Wednesday, June 1, 2016

#uracoach when you set a standard....and hold it...regardless of how it will affect the game...

#‎uracoach‬ when you set a standard for behavior based on great character and hold every player-especially your most gifted players - to that standard regardless of how it will affect the game

The standards spoken about above come from your personal values and vision for your program and your way of coaching.  It's when you don't come from your values or roots that you get yourself into trouble.  You see, there are too many decisions that happen day to day to address short term success that will trip you up, as a leader, if you aren't acting from a deep rooted and articulated place of value.  

From Daniel Goleman's book, Focus: 

If a leader is to articulate such shared values effectively, he or she must first look within to find a genuinely heartfelt guiding vision.  The alternative can be seen in the hollow mission statements espoused by executives but belied by their company's (or their own) actions.
Just some of the possible reasons you as a coach are enticed into not holding team standards:


  1. Avoidance of unrest, as in avoiding the parental outburst that will surely come if you uphold the child of the wrong parent. (hey parent genius - your kid probably needed that standard the most and now she won't learn the lesson because her out of control mom just 'got her back' - What is that?!  You're not her friend, Mom!  And you just robbed her of the chance to learn a lesson that might have prevented her from getting fired from the 10th job she's had. Way to go 'Mom of the year'!)  You are literally preventing coaches from helping your child go through the rigors of life so that he or she can one day fly independently.  Your reward will likely be a child-adult at home with you for life so you'll have that to look forward to at least.  Assume the best of your child's coaches and teachers - the vast majority are trying to help.
  2. Loss of a game.  Oldest one in the book.  This is on you, coach.  You have to determine if you're about winning first or teaching lessons first.  This is where the roots and values being your deeply held beliefs come in handy - when you're willing to deal with a loss and even a loss of a job to hold a kid to a standard - you are coaching for a purpose.  If you find yourself rationalizing a way to get that kid in the game when you know they shouldn't, you're just coaching to coach.  It's different.
  3. Team unrest.  If you built your team standards on solid ground.  The rest of the team will appreciate and respect you for upholding the standard so team unrest will be short term at best.
  4. Administrator overreach.  You players will respect you more if you leave rather than let an overreaching administrator dictate your actions.  Living on principle isn't easy, but at least you'll have definite peace of mind.
  5. Be the cool coach - have players like you.  Listen they might like you in that moment if they get to have fun or fly below the level of a high team standard, but you better believe that all things being equal they will respect a coach who makes them better far more than they will ever like a cool coach that let's them coast.  I asked a player one time who was giving me a hard time about not ever goofing off in position training, 'would you rather make funny videos or be awesome?' They choose awesome every single time.
Bottom line.  There are a lot of reasons to undercut the standards so arming yourself with indisputable reasons to hold your players to the standards will help make extremely hard decisions, easy.  You don't have to have 100 page rule book if your why is right and you coach from that why regardless of the outcome.

For more on this- get yourself signed up for the August 3rd Intentional Coaching Workshop in Big Rapids, Michigan.  After June 17th the price goes up so get everyone on your staff in right away!!!  www.treerootsllc.com

Happy Coaching!

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