Leadership

THE FORMULA FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE TEAM BUILDING

Dr. Cory Dobbs
The Academy for Sport Leadership

“Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will care.” -Your Student-Athlete

Here’s a simple formula that should provide you a clear way to grasp high performance in the area of team leadership. High involvement plus high commitment equals high performance.

So, what does all this mean for you? Well, high involvement means you need to nurture the involvement of every team member. Did you get that—every team member. Each and every team member needs to engage with the leadership development process by bringing a high level of energy and focus. Only when you have high involvement can you entertain the idea of high commitment. Simply put, if you don’t have high involvement you can’t have high commitment, and if you don’t have high commitment you’ll never see high performance.

If you select only a few team captains you’ve willingly and knowingly chosen low involvement. Those student-athletes not selected to develop as leaders will not care much about the process of leadership development of their peers. They’ll clearly say by actions and non-actions, “Why bother, there’s nothing in it for me.” You’ve chosen not to get them directly involved and commitment comes from being involved.

Those student-athletes you’ve chosen as team leaders might show high commitment to leadership and leadership development. Why not, it benefits them. But you are still left with the reality that you don’t—and logically can’t have—high involvement with only a few chosen participants. Thus, you’ll never achieve high commitment nor high performance.

However, if you choose to involve everyone on the team—a leader in every locker—you have a chance to attain high commitment. By placing leadership practice and opportunities in the hands of every team member, you involve everyone. And depending on the quality of programmatic development you have a chance at achieving high commitment. Ahhh, once you get high commitment it is very likely you’ll get high performance.

This isn’t some mystical process. By deploying a leader in every locker approach your players are highly involved with an opportunity to become highly committed. Your challenge is to get them to willingly invest their minds and heart into the team leadership development process, building skills and competencies that lead to high performance. So, to wrap up this leadership bite here’s the formula once again: High Involvement + High Commitment = High Performance.

Leadership Lessons from John Wooden
Dr. Cory Dobbs, The Academy for Sport Leadership

It’s Been Decades Since “Coach” was on the Sidelines but His Commitment to Character is as Relevant as it Ever Was

March is known for its madness. A time when team greatness is revealed. March is also a time when the best baseball players in the world go back to work— fine-tuning the fundamentals of their game. College basketball’s greatest coach was a tour de force for principled leadership and success. Great teams and fundamentals are of vital importance no matter what your endeavor, no matter what time of year.

Do you need proof that leadership is not about style? The legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden suggests that leadership is influence derived from one’s character. For Wooden, the ideal leader is someone whose life and character motivate people to follow. The best kind of leadership derives its capacity from the force of example, not from the power of position or personality.

Much of what passes as leadership today is nothing more than manipulation of people by sticks and carrots—threats and rewards. That’s not effective leadership for the long-term. Authentic leadership seeks to motivate people from the inside, by an appeal to the head and the heart, not by use of command and coercion. Compliance seldom, if ever, leads to authentic commitment.

Wooden influenced players through his character which he displayed in everything he did, from the way he recruited student-athletes to the way he taught them to put their socks on.

For Wooden character is the essential element necessary for great leadership.

Steve Jamison, author of best-selling books on John Wooden and Bill Walsh, has spent the past fifteen years working with Wooden on various books on leadership. He teaches Wooden’s principles to business leaders at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management.

“The reason he resonates with people, relate to him is as a teacher, leader, coach, he was extraordinary and as a person he was even more extraordinary. That’s a tough combination,” Jamison said.

Jamison began working with Wooden to organize and distill his wisdom for coaches and leaders in any industry. At the time he couldn’t find a publisher because most thought Wooden was no longer relevant. As one publisher told him “Coach Wooden is a little dusty on the shelf.”

Character, however, is never a quality to be shelved. Coach Wooden, as Jamison said, “Didn’t seek players who were characters. He wanted players that had character. Character was something that he felt essential to being a good performer, a good leader. Much of the problems we see today we can lay at the foot of leaders that have little character.”

When You’re Through Learning, You’re Through
Coach Wooden practiced life-long learning—as you would expect from a great teacher. Jamison, a leadership expert and educator said, “A lot of leaders get to a position with a lot of authority and power, it’s very easy to become overconfident and arrogant and think you know it all. John Wooden never made that mistake. He was very secure in what he knew but he never stopped learning. Never stopped looking for answers.”

“How willing are you to learn?” Jamison asks. “That doesn’t mean just opening a book or taking a course but how willing are you to challenge your beliefs and the way you do things, examining ways to improve. How willing are you to entertain new ideas? Whatever your level of success, self evaluation is important.”

Jamison said Coach Wooden simply asks leaders “How can you improve if you don’t have the ability to analyze yourself?” Jamison backed up this declaration from Coach Wooden by offering a story that exemplifies his commitment to self-evaluation.

“In Wooden on Leadership, Jamison explained, “ he tells the story of getting to the 1962 semi-finals of the NCAA national championships where UCLA played Cincinnati, the defending nation champs. They lost in the last seconds. On the flight back his assistant coach Jerry Norman says to him ‘coach you know we got some guys coming in next year (Goodrich/Erickson). You know, maybe we should look at bringing in the full court press.’ John Wooden knew what it was, he’d tried it his first two years at UCLA.”

“Maybe it’s time to revisit the press, said Norman.” Wooden, secure in his self, listened to his assistant. The next year UCLA pressed full-court. And the rest, as they say is history.

Wooden on Teaching: The Little Things Make the Big Things Happen
“One of the great abilities John Wooden has and had was his ability to take a complicated issue, distill it, so that, as he said, that ‘little things make big things happen,” said Jamison.
“In my view, what it was that he did to teach leadership, and it’s not complicated, he behaved like a leader. He acted like a leader. The primary teaching tool he used was his own life as an example,” Jamison commented.

Coach Wooden was a proponent of the principle that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. According to Jamison, “John Wooden had an effusive way of letting players know he cared. His practices were ferociously intense. There wasn’t any slack in practice where you could hang out and shoot the baloney. He found time at the beginning when players were coming onto the court to take a moment, to pull someone aside as they were ambling over to the practice and ask about how things were going. ‘How’s your mother.’ ‘How’s that history class going.’ He did this to show his sincere care and concern for his players.”

Pyramid of Success
Coach Wooden’s primary teaching tool has been his leadership model as distilled in his Pyramid of Success. Jamison commenting on this influential model for effective living said, “His definition of success isn’t about big, it isn’t about power, fame, fortune, and prestige. For him the highest level, the highest standard of success is making that effort to become the best that you can become whether it is a coach, teacher, student, member of a team.”

Success, as Coach Wooden says, is the peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.

Encouragement: A gift to be given

Written and contributed by Dr. Chris Hobbs (Follow him on Twitter @Dr_ChrisHobbs)

Scott Drew is the head men’s basketball coach at Baylor University. Over the past 16 seasons, he’s won nearly 20 games per season. It’s an impressive stretch for a program that has a mediocre history and when Coach Drew arrived, was almost completely dead. If you want to read a story of persistence and comeback, read “The Leftovers” which is the story of massive scandal and homicide that rocked Baylor basketball. That is the program that Scott Drew took over. The author of the book, Matt Sayman, was one of only two players that remained in the program after the scandal and during Coach Drew’s arrival. The program was absolutely decimated with NCAA sanctions and terrible support from the local community. It was a very dark time in the life of Baylor basketball. Sayman says, ‘Coach Drew was always positive and always believed we could do the impossible.’ Those first Baylor teams under Coach Drew never actually accomplished the impossible in the win/loss column, but Coach Drew did something important. He provided the players on those teams the gift of encouragement that lasts to this day.

If you understand the intention of the word encouragement, maybe you’ll want to give the gift a little more as well.

Encouragement is to give strength or courage to another. It is the kind of expression that makes someone want to go on.

Here are a couple ways a leader can give the gift of strength and courage to someone to the people in their care…

Call when things go wrong – Over the last year or so, I’ve really tried to embrace the mantra of ‘being the kind of leader that people want around when everything is going wrong.’ An important way to do this is make sure you are actually present when things are going wrong. Often, the best way to do this is to call and talk voice to voice to someone when their world is falling apart. Pick up the phone and show up for your people when things are not going well.

Confirm why things went well – Notice the wording of this suggestion. Expressing appreciation when things go well is nice. Expressing appreciation to someone for what they did (the why) to make things go well is next level encouragement. As a leader, it is important that you give people the freedom to make good things happen and then take the time to tell them what you observed as the ‘why’ behind those good things. A team member knows why things went well but to know that it was observed and confirmed by the leader is very encouraging.

Compliment by name and task – No matter what your opinion of the Bible might be there are some excellent accounts of incredible things that we can learn a lot from. One of those accounts is of Nehemiah who returned to Israel and returned it’s economic and military stability after the Babylonians had conquered it. Nehemiah rallied a diverse and unskilled group of laborers to accomplish the incredible engineering feat of rebuilding the walls around Jerusalem resurrected in only 52 days. The historical account includes an entire chapter of Nehemiah recognizing every group of laborers by their name and the task that they completed. This is simple and powerful encouragement that I have tried to implement anytime I address a group publicly. I compliment someone on my team by their name and by the task that they have performed well for our group.

There are a lot of different ways to give the gift of encouragement. I have only listed a few of the ways that this can be accomplished. I want to encourage you to be the type of person that gives the gift of encouragement to as many people as you can.

Keep on, keepin on, friend!

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‘Bite Down and Don’t Let Go’ is a collection of writings on being intentional about life in a way that produces great persistence. Read about it more here.

Dr. Chris Hobbs is an educational leader and Director of Athletics at The King’s Academy in West Palm Beach, Florida. He’s earned a few degrees and won some awards. He’s happily married to his high school sweetheart and they have three teen age children. Life is messy and complicated most of the time. You can follow him on Twitter for all sorts of inspirational thoughts and good laughs.

Have you ever coached a team that was talented but something was just missing and as a result it simply underperformed?

If the answer is no

… then either you haven’t been coaching long or you are one of the all-time great coaches.

The truth is a lot of teams fall short of expectations.

But why?

According to Dr. Cory Dobbs, Founder & President of The Academy for Sport Leadership, teams often become so focused on tasks and strategies and their commitment to the “team” begins to wane.

In the video clip below Dr. Dobbs discusses a case study he conducted with a team that was underperforming.

He shares the process he used to help them develop teammate accountability and become a more successful team that was focused on transformation, relationships, and harmony.

If you are a coach that is interested in the new science of leadership, teamwork, and teambuilding then you will want to check out Dr. Dobbs’s new masterclass: Coaching for Leadership.

In this groundbreaking course he shares his 3 Big Ideas:

• A Leader in Every Locker
• Coaching for Leadership
• Teamwork Intelligence

*Coaching Toolbox subscribers: Use coupon code “Toolbox25” to receive a 25% discount on the course at checkout here: Coaching for Leadership Masterclass*

Dr. Cory Dobbs
The Academy for Sport Leadership

In an essay titled “Good Guys Finish First (Sometimes),” Andrew Bagnato told the following story:

Following a rags-to-riches season that led them to the Rose Bowl—their first in decades—Northwestern University’s Wildcats met with coach Gary Barnett for the opening of spring training.

As players found their seats, Barnett announced that he was going to hand out awards that many Wildcats had earned in 1995.  Some players exchanged glances.  Barnett does not normally dwell on the past.  But as the coach continued to call players forward and handed them placards proclaiming their achievements, they were cheered on by their teammates.

One of the other coaches gave Barnett a placard representing his 17 national coach of the year awards.  Then, as the applause subsided, Barnett walked to a trash can marked “1995.”  He took an admiring glance at his placard, then dumped it in the can.

In the silence that followed, one by one, the team’s stars dumped their placards on top of Barnett’s.  Barnett had shouted a message without uttering a word.  ‘What you did in 1995 was terrific, lads.  But look at the calendar: It’s 1996.’

Teachable Point of view: It’s dangerous to rest on our past successes.

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.

Slow Down and Take a Look at How You are Leading.

Dr. Cory Dobbs
The Academy for Sport Leadership

The primary purpose of leadership is to create more leaders, not more followers.  Pause for a moment, think deeply about this declarative statement.  More leaders.

Now…

How are you doing as a leader? The answer is how are the student-athletes you lead doing? Do they learn?  Do they lead? Do they manage conflict? Do they change—grow and improve? Do you really create more leaders? When reflecting on how you are doing as a leader, find out how the student-athletes you lead are doing.

In their best-selling book, _The Leadership Challenge_, authors James Kouzes and Barry Posner set forth a fundamental ingredient of all leadership endeavors—that of modeling the way. The authors contend that “Your value as a leader is determined not only by your guiding beliefs but also by your ability to act on them….To be a leader, you have to Model the Way for others by demonstrating intense commitment to your beliefs with each and every action.”

Team leadership is not an easy role for many young student-athletes.  Peer leadership is often an uncomfortable challenge.  The desire to be liked has been the downfall of many adult leaders.  So don’t gloss over the fact that a student-athlete will often be driven by their need to be liked by teammates.  Expect the first hurdle for your emerging team leaders to be overcoming the need to be liked.  Young leaders will also have to overcome emotional issues such as the internal conflict that might occur because of their desire for acceptance. As a leader they will at times need to take actions that temporarily separate them from their teammates—the followers. This is but one example of some of the inherent difficulties in peer leadership.

As a coach, you present a compelling model that young athletes will intensely observe.  They are constantly seeking cues on how they should lead (wanting to please you) and informing them how to act in a given situation. Team leaders will imitate many of your behaviors and attitudes. They will, for example, watch what you do and then imitate or adapt what you do. The less experienced the team leader the more likely they’ll study you closely to help them figure out “how” you want them to lead. When faced with inconsistencies between what you say and what you do, the young and developing team leader will tend to give greater reliance on what you do.

Your status as a model increases the necessity of having a healthy interpersonal relationship with all your players, but the relationship with team leaders will generally be a little more involved as you assume the role of leadership mentor.  Mentors are role models. As a mentor your impact will come from more than just what you tell your team leaders, they will assimilate and emulate many of your behavioral traits and copy many of your values and attitudes.

A healthy relationship and a positive approach to teaching leadership will shape your team leaders. How you model leadership and mentor leaders will go a long way in helping a young and emerging leader understand leaders and leadership.

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.