Leadership

Thinking Through Your Personal Brand

By Brian Williams on April 4, 2024

How do you cultivate a dynamic personal brand? Many coaches think that focusing on personal branding is unnecessary. They shy away from engaging in personal branding–viewing it as self-promotion. However, the reality is that we all have personal brands, whether we focus on them or not. We should be aware of how others view us, and how it may help or harm our ability to succeed on and off the playing field. The following three questions can help you assess your personal brand.

What do I want to be known for? Think wide and deep.
What results do I want to deliver through my coaching efforts? It’s not only about wins and losses.
How do I want others to describe me? Consider your legacy.

An Introduction to the Introverted Leader

Several years ago, Susan Cain, a Harvard Business School professor, delivered one of the most well-received Ted Talks of all time. Today the YouTube video counts more than 18 million views of her talk on introversion. Cain wrote her 2012 book “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking,” which has sold two million copies worldwide. With the Ted Talk and book, Susan Cain has single-handedly triggered a deeper awareness of and appreciation for the many facets of introversion.

She’s introduced a myth-shattering perspective that has transformed the way we view introversion and introverts.

On the surface, introversion looks a lot like shyness; both effect social interaction, but for differing reasons. The shy find socializing difficult. On the other hand, an introvert simply prefers to spend time alone. Introverts are collectors of thoughts, and solitude is where the collection is curated and rearranged to help them make sense of their thoughts.

Far more than we are consciously aware of, we live in a society dominated by extroverts. Susan Cain’s research points out that the American culture glorifies extroversion. Sports stars and movie stars are highly paid and followed, and social media thrives on people exposing their innermost thoughts and feelings. Extroverts are highly visible in most settings and situations. Bold personalities are rewarded.

Cain writes, “We’re told that to be great is to be bold, to be happy is to be sociable. We see ourselves as a nation of extroverts—which means that we’ve lost sight of who we really are.” In fact, she notes, one-third to one-half of Americans are introverts. So if you’re not one yourself, she often advises audiences,

“You’re probably raising or managing or married to one.”

For the past 20 years, I’ve been working with coaches and athletes in the areas of leadership and team building. During this time I’ve noticed a deficit in time, effort, and energy when it came to identifying and developing high potential coaches. It seems as if excellence in leadership is a given. But it’s not! You don’t become a high–potential coach by merely “putting in the time.” Just working hard isn’t the x-factor. Neither is high potential a natural gift.

I’m helping high achievers and high potentials become self-aware and increase their personal effectiveness. If you’ve got a deep commitment to excellence, building right relationships, guiding with influence and accelerating change, let’s talk.

I’m looking for high-potential coaches with a desire to be mentored one-to-one by me. My coaching program is for those coaches willing to pay the price, ready to invest in developing their career for the long-term. If you are interested in talking about how you can go from high potential to high achievement—let’s talk. [Cory 623.330.3831]

Sample of What You Will Learn
-Deep Coaching: Inspiring Others to High Performance
-Humility is not Optional: It’s a Necessity
-What Coaches Need to Hear
-Entering the High Impact State of Coaching
-The Social Context: Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Dynamics
-Conquering Denial
-Managing Envy

Kind regards,
Dr. Cory Dobbs
Ready to Coach You!
(623) 330..3831

New to the Second Edition of Coaching for Leadership!

We are pleased to announce a new chapter to the second edition of the best-selling Coaching for Leadership. The chapter, The Big Shift: Unlock Your Team’s Potential by Creating Player-Led Teambuilding, connects the previous edition of this book to its origin, as well as to the future of team sports.

The new chapter sets forth a practical and applicable agenda for change and improvement. The reader is introduced to seven vital elements of change; seven shifts of traditional mental models that lead to the new core principles necessary for creating a player-led team culture. Click here for more information about Coaching for Leadership

About Cory Dobbs, Ed.D.

Cory Dobbs is the founder of The Academy for Sport Leadership and a nationally recognized thought leader in the areas of leadership and team building. Cory is an accomplished researcher of human experience. Cory engages in naturalistic inquiry seeking in-depth understanding of social phenomena within their natural setting.

A college basketball coach, Cory’s coaching background includes experience at the NCAA DII, NJCAA, and high school levels of competition. After a decade of research and development Cory unleashed the groundbreaking Teamwork Intelligence program for student-athletics. Teamwork Intelligence illuminates the process of designing an elite team by using the 20 principles and concepts along with the 8 roles of a team player he’s uncovered while performing research.

Cory has worked with professional athletes, collegiate athletic programs, and high schools teaching leadership and team building as a part of the sports experience and education process. As a consultant and trainer Dr. Dobbs has worked with Fortune 500 organizations such as American Express, Honeywell, and Avnet, as well as medium and small businesses. Dr. Dobbs taught leadership and organizational change at Northern Arizona University, Ohio University, and Grand Canyon University.

Putting the Person Before the Athlete

By Brian Williams on March 22, 2024

As a leadership educator your main task is to create a psychologically safe environment in which your players want to learn how to become team leaders. This is not a trivial distinction. A learning climate characterized by trust and openness is critical to encourage young people to respect and appreciate their teammates, coaches and the learning process. Strategies for transformative learning should be purposeful, planned, and productive. When we say put the person before the player we imply that the process of navigating life’s challenges should be the over-arching goal of learning to lead.

The following seven conditions are helpful in creating a psychologically safe learning environment favorable to promoting a transformational experiential approach to leadership development.

Student-athletes need to feel comfortable with the concepts of leadership.
Student-athletes need to know about the practice and the processes of leadership.
Student-athletes need permission to make mistakes. Healthy relationships transform conflict into cooperation.
Student-athletes should have a sense of purpose as it relates to leadership. They need to have an answer to the question “Why lead?”
Student-athletes should begin to develop an awareness of their individual strengths and weaknesses as leaders. They need feedback.
Student-athletes need to monitor and adjust behaviors intended to influence others. They need to take the appropriate action suggested by feedback.
Student-athletes should begin to learn the complex practices of self-reflection, self-acceptance, and self-compassion.

Kind regards,
Dr. Cory Dobbs
Ready to Coach You!
(623) 330..3831

New to the Second Edition of Coaching for Leadership!

About Cory Dobbs, Ed.D.

The World is not Fair and What Got You to Good Won’t Get You to Great

By Rebecca Roy on December 5, 2022

Teamwork Intelligence Conversational Exercise

The following questions are intended for leadership conversation involving coaches and players. The deeper your conversation goes the closer and clearer you get to understanding the heart and mind of each team member. The deeper the better; adverse incidents happen daily—it’s a guarantee.

What Can You Do When Something Unfair Happens?

Let’s Talk About It!

A) Accept the fact that the world is not fair.

Conversation Starters:
What do you mean by the word being fair?
Should you accept the fact that the world is not fair?

B) The most important thing to remember when something you think is unfair happens to you is to not dwell on it.

Conversation Starters
How do you dwell on adversity?
Is there any way the world could be made fairer?

C) When something unfair happens to you, emphasize what you have rather than what you lost.

- Conversation Starters:
  If you can’t make the world completely fair, how can you deal with it?
  Explain this sentence and apply in your team situation: Successful and happy players and coaches never dwell, at least not for long. Such coaches and players are too busy building a team.

What Got You to Good Won’t Get You to Great

Some coaches are more talented than others. Pause for a moment.

That’s a fact of team sport life that few coaches would dispute. The challenge is how to develop the coaches (head coach or assistant) who appear to have the highest potential. So you might be asking yourself, “How do I go about developing my coaching talents?”

Don’t wait. If you’re ready to put forward the resources needed to become a rising star in the coaching ranks, take action.

Kind regards,
Dr. Cory Dobbs
Ready to Coach You!
(623) 330..3831

New to the Second Edition of Coaching for Leadership!

About Cory Dobbs, Ed.D.

A college basketball coach, Cory’s coaching background includes experience at the NCAA DII, NJCAA, and high school levels of competition. After a decade of research and development Cory unleashed the groundbreaking Teamwork Intelligence program for student-athletics. Teamwork Intelligence illuminates the process of designing an elite team by using the 20 principles and concepts along with the 8 roles of a team player he’s uncovered while performing research.

Cory has worked with professional athletes, collegiate athletic programs, and high schools teaching leadership and team building as a part of the sports experience and education process. As a consultant and trainer Dr. Dobbs has worked with Fortune 500 organizations such as American Express, Honeywell, and Avnet, as well as medium and small businesses. Dr. Dobbs taught leadership and organizational change at Northern Arizona University, Ohio University, and Grand Canyon University.

Developing the Leadership Setting

By Rebecca Roy on September 22, 2021

How the Learning Context Inspires Confidence, Cohesiveness, and Commitment

It didn’t dawn on me that there might be anxieties and risk involved in team learning until I put a few work teams at a Fortune 100 company under a microscope. To say the very least, what I observed was a wide-range of defensive and protective behaviors. Ultimately, these attitudes and actions closed off the team’s members from learning. Instead, the dysfunctions that emerged anchored the team’s collective efforts in the harbor of mediocrity.

As a result of this work I decided to take a closer look at how student-athletes learn in a team setting, and in particular how the context influences the perceived risks involved in learning to lead one’s teammates. Upon closer inspection it became obvious that many of the risks involved in team learning in the corporate world are mirrored in the athletic world. Needless to say, learning to lead in any team environment is risky business.

So, how do you get student-athletes to learn together? There are no simple answers. However, knowing that the context greatly affects learning is a step (more likely a leap) in the right direction if you’re sincere about your players learning how to lead.

Leadership Development and Psychological Safety

When a student-athlete takes on a leadership role it’s important to understand that he or she will learn primarily through trial and error (which is why I firmly believe in deliberate practice—scrimmage—as a way to reduce perceived risks). If a student is learning physics she will likely study and learn in private with no one aware of her mistakes. However, learning to lead teammates requires learning in front of one’s peers, and this is intimidating. The peer learning environment brings a perceived risk of appearing ignorant and incompetent in front of one’s peers.

Because most student-athletes have little experience at leading, which includes making mistakes in front of teammates, such fears as embarrassment and rejection are always present. Many student-athletes are reluctant to take action or to speak up or speak out for fear that their actions will be held against them by teammates. And this discourages young men and women from taking leadership actions.

To neutralize such fears, it’s in every ones best interest to create a psychologically safe environment. Psychological safety is the shared understanding that the team is an environment where members will not embarrass, disrespect, disregard, or punish a teammate for taking action. All members understand that a supportive learning environment is necessary to building a psychologically safe team context.

At the heart of the growth of a team leader is the leader as a learner, the learning process, and the context, which together form the cornerstone of leadership development. Always keep in mind that the team leader is engaging in learning a new mindset as well as a new skill-set. That is, the student-athlete as a team leader is undergoing a tremendous transformation and that a psychologically safe environment is fundamental to growth and development.

Let me issue a quick reminder, leadership is a social influence process of motivating team members to achieve individual and team goals and the team’s mission. As such, the norms that emerge from team member interactions will create team dynamics that build a team’s culture.

Your first project as the chief architect of the team environment is to create a psychologically safe learning zone. Ultimately, you have more to do with a team leader’s learning to lead—or not learning—than you probably thought you did. If you’re not growing team leaders, then it’s likely the problem is not the seed, it’s the soil.

New to the Second Edition of Coaching for Leadership!

About Cory Dobbs, Ed.D.

A college basketball coach, Cory’s coaching background includes experience at the NCAA DII, NJCAA, and high school levels of competition. After a decade of research and development Cory unleashed the groundbreaking Teamwork Intelligence program for student-athletics. Teamwork Intelligence illuminates the process of designing an elite team by using the 20 principles and concepts along with the 8 roles of a team player he’s uncovered while performing research.

Cory has worked with professional athletes, collegiate athletic programs, and high schools teaching leadership and team building as a part of the sports experience and education process. As a consultant and trainer Dr. Dobbs has worked with Fortune 500 organizations such as American Express, Honeywell, and Avnet, as well as medium and small businesses. Dr. Dobbs taught leadership and organizational change at Northern Arizona University, Ohio University, and Grand Canyon University.

Radical Reorientation: An Intense Approach to Student-Athlete Well-Being

By Rebecca Roy on September 9, 2021

The number one priority of every coach, player, and administrator is building the team’s culture—not winning. And if you get that right, most of the other stuff—such as tactical precision, selfless behavior, teamwork intelligence, and mental toughness—will happen as a natural by-product of the culture created by the team. This is how culture works: players and coaches create each other. The challenge of shaping a team’s culture is that culture is shaped by behavior and likewise, behavior is shaped by culture.

However, most players are blind to teamwork dynamics. The result is team culture of the high-performance variety is more elusive than most of us care to believe. But it’s true. It is very likely your culture is nothing spectacular. To understand changing culture you must engage “leverage points.” Figuring out where to start is far from straightforward; it depends upon where your team is and where you want to go. Sounds simple enough, it’s not. So where might you begin?

In short, a good place to start—a leverage point—is to seek out whatever creates toxicity. So what is the most pernicious poison of culture building? Playing time. Every student-athlete wants more playing time. On the one hand student-athletes are quick to declare “all in” on the team thing. Yet, on the other hand, the world says take care of number one—and student-athletes are all in here too. In the spacious context of self-interest, one can self-justify what one does in the interest of the team. From the perspective of the student-athlete, the needs and wants of the individual player need to be met by some type of desired compensation. Simply said, if a student-athlete pays the price of time, effort, and energy—contributing to the development of the team, they’ll expect to get something in return.

The line that separates the individual’s self-interest from the team’s self-interest is blurred; it’s difficult to see where one begins and the other ends. We know they overlap, spill-over, and interrelate, yet do not know exactly what form the mixture of these two driving forces will contribute to the team’s culture. However, learning how to navigate this messy terrain will help coaches, players, and teams to see more and do more. If done right, the navigation of the messy terrain will give you a new way of looking at the pernicious problem of playing time.

The greatest and highest reward for one’s effort and toil is not what one gets for it, but who one becomes by it. This small, but potentially seismic shift in perspective—a radical reorientation—is filled with a profound sense of promise and possibility. The rewards are undeniable. Toiling for others on the team is noble, and unites the team. Participation on a team provides comfort and community. By being a part of something bigger than one’s self student-athletes gain meaning and worth. The athlete’s toil and inner struggle are never in vain if the goal is well-being; accessing a higher level being, and redirecting and reshaping one’s inner experience so that they have the freedom of choice on who they want to become.

New to the Second Edition of Coaching for Leadership!

About Cory Dobbs, Ed.D.

A college basketball coach, Cory’s coaching background includes experience at the NCAA DII, NJCAA, and high school levels of competition. After a decade of research and development Cory unleashed the groundbreaking Teamwork Intelligence program for student-athletics. Teamwork Intelligence illuminates the process of designing an elite team by using the 20 principles and concepts along with the 8 roles of a team player he’s uncovered while performing research.

Cory has worked with professional athletes, collegiate athletic programs, and high schools teaching leadership and team building as a part of the sports experience and education process. As a consultant and trainer Dr. Dobbs has worked with Fortune 500 organizations such as American Express, Honeywell, and Avnet, as well as medium and small businesses. Dr. Dobbs taught leadership and organizational change at Northern Arizona University, Ohio University, and Grand Canyon University.

Beyond IQ: How Grit and Reflection Can Change the Way You Coach

By Brian Williams on August 3, 2021

Beyond IQ: How Grit and Reflection Can Change the Way You Coach

Angela Duckworth has been one of the leading researchers and voices on the topic of “grit” –something she defines as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals.” Duckworth has found that grit can be a powerful predictor of academic achievement and, of course, physical accomplishments. She considers grit to be the behavioral and psychological ability of one to weather adversity and stay the course—willing to persevere in the short term for the longer term outcomes. In her findings, she argues that achievement is not just a matter of raw intelligence or physical giftedness. She suggests grit matters a great deal in all that we do. So the question arises can grit, through the practice of reflection, enhance coaching ability to reflect on events, relationships, and performance?

Several years ago a group of researchers were interested in understanding the importance of reflection to the processes of adult learning and leadership. In their paper, “Learning by Thinking: How Reflection Aids Performance,“ the researchers reveal the importance of deliberate reflection to learning and leading through a series of experiments.

The researchers worked with small groups through a multi-week training program. They broke the subjects into three groups. First, they had a “reflection” group; they asked this group to spend the final 15 minutes of each day reflecting on what they had learned. The Second group was given the task of “sharing.” This group spent 15 minutes reflecting, and then shared their thoughts with a peer for 5 minutes. The third group, the control group, did not engage in any reflective activity.

The results aren’t surprising. The participants in the reflection group performed 22.8% better than the control group while the participants in the sharing group experienced a similar advantage over the control group participants. However, think for a moment about the work that you and your coaching staff do daily. What does the nitty-gritty look like? Do you and your staff miss out on learning opportunities—those that will only emerge in the course of reflection? Can you set aside 15-20 minutes for reflection and when possible include sharing in your coaching conversation? Doing so will make your daily experience more productive and build confidence, individually and collectively, in learning by reflection.

Reflection is a powerful learning mechanism, so make time for deliberate conversation and reflection. Reflection is an important coaching activity. Reflection is a skill that can be learned, developed, and practiced. If you want a sustainable advantage, take advantage of coupling learning by doing with intentional reflection.

New to the Second Edition of Coaching for Leadership!

About Cory Dobbs, Ed.D.

A college basketball coach, Cory’s coaching background includes experience at the NCAA DII, NJCAA, and high school levels of competition. After a decade of research and development Cory unleashed the groundbreaking Teamwork Intelligence program for student-athletics. Teamwork Intelligence illuminates the process of designing an elite team by using the 20 principles and concepts along with the 8 roles of a team player he’s uncovered while performing research.

Cory has worked with professional athletes, collegiate athletic programs, and high schools teaching leadership and team building as a part of the sports experience and education process. As a consultant and trainer Dr. Dobbs has worked with Fortune 500 organizations such as American Express, Honeywell, and Avnet, as well as medium and small businesses. Dr. Dobbs taught leadership and organizational change at Northern Arizona University, Ohio University, and Grand Canyon University.