Archives for December 2018

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Jalen Hurts’s Mental Toughness

One of the biggest stories of this college football season was the story of Alabama quarterback, Jalen Hurts, the star who went 26-2 as a starter and LOST his starting job in the National Championship game to a freshman who won the game and became the talk of the nation. He went from star of the nation’s best team to forgotten in a span of two quarters, and then had the opportunity to transfer after losing his starting job.

Jalen chose not to transfer, which is very uncommon. Most players transfer when they face this type of adversity, but he chose to stay, and to keep working hard and getting better. He sat on the bench all season but continued to work hard and stay ready for a moment that might never have come.

But, his moment did come, in the last five minutes of the SEC Title Game on December 1, 2018. Jalen Hurts stepped in for the starting quarterback who’d taken his job. With the BCS playoffs on the line, he executed with precision, as if he had been the starter all year.

Jalen Hurt’s story is impressive, and a great example of a young man with real mental toughness. It’s also a great lesson for parents on encouraging your kids to stick with it through the hard times. Jalen has discussed how his parents encouraged him to keep fighting after he lost his starting spot.

What Role Does Culture Play?

However, I think Jalen’s story is also a great lesson for us as coaches. As much as it says about Jalen’s character, it is also a positive indictment of the culture Alabama has created.

If Jalen hated his experience at Alabama and thought his only value came from being the starting quarterback, I am guessing he probably would have transferred this off-season, and I honestly wouldn’t have blamed him.

So many other teams at the professional, collegiate, and high school level use athletes. They treat it as a business and are just out to get wins. Character, culture, and people all come second. When athletes aren’t a part of the plan to achieve their agenda, they toss them aside.

When so many coaches and administrations use athletes at the high school, collegiate, and professional level for their personal gain, why do we feel surprised and upset when those athletes transfer for their personal gain?

We talk about the number of transfers in college athletics as if all transfers are bad, and a great deal of them are definitely due to a lack of mental toughness and an inability to delay gratification. Parents can definitely share some of the blame; more often than not, they are some of the biggest supporters of the decision for their kids to transfer.

But, there is a reality we sometimes ignore. Sometimes, these young men and women just don’t want to be part of a toxic culture that only values winning and not the selfless team experience they are creating, in which players are seen as people first, athletes second. I don’t blame the athletes who transfer out of these type of cultures. I think these are circumstances in which young people are saying, “I’ve had enough!”

I think players, parents, and coaches all share some responsibility for the epidemic of athletes transferring when things get tough.

Culture Helps

I may be wrong, but I believe Alabama has created a team in which players like Jalen enjoy their experience and feel valued as a person, regardless of whether they are on the field or not. I am not saying it was easy for Jalen. It has undoubtedly been one of the hardest things he has faced in his life so far. And I know there are negative things about Alabama’s culture. From my sofa, I have observed many behaviors by coaches and players I don’t believe are acceptable. 

What I am saying is this: Nobody does it alone. Parents, coaches, and teammates had to have a positive influence on Jalen. He leaned on some people during a really challenging year.

My question for us coaches is this: Are we creating a culture that offers support in their struggles? Do we value our reserves?

Notes

1. For 7 more ways to value your reserves, read here: https://thriveonchallenge.com/7-ways-to-love-your-reserves/.
2. https://www.al.com/alabama/2018/12/the-amazing-story-of-jalen-hurts-adds-a-new-chapter.html

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Radical Transparency

“You sometimes say or do things to players which makes them feel incompetent, unnecessary, humiliated, overwhelmed, belittled, pressed, or otherwise bad. If you don’t start coaching people well, growth will be stunted, and the team will be negatively affected.”

What if your assistant coaches told you that in the middle of the season?

Well Ray Dalio, the Founder and CEO of Bridgewater Associates, now the largest hedge fund in the world, managing 160 billion dollars got that feedback from three of his closest people back in 1993. Dalio recounts the painful feedback: “Basically, what they said to me is that my whole total straightforwardness was causing people to be demoralized.”

How Dalio chose to learn and grow from that feedback would forever transform the company and his leadership. These painful mistakes in communication would lead to the foundation of one of Bridgewater Associates’ principles, which they call “radical transparency”.

Dalio’s Two Questions

So, to resolve the situation and personally improve, Dalio began to meet individually with his employees to reach a mutual agreement on how they would treat one another and give each other feedback.

He had these hard questions for his people:

1. “How should I be with you? Should I tell you what I really think?”
2. “How should you be with me? Can you feel free to tell me what you really think?”

He became intent on creating a culture in which employees could have “thoughtful disagreement” and exchange controversial ideas without creating problems.

As it states on the Bridgewater.com homepage, “We require people to be extremely open, air disagreements, test each other’s logic, and view discovering mistakes and weaknesses as a good thing that leads to improvement and innovation. It is by continually striving together for the highest levels of truth and excellence that we create meaningful work and meaningful relationships.”

Truth and Love

You can’t have one without the other, but most of us struggle to find the balance and lean too far one way or the other. Truth can be painful to hear and uncomfortable to give. But, we don’t need to fear it, because it is essential to growth.

Feedback is essential for both parties to understand their challenges and conflicts. When we deliver truth with love, not only can we see clearer, but we can discover the path to positive growth.

3 Ways to Build A Culture of Truth and Love

1. Go First: Be vulnerable by asking for feedback. Trying sharing a list of the important qualities of great leaders and asking, “Which area do you think I struggle with the most?”. When we do this, we show everyone it’s okay to not be perfect, while modeling the willingness to grow.
2. Embrace the Messenger: In The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle says it’s not enough to “not shoot the messenger”; we need to embrace and praise the messenger. Even if the criticism is unwarranted, it is still how they think and feel, and their courage to share this deserves our respect. We want everyone to feel safe enough to come to us with more feedback.
3. Ask Permission: In these one-on-one conversations, ask, “Do you want any feedback?”. If they are not mentally ready to receive and learn from your feedback, then the feedback is often hurtful, not helpful. By asking this question, we help them prepare mentally to take ownership and identify the opportunity for improvement.

Take It Further

Listen to Coaching Culture Episode 63: Improving Your Feedback System for more strategies and systems.

Notes

1. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/12/bridgewaters-ray-dalio-the-leadership-strategy-behind-my-success.html
2. https://www.inc.com/gene-hammett/3-steps-ray-dalio-uses-radical-transparency-to-build-a-billion-dollar-company.html
3. The first heard of Ray Dalio’s story on Adam Grant’s Podcast

Calling Up: Discovering Your Journey to Transformational Leadership

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Creating Culture

“Culture is a set of living relationships working toward a shared goal. It’s not something you are. It’s something you do.”

—Daniel Coyle, The Culture Code

As I discussed in my article, “Why Sports Culture Doesn’t Need Any More Critics”, being a critic of culture doesn’t change it. Andy Crouch makes this argument in his book, Culture Making: “The only way to change culture is to create more of it. Creativity is the only viable source of change.”

Tony Hseih, the CEO and Founder of Zappos, which has a world-renowned business cultures, describes culture as a greenhouse, not a building. Our jobs as leaders are less like a builder with a blueprint and more like a farmer who cultivates and plants. When farming and cultivating a greenhouse, you need to constantly keep an eye on all your plants, make adjustments, and give special care to struggling areas. It is the same for our culture.

4 Keys to Creating a Plan for Your Culture

1. Create a Culture Manual, Playbook, or Plan: There is great value in coming up with a written plan. We need to be intentional in our implementation of strategies, systems, and lessons to build leadership and character.
2. Poke Holes in the Plan: Working with your staff or a mentor, ask these 2 questions:
   1. “Why won’t this strategy or idea work?”
   2. “How can we make this strategy or idea work?”
3. Execute the Plan: Be confident in the new strategies and ideas you are implementing within your culture plan, just as you need to be confident in a tactical change or when teaching a certain skill.
4. Reflect and Refine: Your plan will not go according to plan! Acknowledge what is working and what isn’t working. Why aren’t some things working? How can you make them better?

It’s a Journey

In my own experience, and in my experience working with other coaches, our greatest challenges are in #4. When things don’t go according to plan, and when a strategy or approach fails, we often want to substitute a whole new strategy or take a totally different approach. But all we really need to do is just make little tweaks and stay consistent.

Nearly 40 years ago, Anson Dorrance decided to implement the “competitive cauldron” for his program. At first, it was highly ineffective, but he believed in it, so he kept reflecting on it and refining it, and nearly 40 years later, he is still refining this system. Read more about it here.

Recently, I made the decision to be more intentional when building relationships with a team I support in my local area. I committed to bringing lunch to one player a week, hanging out with them, and talking about life. While some players were enthusiastic for the opportunity, some didn’t understand why I would want to spend time learning and connecting with them as people. Instead of abandoning my decision to build stronger interpersonal relationships and my weekly commitment, I decided it needed a small change, so I started to offer to meet in small groups instead.

In my article, “3 Things to Remember About Making Plans”, I addressed how, when things don’t go as well as we envisioned, we tend to think, “Well, that was a bad idea!” However, we must not become discouraged when things don’t go according to plan. It’s as Jeff Olson says in his book, Slight Edge: “You have to start with a plan, but the plan you start with will not be the plan that gets you there.”

-J.P. Nerbun

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Notes:

1. The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson

2. 3 Things to Remember About Making Plans

3. 3 Strategies to Move from a Coach Led Team to a Player Led Team

4. 6 Steps to a Transformational Culture

5. The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle

Calling Up: Discovering Your Journey to Transformational Leadership

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The Power of a Checklist

The number of surgeries performed every year in the world is growing at a staggering rate, averaging now nearly 250 million per year. Since the 2000s, it has been reported that the number of surgeries performed even exceeds the number of childbirths. However, a 2009 New England Journal of Medicine article reported that at least half of all surgical complications are avoidable. So, while the number of surgeries is growing every year, we still don’t seem to be getting any better.

To address the growing concerns, the World Health Organization started a Surgery Saves Lives program in 8 hospitals in 8 different countries across the world, which represented diverse populations and economic situations. The Surgery Saves Lives program dropped the mortality rate by nearly 50% and the rate of complications by nearly 40%.

How did they do this? It was simple and affordable. They used a checklist.

This checklist is of very simple things, like verifying the person’s identity, introducing all team members in the surgery, and making sure all the needles, sponges, and other instruments are accounted for. Now, it would be easy to remind people of the importance of these various tasks during surgical procedures. The tasks on this list are easy to do. However, they are also easy not to do.

Checklists have a special power and influence that verbal reminders, email notifications, and sticky notes don’t seem to carry. Checklists have been proven to help reduce errors and improve performance in aviation, business, and education.

Setting Standards and Expectations

Early in my consulting days, my workshops consisted of working with teams to help them create a team mission statement, define team values, and create standards and expectations for the season. It was the alternative approach to goal setting. It focused on who they wanted to be and the behaviors which aligned with that identity. Teams would make a list of 10-20 standards on various aspects of their training, practice, games, and off-the-court conduct.

But, then what? Well, it was up to the coach to encourage them, help them reflect on where they were, and hold them accountable to these standards. The challenge is that this can be overwhelming for coaches and players who have high standards but lack the habits and system to sustain those standards. Like the surgical teams, you could remind them of the importance of those standards, but they would often either forget or just choose to not do those things, because as easy as it is to do them—it’s just as easy not to do them!

Imagine if you never worked out, ate fast food once a day, and took the elevator at every opportunity. January 1st comes, and you make a list of all the New Year’s resolutions that someone aspiring to be healthy would make: Working out daily for 30 minutes; a diet of unprocessed, high-protein, low-carb food, consuming vegetables with every meal, and taking the stairs at every opportunity. Following through on one of these new commitments is easy, but consistently following through on all of them would be overwhelming. Even if you only make one commitment (for example, taking the stairs), following through on it can be challenging because again, these things are easy to do, but just as easy not to do.

And it gives you daily feedback on your process and follow-through.

Develop Your System

“You do not rise to the level of your goals; you fall to the level of your systems.”

—James Clear

On Episode 56 of “Coaching Culture”, New York Times bestselling author James Clear states that what people need to build good habits and follow through on them is not more motivation—they need a better system. Our team needs a system in place to help facilitate consistent reminders, reflection, and refinement of their process.

Commitments should be measurable and controllable. One type is objective “yes or no” commitments, such as getting 9 hours of sleep, making 50 baskets, or hitting 100 balls.

Another type is more subjective, self-evaluated commitments, such as effort. Choose a grading scale, for instance, from 1-3. Clearly define the behaviors on that scale. What does a 3 look, feel, and sound like? What about a 2? And a 1? Now, players can simply reflect on their behaviors and evaluate their effort.

Take Action

1. Visual Post-Practice Reflection: Set a weekly or daily commitment. Then, at the end of your practice, in the huddle, quickly use your grading scale to assess how well this commitment was followed through on. Now, you have a team average. The goal is to improve on that average during the next practice.
2. The Team Commitments Checklist: Some coaches I work with are already charting wins and losses during a practice. Charting commitments is a way to chart mindset and help both players and coaches see growth in those areas. Create a checklist for players or coaches to record whether or not they followed though on that commitment. Use this to assess individual and team follow-through.
3. Pennies in a Jar: Every day, for every commitment the team follows through on, they will put a penny in the jar. You can also use rocks, buttons, whatever! The idea is that players start by filling a jar. Then, once the jar is full, you switch to a bucket, and once that’s full, you move on to something larger. Then, by the end of the season, you will have a really big container full of all the commitments the team has followed through on, and they will have a visual representation of the work they put into following through on those commitments.

For more information on these systems, please send me an email to jpnerbun@thriveonchallenge.com

Notes:

1. James Clear, Atomic Habits
2. http://www.hartfordbusiness.com/article/20140623/PRINTEDITION/306199955/seven-management-benefits-of-using-a-checklist
3. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa0810119#
4. https://www.baatraining.com/flight-safety-discipline-and-importance-of-checklists/