Expert communication skills so they can communicate that game to players with an ever changing communication skill set
• Skills to both identify and evaluate the right talent and people to fit in with their program philosophy
• Budgeting expertise
• Fundraising abilities
• Knowledge and business skills to market and run camps
• Culture building skills
• Public speaking abilities to inspire their players, administrators, fellow coaches and fans to support the vision they have adopted for their program

So I'm just saying, perhaps the majority of the pie chart that makes up the skill set of the typical college coach should be focused on the what, the how and the why you do it.  Networking is important, sure, but perhaps lets spend 10% of our efforts on that and 90% on gaining the skills for the most important aspects.  We owe that to the profession, our players and the sport we coach.

Perspective...Choice...Little Moments

Over the weekend I had the chance to attend the celebration of the 2015 season of the CMU Volleyball team.  It doesn't go unnoticed by me that this wasn't a given.  After all, I had been released by the CMU Athletic Department at the conclusion of the season once our head coach resigned his post.  The new coaching staff, led by Mike Gawlik, extended the invitation.  They didn't have to.  It was a classy move only to be topped by his ask that I say a few words to the team at the event when I arrived.  Again, classy.

Not having prepared anything in advance I let the moment take me and trusted that whatever came out, it would be right for the moment.  When you speak from your heart and from a place of love and gratefulness, you really can't go wrong.

After I faced the crowd and fought back the sentimental tears that have a tendency to overtake me, I told a story that seemed right for the moment.  I heard it a long time ago on from Wayne Dyer.  He was walking along a beach in Hawaii where he spent the final years of his life.  As he tells it, he came upon a women who was looking to move there with her family.  She asked him what the people were like.  Wayne asked her what the people were like where she was coming from, she beamed about the people in her community.  "They're great, people help one another out, they're interested and care about your success, it's like a big family," replied the woman.  Wayne simply replied, "that's pretty much what you'll find here," and continued on.  A while later on the walk he came upon another woman who asked the same question.  Wayne again asked her what the people were like where she lived. "They're not nice, everyone is in each other's business, no one stops to help or cares at all how you're doing," replied this woman.  "Well, that's pretty much what you'll find here," he said before he carried on.

The story is about perspective.  Everything in your life, every person, situation and circumstance you find yourself in is about you and the way you see things.

I asked the players to move forward, work hard and demand that their teammates work hard and to be the very best version of theirselves everyday.  Isn't this what athletics and life should be all about?  To do things you never thought possible, you will have to seek the uncomfortable.  That banquet, as great as it was to be there, was extremely uncomfortable for me.  The reward of seeing and getting to hug and laugh with those players one more time made it worth it times a million.  It seemed the least I could do was to implore them to live up to their awesome potential as I had done many times before.

Everything in your life, every person, situation and circumstance you find yourself in is about you and the way you see things.

So it is for everyone, so it is for me.  I have chosen to make my journey the fault of no one else.  I have chosen to make the best of every situation I am in.  I am grateful for my circumstances, regardless of outcome.  It is my hope that my choice of response inspires the players I used to see everyday do the same.

I grew a little over the weekend.  I hope I helped them grow a little too.  We all grow in little moments.  

Why Donald Trump doesn't wear blue jeans.

"There are few things more powerful in our lives than a journey into the unknown." Terry Pettit in the book A Fresh Season.

Okay, I have a confession to make. I have no earthly idea if Trump does or does not wear blue jeans, nor do I care.  The drive from Louisville, Kentucky is a long one and it included A LOT of news, commentary and random audio book excerpts. In one of them, the talking heads were making a point about why the media isn't totally to blame for Trump's standing in the polls.  Never mind that they have given him a billion dollars of free coverage.  Literally, a billion.  This particular member of the media wanted to at least share the blame with the citizens.  His point was that every member of the media knows that if you add Trump's name to the title of the whatever it is you're working on, you're ratings, clicks, views or whatevers goes up dramatically.  So, here we are, not talking about his blue jeans.  Well that and I've been re-reading Terry Pettit's books as of late.  No one and I mean NO ONE titles chapters better than the former University of Nebraska volleyball coach turned author and sport elder.

The quote on the wall in the University of Louisville's practice gym caught my eye.  It's in the upper left hand corner of the PI results for the entire team and staff.  It's not in color or bigger than anything else there and it's not on some special lamented card stock for long keeping, it doesn't have to be.  The spirit of the quote is so adamantly lived out by their head coach - in every word spoken and action - this is her to the core.  The quote is by Winston Churchill and although he didn't know it when said it, it so eloquently describes what great coaches do on a daily basis.  They adapt and they adapt in positive and constructive ways.  The quote:

 "The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity.  The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty."

On the four day learning tour that included Louisville, University of Indy, Purdue and Illinois, I saw example after example of coaches adapting to players. All four programs were unbelievably generous with their time, and all four had different ways of doing a very hard thing very well.  I'm not going to go into what each of the programs do and I refuse to compare them.  They were all great and I learned a so much from all four.

What I will leave you with are the Top 10 things that I learned or were confirmed for me during my recent journey:

1. There is no end line to culture cultivation.  There are also no shortcuts to good culture.  It comes in little moments, it comes through consistent communication from coaches and should be looked at as a living, breathing and growing thing that serves as the oil that allows the engine to run smoothly.  A dysfunctional culture is like dirty oil-neither is good for motor.
2. All four coaches/programs have drastically different styles, but importantly all of them give off the impression that they don't, even for a second, think that their's is the only way or even the best way-but just the right way for them.
3. Self Awareness is the key to building great culture.  You have to know your values, your roots in order to lead other people successfully.
4. Great coaches collaborate with today's players who expect input.
5. Players were asked to evaluate almost every drill along the way.
6. Practice tempo can vary wildly and still be successful.
7. Consistent communication about behavior not in line with a team's culture is important, but not more important that patience and understanding.  Great coaches take an educational approach to discipline.
8. There is more than one way to skin a cat when it comes to parent communication.  The range goes from not talking to parents about anything volleyball related to talking to them about whatever they need to talk about, including playing time.  As long as the coach believes in the policy and carries it out consistency and artfully, the canvas is the coach's to paint.
9. Great coaches express vulnerability to their teams, regularly and without regret or hesitation.
10. Simon Sinek would be proud of the programs I saw this week.  The level of safety in the gyms I stood in was very high. When I speak of safety, I don't mean that the players know they won't get shanked if they miss a serve.  I mean the safety to give advice to a teammate without fear for being told they're wrong, safety to speak up and take the team aside for a pep talk after poor performance in a drill, safety to ask questions of the coaches or ask for a more complete explanation if needed.  The kind of safety that allows a team to take risks in the pursuit of improvement.

More to come...In the meantime, if you know about the blue jeans, let me know at Tree@TreeRootsLLC.com  Happy Coaching!

Reactive vs. Proactive Language in Coaching

Excerpt from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People….
From Pages 78 – 79
Listening to Our Language                  Because our attitudes and behaviors flow out of our paradigms, if we use our self-awareness to examine them, we can often see in them the nature of our underlying maps.  Our language, for example, is a very real indicator of the degree to which we see ourselves as proactive people.
                  The language of reactive people absolves them of responsibility. “That’s me.  That’s just the way I am.”  I am determined.  There’s nothing I can do about it.
                  “He makes me so mad!” I’m not responsible.  My emotional life is governed by something outside my control.
                  “I can’t do that.  I just don’t have the time.” Something outside me-limited time-is controlling me.
                  “If only my wife were more patient.”  Someone else’s behavior is limiting my effectiveness.
                  “I have to do it.”  Circumstances or other people are forcing me to do what I do.  I’m not free to choose my own actions.
Reactive Language:                                                                                                Proactive Language:There’s nothing I can do.                                                                                     Let’s look at our alternatives.
That’s just the way I am.                                                                                      I can choose a different approach.
He makes me so mad.                                                                                            I control my own feelings.
They won’t allow that.                                                                                         I can create an effective presentation.
I have to do that.                                                                                                      I will choose an appropriate response.
I can’t.                                                                                                                            I choose.
I must.                                                                                                                            I prefer.
If only.                                                                                                                            I will.
                   That language comes from a basic paradigm of determinism.  And the whole spirit of it is the transfer of responsibility.  I am not responsible, not able to choose my response.(Covey, 78)                
                  A serious problem with reactive language is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  People become reinforced in the paradigm that they are determined, and they produce evidence to support the belief.  They feel increasingly victimized and out of control, not in charge of their life or their destiny.  They blame outside forces – other people, circumstances, even the stars – for their own situation. (Covey, 79)

        In coaching there are plenty of opportunities to see and work with athletes covering the entire spectrum of reactive versus proactive.  When a coach works with a student-athlete in regards to academic studies, the biggest and most prevalent task to tackle first is that of moving them into a more proactive way of thinking.  “My teacher just doesn’t like me.”  “I just don’t do well with numbers.”  “The professor’s lectures aren’t about anything to do with the class.”  These are all actual quotes from college students I’ve worked with in the last few years.  Moving them off of statements like that and into more proactive thinking is the challenge.

        We work to solve this problem in a few ways.  For example, we have constructed a pre-season classroom session that incorporates parts of Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People with study habits known to be successful in helping students make the transition from high school to college.  Coaches also talk to them and help them understand the concept of getting a degree versus getting an education.  Feeling like they are doing much more than just trying to get the grade really makes a difference in how they approach their classes.  It encourages them to take more responsibility for learning materials rather than wanting to passively sit and absorb random facts for the sole purpose of doing well on the exam.

      We find this type of ownership carries over to the court as well.   When an athlete is more engaged in learning new techniques rather than just doing reps, the ability for deep practice is much greater.

      Much more to come on this topic…