Be Like Jessica Mendoza: Improve By Staying Humble

From the website stack.com


If you’re a top player and a team leader, you probably receive little or no negative feedback from your parents, coaches or teammates. On the contrary, they probably rely on you at critical points during games and lavish you with praise when you inevitably deliver.

Basking in the glow of such approval, you might easily think your game is fine the way it is. Unfortunately, this mindset leads to complacency and can slow your development as an athlete.

Jessica Mendoza, USA Softball Olympic gold medalist, stays on top of her game by staying humble. “Despite all the accolades and all the people telling you that you’re amazing, you still need to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and be accountable and responsible for your faults [in order] to get better,” she says. “When you lose your humility, you lose your success.”

Even if you have the talent to dominate, remember that thousands of athletes are shedding blood, sweat and tears every day to reach their goals. Realize that you are not a perfect athlete, find your faults and work on curing them. Even the best can get better.

Check this video out:

http://bcove.me/8xp8i5f9

Creating Captains

• Rett Larson
• 4/12/2011
• More Articles at Combine 360

I read a great blog a while back that got me thinking about the way we treat and train young athletes. 

It said:
“I am sick of seeing 13 to 15 year old kids labeled as the next superstar. We anoint these kids to the point where they think they are above the rules. Adults tolerate ant-social and sometimes illegal behavior; we enable these kids to the point where they never have to grow up, this is not a racial thing, it transcends race and gender. They don’t have to go to class, they don’t have to do their assignments, and someone always takes care of them. What do you think will happen when you give a kid like this a contract worth millions of dollars? Will he immediately learn responsibility and change a behavior pattern that authority figures have enabled him to do throughout his athletic career? I don’t think so and there is evidence everyday in the sports page to prove it. I know I am old fashioned but I was raised to believe that character was important. As coaches, teachers and administrators we have a responsibility to teach good behavior and responsibility for the star and the last person on the bench.”

This reminded me of another conversation I had with a coach recently about the philosophy of creating greatness in young athletes on and off the field.  He trains his athletes to not only run faster and jump higher, but to be the captains of their team.  From a practical standpoint it means that athletes are responsible for getting and putting away all equipment, they’re instructed how to give a good handshake while looking their coach in the eye, they’re lauded for encouraging others in the group, or welcoming a new athlete and making them feel like part of the team.  Coaches ask parents to make their young athletes call and schedule their training so they learn to take responsibility for their athletic potential. 

Some coaches go even further, correcting their athletes’ poor grammar or bad posture.
Lots of speed and strength programs, even bad ones, can make young athletes faster, but it takes a great coach to change the behaviors of those athletes off the field to create better human beings.  Create captains – the world thanks you in advance.

The Biggest Reason Why Your Captains Often Struggle...

By Jeff Janssen, M.S., Peak Performance Coach

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What’s one of the biggest reasons why your captains struggle to be effective leaders? Interestingly, it is not a lack of desire. The vast majority of captains I talk with sincerely want to be effective leaders for you and your team. 

The biggest reason why captains are not as effective as they should be is most often a lack of awareness. They lack an awareness both in terms of what it takes to be an effective leader, and just as important, they lack an awareness of their strengths and weaknesses as leaders. This fact has become painfully obvious to me as I ask captains to evaluate themselves as leaders - and to have their teammates and coaches evaluate them using the Team Leadership Evaluation.

This captain’s evaluation is available for free online at  http://www.jeffjanssen.com/coaching/evaluation2.html

Here’s an example...

One athlete rated himself at a 115 out of 120 on the Team Leadership Evaluation. This athlete essentially believed he was a superb leader and was highly confident that he was doing a spectacular job as evidenced by his nearly perfect self score. 

However, the ratings from his teammates told a completely different story. His coaches rated him at only an 87, which is night and day difference (28 points) from his viewpoint. The coaches rating of 87 meant the coaching staff did not even consider the young man to be a team leader whereas the athlete somehow believed he was in the top 5% of all leaders. 

Worse, his teammates had him rated even lower at an 85, effectively corroborating the coaches’ views. His teammates too had little respect for this athlete’s “leadership” skills.

Now the major problem is unless this athlete becomes aware of how his teammates and coaches actually view him, he will continue to exhibit the same “leadership” skills he thinks are exemplary. This situation is similar to walking around with spinach in your teeth, a big ketchup stain on your shirt, and your fly open and no one is kind/brave enough to tell you... 

Without the honest and helpful feedback from his coaches and teammates, this well-meaning, yet clueless athlete will remain painfully unaware that he has some significant shortcomings and fatal flaws as a leader that must be improved.

In sharing this far too common example, my hope is that it sheds some light on the problem of why your captains often struggle to be effective. More and more I’m discovering that many of them think they are doing a great job as leaders, yet they don’t receive any substantial feedback to realize that their coaches and teammates do not see them as the effective leader they think they are. 

My research shows that three out of four captains (74%) rate themselves as better leaders than how their coaches rate them. How about your leaders? Are they too under the assumption that they are leading effectively when you and your athletes have some/several concerns?

Typically, a mere 10% of captains rate themselves in the same ballpark as their teammates and coaches. This obviously means that roughly 9 out of 10 leaders are “awareness-challenged” when it comes to self assessing their leadership skills in comparison to their coaches’ and teammates’ views.

The remaining 15% of captains rate themselves lower than how their coaches and teammates rate them. 

These leaders are often overly self-critical and/or lack the confidence to step up and take charge. Once these leaders receive the affirming feedback of their teammates’ and coaches’ higher scores, they quickly gain the confidence necessary to step up as Vocal Leaders and speak out knowing that they have the support and confidence of the team.  

My latest statistics also reveal that the average captain, without any leadership training, rates herself at a 97 as a leader on the Team Leadership Evaluation. The coaches rate these same captains at an average of 87 (below the Vocal Leader threshold) - and their teammates have them at a 90. Clearly there is a discrepancy.

However, with leadership training the numbers improve considerably in two ways:

1. After undergoing leadership training the average scores for the captains rise to the following - self average rating of 105, teammate average rating of 100, and coach average rating of 98. This means that a captain’s leadership skills are rated as better by themselves, their teammates, and their coaches following leadership training. 

2. The additional benefit of the training is that the leader’s views of her leadership skills becomes more in line with how she is evaluated by her coaches and teammates. Rather than blindly leading with no understanding of herself, she becomes more aware of her strengths and shortcomings as a leader and in closer alignment with how her teammates and coaches see her.

To promote better awareness on the part of your leaders you must invest the time to do two things:

1. Teach your captains what it really means to be a leader as well as train them to develop the necessary skills and insights to become an effective leader for your team.

2. Provide your captains with regular, quantitative and qualitative feedback from their coaches and teammates on their leadership skills. The Team Leadership Evaluation is obviously a potential tool to help you do this.

One important thing to consider: Anyone who has ever received anonymous feedback from others on their skills knows it can be a scary and challenging process. Hopefully your leaders will have the courage to put themselves out there to see how they stand.  While I encourage captains to get feedback, I don’t make it mandatory and encourage you to utilize the same policy. The best you can do is to encourage them to get the feedback and let them know how valuable it would be for their development. Getting feedback from others is consistently rated as one the best and strongest aspects of a leadership development program. 

Finally, as a challenge to you as a coach or athletic director, remember what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Just as you hope your captains would be open to receiving feedback on their leadership skills, I challenge you to be open to receiving the same kind of helpful feedback from your athletes and staff.

Check Jeff's Site out here!

Captain Selection Secrets

 

Posted by Kelly Anton

For those of you who never played sports, team captain is not just an honorary position for the cutest, most-popular guy or gal on team. (Or for the coach’s son or daughter.) The captain and alternate captains have an actual job, defined by USA Hockey as the players who “shall have the privilege of discussing with the Referee any questions relating to interpretation of rules that may arise during the progress of a game.” (See the complete captain section on page 11 of the 2009-11 Official Rules of Ice Hockey book.)

So who should be the captain? We turned to Captain D of CaptainDevelopment.com, a USA Hockey Level 5 coach, for help. His site covers everything from rotating captains to development and duties. Here’s an excerpt from his site:

Selection of Captains

Some coaches choose their team captains. Some have the players vote for captains. With older players it may not matter too much. In most cases (although not always) the results will be the same. Why is this? Coaches will choose players who’ve shown good leadership skills. Players also look up to and choose players who’ve shown these traits.
A successful high school coach had an interesting compromise. When asked at a coaches’ seminar how he chose captains for his teams he replied, “We have the kids vote—then the coaches count the ballots.” (He went on to say that in all the many years he had coached, the coaches never had to throw out the vote of the players. They always chose captains that the coaches would have chosen anyway.)
Location, Location, Location
One indicator of leadership potential is easy to spot. Note where players sit in the locker room.

• The player who sits in the center of the wall across from the door is likely to be a player who is confident, wants attention and is likely to want to be “in charge.” This can be good or bad since some players like this are “bossy” but lack the work ethic and/or respect needed. Keep your eye on these players to see if their confidence and work ethic are both strong.
• At the opposite end of the spectrum are the players who seat themselves in the corner behind the door. Although they may be very skilled players, they aren’t likely to be leaders.

Naturally, seating arrangements should not be used to automatically determine captaincy, but it is an indicator of players’ temperaments.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that choosing the captain is only the first step. Once chosen, coaches must work with team captains to help them develop and use their leadership skills. “However good a leader a captain may be, the key is finding what makes his teammates willing to follow.”