Tag: Tim Elmore

Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch – Part 8 – 2 questions every young athlete needs to be asked

Stephen Covey teaches in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: ‘Seek first to understand, then to be understood.’ To better understand the kids you coach, there are two questions to start with.

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Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch Part 8 – Seek First To Understand

As coaches, we often jump to analyze, interpret and fix anything that is going wrong in our program. It is in our nature to continuously improve our program. And it should be. But the procedures and processes can distract us from why we are called to coach. If you have followed me for long or listened to my podcasts, you know my favorite quote is Frederick Douglass’
 ‘It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.’
Another quote, attributed to several different coaches, is
‘Kids don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.’
The only way we really get to know anyone, including kids, is to ask questions about them and hear their stories. 2 simple but important questions to start with are:
1 – What is your favorite thing about playing this sport and for this team?
2 – What is your least favorite thing?

Then you can start diving deeper. Here are a few tips:

  • Make sure you understand each kid’s expectations – are they on the team to just have fun, to put it on their resume, or to become a D1 college athlete?
  • If a kids loses his temper and explodes during a practice or game – go ahead and discipline him appropriately, but ask some deeper questions about his life outside the sport. Often there are stressors with their home life that are impacting them.
  • My friend Kevin Kennedy uses the phrase ‘Isn’t that interesting’ – Don’t be judgmental when coaching – rather, make observations and analyze why things are happening. Ask questions before judging.
  • I recently met the founder of an interesting company called First Team Reps – They have created a tool that provides feedback to coaches based on anonymous surveys of the players. Some of the questions help the coaches communicate better, such as ‘What plays don’t you understand?’ The cool thing is they end their surveys with the question ‘Are there any stressors outside of football in your life right now?’ They have found that since it is anonymous the kids are very honest and many will pour their heart out.
Tim Elmore writes in his Generation iY book: ‘Great teachers build a relationship so strong that it can bear the weight of truth.’ If kids understand that you have their best interest in mind, they will respond to and listen to coaching and constructive criticism. And more importantly, you will be building stronger children.
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Next week we’ll look into ways to build a championship culture when coaching a team with your own kid on it.
Check out the rest of this 10 part series on Culture: Go to blog posts
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WYC 061 – Mental Toughness – James Leath and Will Drumright talk Sports Psychology at the AASP

 

The Association for Applied Sport Psychology National meeting was a few weeks ago – so for Episode 61 we invited 2 sports psychology guys who attended to share with us some lessons learned.

James Leath has been a WYC guest previously in episodes 50 and 31.  James’ first interview on the show, WYC Episode 31, was a huge hit and is the #1 downloaded episode all-time on the show.

Will Drumright is a sport psychology coach who work with Dr. Rob Bell, providing mental skills and performance psychology training to coaches, athletes, and teams.  Will focuses on the high school and middle school athletes.  Will is also a professional Ultimate Frisbee player and coaches the local high school Ultimate Frisbee team.

Sign up for James’ weekly Coach Notes: James Leath weekly Coach Note

Twitter: @jamesleath; @wcdrummy15

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What was the biggest ‘a-ha’ moment you had during the meeting?

James

HUGE IDEA #1

  • Teach the human, not the athlete. Children are not mini-adults, they are children.  If you don’t first build a relationship – then the gameplan you develop doesn’t matter.  Tim Elmore quote from Generation iY book: ‘Great teachers build a relationship so strong that it can bear the weight of truth.’ If they understand that you have their best interest in mind, they will respond to and listen to coaching and constructive criticism.
  • Love.  What do you love about your sport? And as a coach I need to love my players for who they are, not for them to please me.

Will

  • The athlete is a human first.
  • Speak to athletes in a way that increases their intrinsic motivation

Were there any discussions on how sports psychology has changed over the past 10-15 years as our society and our society’s approach to youth sports is very different today vs. 10-15 years ago?

Will

HUGE IDEA #2

  • The importance of providing resources to athletes so they can take care of themselves as individuals outside of athletics.
  • Quote: ‘Sport doesn’t inherently build character, it just has the opportunity to do so.’- Dr. Greg Dale, Duke University
  • Is your message slippery or sticky?  Your message is only effective if it resonates with your athletes.

James

  • ‘Culture eats strategy for lunch’ – Dr. Greg Dale, Duke University. One way to create culture – address the elephants in the room.
  • You can’t coach the kids today the way you were coached growing up.  There are too many other options and they will quit.

Learn any new routines for brushing-off mistakes?

Will

  • Develop a flushing routine. It has to be unique, something that is meaningful to the individual athlete.
  • Take a centering breath.

James

  • It’s all about giving meaning to things. Shared terminology. James has worked out a ‘word’ that has meaning with his wife – if he says ‘I’m in a folder’ – it means ‘Hey honey, I love you, so great to hear from you, I can’t talk right now because I’m in the middle of something, I’ll call you as soon as I can.’
  • ‘Great cultures have a ton of inside jokes’

What’s the best story or analogy you heard?

James

  • Yoda on the back of Luke Skywalker – Justin Su’a.  Coaches who fail are the ones who want the spotlight – instead coaches should want to have their students rise up and be stronger than their teacher.

Will

  • Matts Stutzman – Holds world records for longest archery shot – and he was born without arms – ‘How do you become the best.  Period.  No excuses.’  His parents didn’t modify anything for him, they allowed him to struggle.  And that’s what made him a champion.  Failure is a key part of learning!

Hear any out-of-the-box approaches that you thought might have some validity?

Will

  • Dr. Greg Dale, Duke University – ‘Are you effective when you are listening to 3 things at the same time?’ – Realize as a parent you are 1 of 3 voices the kids are hearing – so think about if you need to say anything while the athlete is playing a game
  • Coaches need to spend more time on warm-ups. Spend time addressing all the different aspects of the game – the technical, the tactical, the mental.

James

  • Do you say ‘My team’ or do you say ‘Our team’?  Parents and coaches – give the experience back to the kids -it’s not about you.  Great John O’Sullivan post about this:

 

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