Leadership

An Academy for Sport Leadership Case Study–Dr. Cory Dobbs

Instructions: give a copy to every team member.  Read alone.  Answer discussion questions.  Come together as a team and engage in a spirited conversation.  When you’re done, identify two action items for your team.

Big “We,” little “me”
Thinking and Acting Like a Committed Teammate

Introduction

Erin arrived late to her first class of the day.   She was still brooding about not playing in last night’s game.  Consumed with disappointment  in her coaches, teammates, and herself, Erin was contemplating quitting the team.  She reflected on the hours upon hours invested over the past two years simply to eke out a few minutes of playing time each game.  She’d set high goals for herself, and she met most of them.  She improved in the weight room and on the playing field.  She always gave all she had in practice and the coaches were usually pleased with her as a member of the team.  However, she seemed to be stuck on starting.  Playing time.  Seemed little else mattered to her.  She wasn’t quite sure why she felt this way, she’d always thought of herself as a very good teammate.  She enjoyed working alongside everyone, had not grudges and couldn’t muster a bad word about her teammates.  She just wanted to play.  And she’d just realized after last night’s game she really wouldn’t get much playing time this year—her senior season.

Questions for Discussion

• Why might a team member become discouraged about a lack of playing time?
• How can you encourage teammates to balance “Me” with “We?”
• How might you unknowingly discourage a teammate from accepting “we?”
• How might Erin’s thoughts determine her behavior?
• What happens when one team member goes in his or her own direction?
• What might happen when a team member places too much emphasis on themselves?
• What are the benefits of being a member of a team? (physically, intellectually, emotionally, socially)
• What “rewards” might a player receive that doesn’t get much playing time?

What’s at Stake?

While we all have to take responsibility for ourselves and our success in life, we need to do so in a way that honors the various wholes of which we are a part.  Thinking and acting “BIG We, little me” is not about denying yourself, your needs, or your individuality.  It is about realizing that you are part of a whole that is greater than you.

Point to Ponder

A famous proverb states, “The best potential in ‘me’ is ‘we.’”

*This case is a part of a portfolio of cases created by The Academy for Sport Leadership.  Case studies legitimize a range of issues by giving the student-athlete an opportunity to explore the physical, intellectual, emotional, and social dimensions of existing or potential problems.

“Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will care.” -Your Student-Athlete The world of coaching is changing. In Coaching for Leadership you’ll discover the foundations for designing, building, and sustaining a leadership focused culture for building a high-performance team. To find out more about and order Sport Leadership Books authored by Dr. Dobbs including Coaching for Leadership, click this link: The Academy for Sport Leadership Books

From the Academy for Sport Leadership–Dr. Cory Dobbs
A Note to the Student-Athlete

THE LITTLE BIG THINGS: Excellence Begins by Sweating the Small Stuff

“HEY STUDENT-ATHLETE!”
It’s All About the Locker Room

I recently visited a neighborhood Denny’s. Prior to ordering my meal I visited the restroom. Upon entering I noticed scraps of paper towel all over the floor. The sink basin revealed soap drippings that had probably been there since the day before. No, I’m not a neat freak. It’s just that in a world addicted to mediocrity little things are really big things. I left the restaurant. My experience with the filthy restroom sapped me of any confidence in the restaurant’s ability to deliver a quality meal.

The small stuff matters.

To me, a clean and attractive restaurant is the best indicator that the people running the show—at the restaurant, school, hotel, you fill in the blank, care about the people that use the facilities (and this includes the workers!). Make no mistake, the restroom screams commitment to excellence. It takes great leadership to ensure clean restrooms. If you want to be different—successful—a great place to start is your locker room (And here’s the kicker…each and every one of you will be running a show somewhere and sometime in the future.).

How do you and your teammates care for your locker room? Do you use it and wait for others (coaches, janitors, etc) to pick up the mess? To me, a clean and attractive locker room tells me the people running the program care. Come to think of it, the way you take care of your playing field, court etc. tells a lot about your commitment to excellence.

The small stuff matters. What little things might you do today to make a big difference in your team?

Humility matters. Every small action reflects not only on you personally, but also on your teammates. Act in a manner that honors yourself and your teammates. Act in a manner that will reflect well on you and the others in your life.
Today’s headlines and daily news stories are filled with accounts of self-centered and irresponsible professional athletes. The world of sports often breeds excess—it is noble and ignoble, beautiful and ugly. Sports reveals the best and the worst of human nature in a highly visible action-packed arena dominated by intense emotion.

Humility is the quality of being respectful. It is displayed in conduct that dignifies others. Humility is found in the small stuff. How you talk to your teammates reveals your care and concern. How you listen to others reveals your commitment to them and your team. Model humility: serve and honor your teammates.

Sometimes one minute (a very small thing) makes all the difference.

How long does it take for you to care for your locker room? Your playing field? Your teammate? My guess is you can do a lot in one minute…and when all those small one-minute actions accumulate…

The small stuff matters. What little things might you do today to make a big difference in your team? Select at least one thing. And do it.

You can make excuses for not doing that one thing. If so, then excuses are probably small stuff to you. But remember, the small stuff matters.

In the final analysis, it is the small stuff that determines what we draw out of the sports experience. The little things make all the difference.

“Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will care.” -Your Student-Athlete The world of coaching is changing. In Coaching for Leadership you’ll discover the foundations for designing, building, and sustaining a leadership focused culture for building a high-performance team. To find out more about and order Sport Leadership Books authored by Dr. Dobbs including Coaching for Leadership, click this link: The Academy for Sport Leadership Books

by Dr. Cory Dobbs, a national leader in providing leadership resources for coaches and student-athletes. The most recent resources include A Leader in Every Locker for coaches and Teamwork Intelligence: a workbook for the student-athlete along with a facilitator’s guide for the coach.

An excerpt from “Coaching for Leadership”

Are you a talented coach on the rise? Do you want to be an “A‐Level” coach? Are you interested in becoming an elite leader? Think deeply about these three questions before moving on.

Instead of assuming leaders are born with the “right stuff” to lead, I start with the assertion that leadership is a talent. If that talent is to be advanced the coach needs a context that supports the development, get the experiences they need to cultivate their leadership ability and possess the drive to master learning to lead.

Let me make another claim: talented people want to be challenged, not coddled. As a coach to coaches I know this to be true. And as a coach I’m sure you will agree success isn’t something you simply hope happens. It is high achievement accomplished by consistent, deliberate, and intense preparation and commitment to a goal with a daily plan of action based on choices you make.

In your version of reality you may have “high potential” stamped on your forehead and be successful in your own mind. All this may be true, but don’t be deluded. Odds are you’re nowhere near where you want to go and who you want to be. If you really want to stand out, lift your performance to its peak, break into the small circle of elite performers, then accept that life is not a do‐it‐yourself project. If you surround yourself with winners—or are fortunate enough to have a skilled and caring mentor in your corner—you are likely on a winning path toward the success you covet. We all need people who help us look at situations from a different perspective.

Today, top athletes, actors, musicians and corporate leaders have begun to use performance coaches to help them reach their potential. They’ve chosen coaching as a way to shorten their path to sustained success. What they know is that good coaching will get them where they want to go, help them achieve what they want to achieve, and transform them into who they want to be.

REALITY BITES
Here’s your first bite of reality. As determined as you are, you might never get to where you want to go. You ask; why is this?

The answer: blind spots. All coaches have blind spots. Yes, we all have blind spots, but this is about you.

I know how badly you want to be good—no great! So it’s important for me to let you know that blind spots are real and really capable of derailing your efforts to reach your potential.

You’ve spent most of your life committed to particular ways of thinking, doing, and being, and that’s a good thing; and a bad thing. It guarantees blind spots. Don’t checkout yet. Let me be clear about this: it is never easy to bring about a mindset change. But that’s not enough. Another bite of reality is that it’s more difficult to replace a simple way of thinking with a more complex way; which of course, is likely necessary to become an elite coach.

So, what is a blind spot? A blind spot is a weakness that other people see but we don’t. The crazy thing is, because a blind spot is not known to us, we simply don’t know what we’re doing wrong and what we can do to get better outcomes. We have no idea how a certain coaching behavior of ours is coming across to our stakeholders—players, parents, coaches, and administrators—but it is. A blind spot is an outer reality. That is, it exists outside of us, yet inside of others.

There are various sorts of blind spots that can lead to ineffective coaching to some degree or another, but one particular form holds many coaches back from great success. That is, a behavioral blind spot. A behavioral blind spot is the unproductive or destructive behavior that undermines or erodes interpersonal influence and the building of durable and enduring relationships.

To ease into the idea of blind spots think of it as something similar to the blind spots we encounter when driving a vehicle. Several years ago while driving a large truck I bumped up against a car in the other lane, hidden in my blind spot, without knowing it. The car sped up to get alongside me. I spotted a crazy man pumping his arms and screaming at me. I pulled over and, sure enough, unbeknownst to me I had sideswiped the driver‐side door of the crazy guy’s car. Yes, I failed to use the tool built for reducing blind spots—the mirror.

Getting a grip on reality requires a heavy dose of reality. Here’s a start: Deep changes in how people think, what they believe, and how they see the world are difficult to achieve. Experts will tell you such change is downright impossible to bring about through compliance. You’ve got to want to change.

THE EDGE OF REALITY
Self‐awareness has limits. Taken in isolation, the problem with self‐awareness is that what others think of our behavior takes place outside of our awareness. The built in constraint is that self-awareness only reveals what we can see as what we can know, not what we can’t see and not know. We are essentially disconnected from the effects of our behavior; we are blind to the internal reality of the other. All this makes it difficult to know there’s a need to change our behavior. I think this is what author and psychologist R.D. Laing meant when he said, “The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.”

Because people don’t know blinds spots exist, they aren’t searching to understand how others’ experience them. Consequently, if someone tries to bring a blind spot to one’s attention, it’s likely to be brushed off. The message will be disregarded and discarded. Let’s be clear, if someone told you that you are behaving in a way that is having a negative impact on others, your initial reaction will be to take a defensive posture.

Our ability to confront ourselves is crucial to building insight and understanding and tackling the truth of our blind spots. Our willingness to venture out of our comfort zone and see things from others’ perspectives is vital to achieving peak performance. This takes courage but offers great rewards.

Reality demands change. The biggest threat, the most resistant barrier, to personal change is you. Please do not take this to mean that you’re not motivated or talented. You wouldn’t be where you are, in position to get to the peak of your mountain, if that were the case. It’s just that desire and motivation aren’t enough. The reality is that the ability to initiate and persist with deep change is often exasperatingly elusive for most of us. Grasp that reality!

Yet, as the world maddeningly changes, so must we. The greatest power we have is the ability to envision our own fate and to action to change ourselves. However, the unavoidable question is can you do it by yourself?

REALITY CHECK
Like the rest of the world—government, medicine, education, and business— sports has relied on the doctrine of scientific management: the theory that any task process can be broken down to its component parts and then reassembled in an efficient “scientific” manner. That sort of thinking, a mechanistic view of management, fostered assembly lines and military hierarchies. And it’s fostered a social preference in which building relationships is not as important as task accomplishment—winning trumps all.

Today, we still have many assembly lines (such as schools) and hierarchies are still a favored organizational structure. However, more frequently these industrial age artifacts are adapting to and changing how the individual, the organization, and society interrelate. Change invariably reveals blind spots, and blind spots are deep and difficult impediments to growth.

Let me step onto thin ice. Every coach utilizes “constructive yelling” (my quotes) under the theory that if a player can’t survive a spirited “talking to,” the opponent will kill her. This idea may work, sometimes. And other times it might not. Rather, it’s simply a taken‐for‐granted coaching behavior, a “coaching style,” a way of “motivating” athletes. But until we have the courage to explore such coaching behaviors from a variety of frameworks—certainly to include the athlete’s perspective—we might just be feeding a blind spot.

Here’s how it happens. A team is a human community. It is a living system, like a plant. So, all teams are made up of people. And people are emotional. When engaged emotionally people easily lose perspective. Because people are emotional and lose perspective things are not always as they seem. In a nut shell, to lead effectively involves the need to recognize and acknowledge the importance of dealing with both one’s own feelings and emotions and those of the others in an interaction.

Now, stay with me. Every relationship involves reciprocal relational dynamics such as trust or distrust, respect or disrespect, liking or disliking, and dominance or autonomy. Consequently, these dynamics either reinforce relational growth processes or introduce limiting forces that impede the development of a durable relationship.

Here’s a reality check. Without recognizing how certain behaviors negatively impact others, you won’t be able to change your unproductive and destructive behaviors. Most of us fall into this trap, thinking we are always acting in the best interests of the student‐athletes. That’s just not true. Unfortunately, we continue unaware of the negative impact our behaviors create. The causal chain is clear: the fastest way to cause cohesion and morale to erode is to deny that a behavioral blind spot exists or to ignore it.

Discipline and determination are necessary, but it is the discovery of behavioral blind spots that is essential to unlocking your coaching potential. The better you know your strengths and weaknesses, your likes and dislikes—the better you know where you’ve been, where you want to go and what it will take to get you there—the better you can set your goals and craft a plan to get there. However, if you have a faulty behavioral blind spot you are destined to limit your growth and development into the great coach you want to become.

NEW RESOURCE FOR COACHES

In Leadership Quest Dr. Cory Dobbs offers student-athletes a leadership fable that is engaging, instructive, and transformative. This book provides a simple, yet powerful, model of leadership that will build confident and effective team leaders for any sport. Using the power of storytelling, Leadership Quest presents a proven framework for student-athletes to follow and become exceptional leaders on the playing field and in everyday life. Leadership Quest advances an athlete-centered approach to developing the leader within each and every student-athlete.

Click here for more information on the: Leadership Quest Pack

About the Author

Cory Dobbs is the founder and president of The Academy for Sport Leadership, a national leader in research‐based curriculum for coaches and student‐athletes. Dr. Dobbs is a college educator, a coach to successful coaches (helping coaches attain a higher level of success), and an accomplished human performance specialist whose expertise is in the field of leadership, team building, and creating a high‐performance culture in the arena of team sports. Cory blends social‐personality, psychology, and applied social psychology, which means he studies how people’s thoughts, behaviors, and preferences are influenced by both who they are and the situations they’re in. He uses Teamwork IntelligenceTM to help teams explore how the mix of perspectives brought by their individual members influences their work together. Dr. Dobbs recently joined Jamy Bechler on the “Success is a Choice” Podcast – hear his thoughts on team leadership and developing a leader in every locker here.

What to do: Contact Cory directly. Start a conversation on how you can reach your coaching potential.
Dr. Cory Dobbs
(623) 330.3831 (call or text)

The Effects of Reference Points

A Teamwork Intelligence Initiative

by Dr. Cory Dobbs

I’m a basketball fan. I’ve coached at the high school and collegiate levels. And I’ve created a nationally recognized leadership development firm for collegiate and high school coaches and athletes. The fuel that fires me up is my intense dislike for losing. Oh, I know it’s a part of the game—the game of life too—but I don’t enjoy losing. Part of anything worthwhile involves losing. You’re going to lose.  If you look deep enough you find ways to get better, win more, and enjoy life.

I enjoy watching great teams win. I recall the 1992 NCAA tournament as one of my favorite basketball tournaments of all time. It’s by default that I think we have to look back to see the very best tournaments, with today’s best players leaving college after one year. Okay, anyway, In the East regional final, Duke defeated a very talented Kentucky team. Duke had the triumvirate of Bobby Hurley, Grant Hill, and Christian Laettner, yet with little time left they found themselves on the brink of elimination.

Duke had possession of the ball One last gasp. Inbounding the ball 94 feet from their basket, it would take perfect execution to end victorious. Grant Hill was the inbounder. He executed a perfect three‐quarter length of the court pass to a surprisingly open Laettner. Laettner catches the ball at the free‐throw line, his back to the basket, one dribble with his left hand, dips his right shoulder into the defender, then pivots back to his left and releases a perfect shot. Duke wins and advances to the National Championship game.

Duke and Michigan meet in the final game. Duke trailed 31‐30 at half‐time. Michigan with its star-studded freshman line‐up, The Fab Five, looked like a good bet to take down Duke and win the championship. But that didn’t happen. Duke went into the locker room at the half and emerged like an uncaged lion. The final score was Duke 71, Michigan 51. Do the math. A 20 point win. What happened? Duke by all measures was not a 20 point better team. In fact, if they played the next night Michigan might win.

It turns out that Duke’s performance that night fits nicely with the research findings of Wharton professor Jonah Berger and University of Chicago professor Devin Pope. Berger and Pope, huge basketball fans, analyzed 18,060 professional basketball games between 1993 and 2009 and over 45,000 college contests seeking to understand the relationship between half‐time scores and the final outcome of the game. What they found is somewhat surprising. They found that when a team is trailing by one point at halftime, they actually are more likely to win. On the face of it, this makes little sense.

However, there is another face to this situation. The situational variables, down by one and fresh off a confidence-boosting win, actually favor Duke.

As Berger and Pope explain it, the players on the team trailing by one point enter the locker room stewing with frustration and anger. The coach provides corrective feedback, channels the emotion, and the team emerges from the locker full of motivation. The feeling of being down, even if it’s only a point, tends to open minds to corrective feedback and reignites the heart to commitment and effort.

So why the 20 point differential? Well, when a team falls behind by a high reference point, let’s say 15 points, they are more likely to become discouraged and reduce their effort. On the other hand, how many times have you used the reference point of “under 10 points.” Let’s say, you’re team is down by 11 points and has the ball to end the quarter (another reference point). In a time-out huddle, you compose the players and say “let’s get this thing under 10 points.” You inbound the ball and score getting the game into what is now a more manageable frame of mind. The reference point of “under 10” has you and your players energized and re‐focused. The reference point has effectively reduced cognitive and emotional uncertainty.

The psychological effect of reference points is real. When a player nears a goal she set for herself she feels strengthened and emboldened. The gap between current and a desired reality has been narrowed. On the other hand, when it looks like she’s not going to achieve a goal diminishing sensitivity sets in; the goal becomes marginalized. Down by one, Duke goes into the locker room with the knowledge that they’ll need to kick it up a notch, and confidence— they’d just beaten a tough Kentucky team — that they can win the game.

The Duke players know that no matter what’s happened up to this point, they can win. Michigan, on the other hand, gets down by a sizeable margin, a discouraging reference point, loses focus and suddenly they’re behind by twenty points.

Reference points are essentially stimuli that generate emotion. They have a temporary, short-term effect, which is to focus attention on the positives of a prior experience that is applicable to the current situation. If the reference point functions as intended, the result is that the players recall or reproduce a memory that shapes their state of mind at that moment in time.

For example, when you go to the store to buy a pair of shoes, the likely price point you choose will be relative to the price of the shoes you’re replacing. The shoes you are replacing serve, tacitly, as a reference point for your current purchase. The implication is that your thought process during the transaction is greatly influenced—emotionally and cognitively—by your previous transaction.

Though this is an example from the world of consumer behavior, the use of reference points as a coach are nearly endless. Think of the many physical, intellectual, emotional, and social reference points you can use to evoke the desired emotion at the preferred time. The goal should be to intentionally build cognitive, affective, and situational reference points with your team. These then become strategic triggers, available when you need them to generate positive emotions.

How you deploy reference points matters. Individuals and teams are always engaging with reference points; some explicit like, “We’re down by one point, we can with this thing,” and implicit “let’s get it under 10 points,” and the mood of the team swings in a positive manner. You just need to use the reference points aptly, skillfully, and accurately.

“Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will care.” -Your Student-Athlete The world of coaching is changing. In Coaching for Leadership you’ll discover the foundations for designing, building, and sustaining a leadership focused culture for building a high-performance team. To find out more about and order Sport Leadership Books authored by Dr. Dobbs including Coaching for Leadership, click this link: The Academy for Sport Leadership Books

About the Author

Cory Dobbs is the founder and president of The Academy for Sport Leadership, a national leader in research‐based curriculum for coaches and student‐athletes. Dr. Dobbs is a college educator, a coach to successful coaches (helping coaches attain a higher level of success), and an accomplished human performance specialist whose expertise is in the field of leadership, team building, and creating a high‐performance culture in the arena of team sports. Cory blends social‐personality, psychology, and applied social psychology, which means he studies how people’s thoughts, behaviors, and preferences are influenced by both who they are and the situations they’re in. He uses Teamwork IntelligenceTM to help teams explore how the mix of perspectives brought by their individual members influences their work together.

The End of Yesterday
By Dr. Cory Dobbs
The Academy for Sport Leadership

Excerpt from A Leader in Every Locker

“I’m not used to supposing. I’m just a working man. My boss does the supposing . . .”

This quote is a line from the classic movie 12 Angry Men. During the opening dialogue among jury members, each feeling out their place and role in the deliberation of the fate of a young man’s life, a blue‐collar working man makes this declaration of powerlessness. The implication is that all the power—at least that of “supposing” rests in the hands of his superior. Just a movie? Hardly.

It’s been the rule for over a century in team sports to install a hierarchical leadership structure. This is accomplished by appointing a couple of players as team captains (as well as modeled by the hierarchy of the coaching staff). Surely everybody knows that on any sports team only a few players are able to really perform peer leadership. This is the team captain axiom, the basic axiom of traditional team leadership.

An axiom, of course, is a truth so self‐evident it doesn’t need to be proved. After all, everybody knows an axiom is accurate and correct. So then, it’s indisputable that you need a pecking order in order to get things done.

Not too fast, things are not what they always seem to be on the surface. The bad news is that far too often our intuitive ways of thinking about the world are wrong. Yes, axioms can be wrong. The good news is that it’s possible to set them right.

What’s self‐evident, what’s obvious, what everybody knows, has deep roots and of course isn’t in need of change. Yet, paradoxically that which is self‐evident hides something–covers over what might be a deeper truth. Axioms, by their nature, are anti‐learning. Nobody ever questions an axiom. Nobody ever discusses an axiom (save for a few propeller heads). It’s just taken as a given. And nobody ever talks about the possible counterproductive consequences of what everybody knows. The fish, after all, never questions the water he lives in.

Then, all of a sudden, someone comes along with a breakthrough idea and turns the old axiom upside down. The taken‐for‐granted truth, it turns out, wasn’t really the truth after all. “The world is flat,” was the truth people lived by for thousands of years. Then, along comes Nicolas Copernicus who proves to the world the old axiom to be wrong.

Twenty years ago, to choose a different model of team leadership was unthinkable. In elaborating on the end of two decades as a premier athlete Kobe Bryant had much to say when asked the question, if he could go back in time and offer advice to himself as a rookie, what would he say? His response: “It’s hard to tell somebody ‐‐ a player at that age ‐‐ to understand compassion and empathy, but that would be my advice.”

Why of all things would Bryant endorse caring, compassion, and empathy? “Well,” Bryant continued, “because that’s the biggest thing about being a leader, I think, and winning a championship is understanding how to put yourself in other people’s shoes.” “That’s really the most important thing. It’s not necessarily the individual skill you possess. It’s about understanding others and what they may be going through. And then, in turn, when you understand that, you can communicate with them a little bit better and bring out the best in them. Bringing out the best in people isn’t passing them the ball and giving them open shots. It’s about how to connect with them, how to communicate with them so that they can navigate through whatever issues they may be facing. That’s a very, very hard thing to do.”

I’ve never been a fan of Kobe Bryant, and I seldom look to professional sports for deep insights and understanding on leadership, but it appears that the wisdom in Bryant’s words fit hand‐inglove with today’s call for a more heartfelt approach to coaching and leading. So what’s the way forward in this brave new world?

Don’t worry. While you’ve been trapped in the axiom of team captaincy, I’ve been turning over rocks to find a better way of designing a high‐performing team, its culture, and of course, leadership. I’m not done yet. It might be another decade or so before I’m finished. But this workshop workbook is a start.

So, What is Leadership?

There has been a long running debate in scholarly circles about whether people learn to lead from their experiences or if leadership is something a person is born with. Today, however, most academics agree that leadership is best considered as a set of skills and qualities that can be learned and developed along within a wide‐range of personal styles. It’s widely agreed that all people have the potential to develop leadership skills. I point this out because it is also clear that leadership is viewed and valued differently by various fields, disciplines, and cultures.

So then, what is leadership? This is the big question that every person, group, team, organization, community and society seeks to answer. Our American culture, which of course includes a heavy dose of sporting influence, exalts the lone ranger, the hero, the charismatic leader. We see this in the election and glorifying of politicians, the deifying of business tycoons, and the adoration and idolization of great coaches and athletes. This notion falls in line with the traditional ideas of leadership—that it is the make‐ up of the leader that makes all the difference. Individual determinism has been and will continue to be an easy and favored explanation of things. But traits such as self‐confidence, intelligence, and a can‐do attitude—favored qualities of a leader—do not always predict the effectiveness of a leader; rather, they can be very misleading.

However permeable the traditional mental model of leadership seems, it does not provide a path to sustainable effectiveness as it leaves out the detail and nuance of the context in which a leader takes action. It also ignores the fact that it tends to reduce followers to passive participants; resulting in deliberate apathy and often conscious withdrawal from the leadership provided by one’s peer. Careful examination of this aspect of team captaincy suggests it may promote the discounting or dismissing of the potential of all members of the team to learn and perform in a leadership role.

Both the context and followers are foundational to leadership and are central to The Academy for Sport Leadership’s search for a new conceptualization of team leadership. The leader in every locker approach to team leadership is, no doubt, a paradigm shift. Paradigms, as you know, are the common patterns and ways of looking at things in order to make sense out of them. Leadership has long been presented as an elusive phenomenon available to only a select few. It is my contention, however, that understanding the relational nature of leadership and followership opens a team up to an immensely practical and dramatically richer form of team
member involvement.

The basic foundation of any leadership process is relational. As leadership expert Margaret Wheatley notes, “None of us exists independent of our relationships with others.” At the core, it is a relationship which comes into existence because of some sense of commitment by people to a common purpose. Thus, the ASL framework for answering the question “What is leadership?” begins by grounding it in the following core assumptions:

1. Conventional views of leadership are changing. Leadership is not limited to a chosen few; it is an educational component of participation in student‐athletics and must contribute to the growth and development of all athletes. A leader in every locker embraces the potential of all student‐athletes to take on leadership roles now and in the future.

2. Leadership is a relational process. That is, leadership is a socially constructed phenomenon consisting of student‐athletes working together to accomplish something.

3. Team leadership is distributed. Leadership is not the sole responsibility of the coach, coaching staff, or selected team captains. The best team leadership results from the actions and activities of those best positioned to provide leadership contingent on the context.

4. Leadership is a process to create change. Leadership is about making things happen; transforming people and programs. Effective leadership accelerates change. Change is necessary for growth, development, and improvement in performance.

5. Leadership growth and development is personal. There is no time frame related to progressing through stages of development. It’s also recognized that all potential leaders begin at a different starting point. Leaders grow and develop through deliberate practice, informal practice, roles, reflection, and the observation of role models.

6. Leadership is a process that involves followership. All coaches and student‐athletes participating in a leader in every locker understand and embrace both roles—leading and following. Followership implies a relationship to the leader, but does not imply one that places the follower in a less important position.

7. Leadership develops over time. There is no one way to lead. The practice of leadership involves the continual practice of finding the best way to lead with the particular capabilities that the student‐athlete possesses at a specific time, while constantly working to improve and expand those capabilities.

Embedded in the seven assumptions above are the four P’s of team leadership. The framework highlights the integration of the four key domains of leadership. The framework answers the question What is Leadership? Leadership is a position, it is a process, and it is performed by a person for a purpose.

Too often leadership is narrowly defined exclusively as a person. Conceptually this leads us back to a focus on the leader, her traits and disposition. But leadership is more than the idiosyncratic actions taken by a chosen person. It is a process. A process is simply a
coordinated way of doing things. Can student‐athletes, including those that don’t possess the so‐called necessary traits, learn a process for doing leadership things? Of course they can.

Leadership is also a position. In The Academy for Sport Leadership’s way of doing things we suggest giving each student‐athlete a “role” to on‐board them into the leadership team building development process. You’ll see this later when I introduce you to my 8 Roles of Teamwork. A leader’s words and deeds provide purpose, a compelling vision of the future. Effective team leadership answers, for all team members, the questions, “why am I doing this?”

The four P’s, like the compass that they form, are only a tool for answering the question “What is leadership.” Each student‐athlete (and coach too) brings his or her own unique values, skills, experiences, and personality to the leader role; and each student‐athlete has his or her own personal way of making change happen. The compass is a simple model that represents the key domains of an effective leadership development program.

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