What Makes Coach K A Genius Of The Game

Getting guys from all different walks of like to buy-in to one common theme is what makes him a genius of the game.

During a broadcast of the USA Basketball Men's National Team's practice, Grant Hill was asked where the 'greatness' of Coach K comes from.

Grant says that, along with his great mind and understanding of the game, his ability to connect and build relationships with the guys allows him to build a trust and get a buy-in from the guys.  

Grant says that Coach K has a way of selling himself and making you feel special within that relationship.

We can have all the knowledge in the world, but if we can't get a group of guys to buy-in to a common theme and come together as one, we will struggle to find success.  Use your relationships to do so.

You Can’t Be a Great Manager If You’re Not a Good Coach

How Can We Make This Thing Right Here Personally Meaningful?

The most powerfully motivating condition people experience at work is making progress at something that is personally meaningful.

How can you make what your team/school/class/business is doing personally meaningful?
- Understand what drives each person
- Help build connections between what drives them, their individual work, and the mission of the organization
- Provide timely feedback
- Help each person learn and grown on an ongoing basis

Regular communication around development – coaching conversations – is the single most important managerial competency that separates highly effective managers from average ones (or great coaches from average ones)

Many managers think they don’t have the time to have these conversations, and many lack the skill. Yet 70% of employee learning and development happens on the job, not through formal training programs. So if line managers aren’t supportive and actively involved, employee growth is stunted. So is engagement and retention.

 If there’s anything an effective, resonant coaching conversation produces, it’s positive energy. Hundreds of executive students have reported to me that helping others learn and grow is among the most rewarding experiences they’ve had as managers.

Starting today, you can be significantly more effective as a manager — and enjoy your job more — by engaging in regular coaching conversations with your team members. As you resolve to support their ongoing learning and development, here are five key tips to get you started.

1 – Listen deeply
2 – Ask, don’t tell
3 – Create and sustain a developmental alliance
4 – Focus on moving forward positively
5 – Build accountability

Full article is after the jump.

What Stops Your Organization From Having Winning Culture?

Every group has a culture.  The culture reflects the conversations of the people within the organization.  To create change, you have to change the culture.  To change the culture, you have to change the conversations.

If the CEO is committed to creating possibilities from “nothing”, he or she cannot transform those possibilities into reality as a lone wolf. If he surrounds himself with the smartest people, it does not mean those people will be comfortable turning “nothing” into something extraordinary. Even the smartest people need to be motivated to produce astonishing results. And, without a culture to support extraordinary, high performance becomes a pipe dream. Therefore, the CEO is also responsible for creating a winning culture.

While there is no silver bullet, the solution is much simpler than it sounds. Every organization has a culture. Every culture is made up of a network of conversations (social anthropologists say the culture of a country, company or family is made up of a network of conversations). If you listen to what stakeholders – employees, suppliers, community, management, government, media, etc. – say, that will provide insight into what the culture of the organization is. Regardless of what you wish the culture to be, what people say about a company determines what the culture is. Sometimes the water cooler conversations are most telling.

There are 3 main kinds of conversations that make up a culture in an enterprise:

- Under performing – Like all cultures, under performs use key words. The conversations sound something like: “Things are unfair.” “I don’t like.” “I don’t know how.” “I don’t care.” “That’s impossible.” “You’ll never be able to do it.” “Something is wrong with.” In general, the underperformers tend to be victims and feel powerless to change anything.

- Average performing – The average performers talk about the following: “If it was meant to be it will be.” “Let’s see how it goes.” “I’ll give it my best shot.” “If they do it first, I will do it.” “Under promise and over deliver.” It seems as though this group is committed to avoiding any type of pressure.

- High performing – In this paradigm, the people occur as though they are from another planet. To start, they are making unreasonable promises to accomplish the task at hand. They almost appear reckless. Yet, there is a high level of integrity and accountability. Furthermore, they are making unreasonable requests of one another, without complaints. The language would sound more like: “this is going to require real effort to accomplish. And, I am up for it.” “Let’s take care of this now.” “Nothing can stop us now.” “Let’s work on this together.”

As you can see, the language within an organization can predetermine outcomes. If you watch the 3 groups closely, you will see their actions are always correlated with the conversations they have. With that understanding, it becomes clear why some corporations, divisions or teams have difficulty executing easy initiatives.

On the other hand, when the CEO is committed to inventing breakthroughs or creating possibilities from “nothing”, she will need a corporate culture that is ready for action, even if the goal appears impossible.

Therefore, if you are a leader/manager, it is not necessary to control your people. It is, however, imperative to create a network of conversations that will support the possibilities you invent.

Action Plan
To support this effort, you should give real time feedback to your people, instead of waiting for annual reviews. Your people should know immediately when their conversations and actions reflect under performance. Conversely, they should be acknowledged when they display behavior of a high performer.

Furthermore, if high performing language does not exist in your company now, it will not happen overnight. You will need to repeat the message many times.

While I may have over simplified this method for creating a winning culture, it works. Except, the network of conversations has to start at the top. In some cases, leadership does not have the core competencies to transform culture. If that is the case, it is better to bring in outsiders with the expertise. That way you avoid trial and error and get it right the first time. Like creating possibility from nothing, the CEO gets to create the language of high performance from nothing as well. What are the conversations in your organization?

What do you think? I’m open to ideas. Or if you want to write me about a specific topic, connect through my blog www.turnaroundip.blogspot.com.

Post Taken From:https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140701131548-262500-what-stops-your-organization-from-having-a-winning-culture?trk=eml-ced-b-art-M-3-6934480437294683914&midToken=AQF8MR0yVmEkig&fromEmail=fromEmail&ut=2tPfLxIBMhfCk1

via:
http://blog.coachbobwalsh.com/

Portland Trail Blazers Lob/Fade Screen Play

Portland Trail Blazers NBA Summer League

This is a GREAT way to get an easy basket, and could turn into one of your better back screen plays that we like to use to start the game off with a lob or an easy basket.  You can also use this play to get your best player a look in an end of quarter/half/game time situation.

I saw this play while watching the Portland Trail Blazers play the New York Knicks.  Portland ran this play several times to get shots for guard CJ McCollum and they also ran it for a lob to athletic guard Will Barton.

What I love about NBA sets, along with them being the best sets in basketball, is that each play has so many options, and they always have a setup for the ‘play after the play,’ as I have heard Lawrence Frank call it.

It is important to have built in scoring opportunities or options for if the play breaks down or doesn’t work.  In the NBA, that often means a ball screen look, and this set has a few different options at different points where the play might break down.

For youth, junior high, high school coaches, the initial action of the fade/back screen look might be enough for your guys.

Click on the picture to enlarge.

My Dear Albert ... A Letter From A Father to His Son

“That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes.”

In 1915, aged thirty-six, Einstein was living in Wartorn Berlin, while his estranged wife, Mileva, and their two sons, Hans Albert Einstein and Eduard “Tete” Einstein, lived in comparatively safe Vienna. On November 4 of that year, having just completed the two-page masterpiece that would catapult him into international celebrity and historical glory, his theory of general relativity, Einstein sent 11-year-old Hans Albert the following letter:

Thanks to www.fresherair.net for the find and www.brainpickings.org for the added research.

The thing you are doing now, the thing you do when you are supposed to be doing something, the thing you do to waste the time, that is your true passion.  #followit

Coaching Fundamentals Is a Difference Maker

This is a clip from an episode titled “What Could Have Been”  from NBA TV’s “Open Court.”  In this clip, they are discussing the career of Tracy McGrady.  Tracy McGrady was a very talented and versatile scorer and star in the NBA from 1997 – 2013.  He was a 7 time all-star and led the league in scoring twice.  He was also known as a big time superstar, who in his prime, could not lead his team out of the first round of the NBA playoffs.

In the clip, Steve Kerr questions McGrady’s ‘fire’ and suggests that this lack of ‘fire’ kept him from being greater than what he was.

Some of the other guys jump to McGrady’s defense, expressing that him being able to do what he did as a professional in the NBA shows that he did indeed have that ‘fire.’ 

McGrady skipped college, jumping straight to the NBA out Mt. Zion Christian Academy in North Carolina.  Kenny Smith said something very interesting about the growth in learning that you get from going to college and that you miss out on when you skip that part of the process.  He talked about how you learn to be on your own in college,you learn to lead in college, and you learn the fundamentals of the game in college.  Kenny talks about how the fundamentals of the game is something that really separated Michael Jordan from the McGrady’s, the Kobe’s, and the LeBron’s (I do believe Kobe has great fundamentals, something he’s credited to growing up in Italy).  He says that it wasn’t just Jordan’s natural talent, but the fact that he had great fundamentals to go along with his amazing athleticism, and Smith said that those fundamentals were the difference in what made MJ who he was.

Isaiah Thomas piggy-backed on Kenny and talked about how great of coaching MJ received.  This clip missed this, but Thomas observed that Jordan played for two hall of fame coaches, Dean Smith and Phil Jackson, and that the quality of coaching that a player receives is a difference maker in a player reaching his full potential.  He also spoke on the coaching that Larry Bird received and Bird’s ‘flawless’ fundamentals and how he never made a mistake in terms of his setup for his shot or using his right hand or left and to finish, and that Bird’s fundamental setup was so good that it gave him more time to make a play because he was always in position.

Isaiah said that we can sometimes mistake that ‘fire in the belly’ for old fashion fundamental ‘know-how.’  When guys don’t have the fundamental know-how and a strong fundamental base, they have to be more ‘tricky’ with the ball and try to create more.

As a coach, it is great to hear that NBA veterans and NBA greats recognize the difference between a player who has great fundamentals, taught through great coaching, and a player who has the talent and athleticism but who might not have as strong of a fundamental base.

Now, Kerr might have had a point in his observation of T-Mac; T-Mac has talked about how he sometimes slept of 20 hours a day as a rookie, and his minutes increased when his work ethic as a professional improved, and when you are talking about Larry Bird and Michael Jordan, you are talking about two guys who have reputations for being among the most competitive guys in sports.  But, it is great hearing commentary on the importance of quality teaching in coaching.