A Coach's Diary

The video below is one of the best leadership videos I’ve seen. It gives a simple model for how to create and manage a high-performing environment. Brett Ledbetter is a thinking partner with some of the top coaches and athletes in the world He said an NBA GM was asked, “What is your role inside the organization?” and his response was, “My job is to build an environment where people can do their best work.” What is the most important thing you can do as a leader to build an environment where people can do their best work?” Brett said it comes back to three things: How you define, manage, and model your expectations. Defining is proactive. Managing is restive, and modeling happens all the time. Define Neil Armstrong once said, “If you’re an inch off in landing, no big deal. If you’re an inch off on takeoff, you miss the moon by a million miles.” What are the expectations that you need to define? The best leaders clearly define what success or appropriate behaviors look like and what it d...

Napheesa Collier is a basketball superstar in the WNBA. She sat down with Brett Ledbetter at What Drives Winning and was asked some questions about being a leader, saying, 'No,' and confidence. Question 1: As a leader, you have to be able to hold the people around you accountable. Everybody leads in a different way, and you have to know the people around you, and their personalities, and try to help them be the best they can be in their own way. NC: Delivery is really important. You can say something two different ways; one way will help a person, and one way will cause them to shut down for the rest of the game. The way that you talk to people is so important. I don't mind getting yelled at by my coach, but if you yell at some people, you aren't going to get anything else out of them. And some people need to be yelled at; they don't like to be talked to nicely. Question 2: A lot of performers are pleasers because they want the fans to like what they are doing. The ...

First, watch the video below for an insight into the type of parents and parental support that NBA legend Kobe Bryant grew up with: (Watch the video before continuing) In the video, Kobe Bryant was asked, "Who was your greatest teacher growing up?" He said his parents were great. They instilled in him the importance of imagination and curiosity with the understanding that if you want to accomplish something, you have to put in the work to get there. Kobe grew up thinking the world was his oyster and all things were possible if he was willing to put in the work. He was then asked, "Who was more influential for you, your mother or your father." Kobe said, "Both were influential at different points. My mom was there on a daily basis. My father was really influential at a critical time." Kobe then told a story about how when he was 10 or 11 years old, he played in a summer league where he went the entire summer without scoring a single point. The league was a ...

Every season as a high school coach, I had a very similar trajectory. I always started the season with the goal of building character first in my athletes, doing the right things, and coaching kids up on the court and off the court to be better athletes and better players. Then, we start to win and I feel the pressure to keep winning, and sometimes the character piece takes a back seat to the winning. Then I see a video like the one above and quotes like the one below and I get back on track and back to doing things the way that they should be done. We signup to coach. We want to teach our kids how to play, we want to compete, and we want to win through the process. But if we want to get the most out of the game, our players, and ourselves, we will use the sports that we coach to build character. There is a real, huge relationship between building character and performance. Building character is just like building muscles. When you work on it and put consistent demands on it, you build...

Before the first practice when Coach K took over team USA basketball, he sat down with all members of the team and they created team standards that they were committed to living by and playing by. Those standards included things like how to show to up on time, the effort that they expected everyday from each other, and the type of teammates that they would need to be to each other. One of the first things a coach or leader needs to establish are the standards that they team would live by. One smart thing that Coach K did was meet with his team leaders before practice, ran the idea by them first, and asked them to bring one standard each to lead the conversation. After this, everybody else just fell in line. Setting clear standards draws a line of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. We want to live above the line.  1 - Set clear standards. 2 - Catch above the line behavior. 3 - Manage below the line behavior. 4 - Be the example of the standa...

In the video below Brett Ledbetter shows a clip of the movie Whiplash to a group of coaches.  Whiplash is a movie about a young, talented musician and his hard-driving coach who feels like it's his job to do what it takes to get the most out of his students, even to the long-term detriment of the students. They discuss the parallels of this music teacher and many coaches that we see that act as it it's their job to push their athletes as hard as they can to get the most out of them, using fear and intimidation at times, ignoring or ignorant to the long-term damage that they could be doing to their athletes mental health. This leads to a couple of great speeches by Dr. Jim Loehr, a leading sports psychologist who teaches and encourages coaches to have the right mission as they lead young athletes  We Hold Their Dreams in Our Hands It's so important for coaches to understand the extraordinary power you have in the lives of athletes that you interact with....

Can you take character development into the most pressurized environments in athletics? When you grow a kid's character and emphasize character and personal development, the athlete always wins. The video below has really helped me refocus my purpose as a sports parent.  It's very easy for us to find our identity lost in how our kids play.  So much of my weekend levels of joy are based on the results of my kids' games.  This is not healthy, and this is not fun.  Like most kids, mines are inconsistent and so my weekend joy has been inconsistent. This video has taught me to emphasize and focus on who my kids are as people, and to re-purpose sports as another tool to help my kids live happy, healthy lives by learning how to set goals and work for them, by learning how to play well and work well with others, learning that how hard you work and how much grit you have has a positive correlation with success, and learning how to have a healthy relationship with...

Character drives The Process which drives The Result Results > What you want to accomplish The Process > The work you put in, over time, for the results you want Character > Who you are as a person Focusing on building character will help your athletes embrace the process more which will lead to better results. Who you are as a person will tell how hard you are willing to work (the process) for the results that you want.  Build, grow, and developing character will help you work harder, better and smarter through the process of achieving the results that you want. Of course every team wants to go undefeated and win their championship, but above that, every team should want to strive to maximize their ability.  Everyone will experience loss, and while nobody wants to lose, losing isn’t the worst thing in the world.  Worse than losing is wasted talent. John Wooden once defined success as, “Success is peace of mind which is a direct re...

This past week for our professional development leading into the new school year, we were blessed to have Brett Ledbetter come to talk to us about the importance of building character in our kids and athletes in helping maximize the ability of our teams.  The link to his power point can be found here:  please click here We were asked to answer survey questions about his visit, and below are the questions and my responses so that I can remember to ignite commitment, get kids to their sweet spot, frame struggle as development, and measure commitment level of out athletes. How do you ignite commitment levels inside the classroom (or with teams)? We try to identify what the individual goals of each of our kids are, we try to give them the road map on how to achieve those goals, and we give constant and consistent feedback throughout the process on how they are moving towards those goals.  It is cliche, but we understand that the relationship with the kid/athlet...

Below are my notes from a speech by Brett Ledbetter at ‘ What Drives Winning ’ on the importance of placing emphasis on the PERSON more than the PLAYER.  You can see the video in its entirety below. How You Are REMEMBERED As A PERSON Is So Much More  Important, And LASTING, Than Your Stats Key Takeaways: 1 - You can't remember who led the team in scoring 3 years ago, but you remember your favorite teacher from 10 years ago. 2 - How you are remembered as a PERSON is more important that how you are remembered as a PLAYER 3 - When helping with a problem, identifying the issue first and then finding common ground will help you find a solution. In the speech below, Brett Ledbetter talked about how he helped a star collegiate soccer player overcome her biggest fears in sports, dealing with the expectations of other.  It helped me become a better coach, person, and father of a young athlete (or 3) by focusing on the person and the things you can control r...