By Dawn Redd-Kelly

This article and other helpful coaching tools can be found at Coach Dawn Writes

Sometimes social media gets a bad rap for being a time sucker, which it can be. But most times, I find good stuff there.  Whether it be a good leadership article, a timely motivational quote, or (like this time) a great tweet from team building expert Jeff Janssen.

How can we be successful coaches?  Or maybe a better way to put it is how can we measure, at the end of the season or school year, that we’ve been successful?  Janssen has some ideas.

9 requirements of success:

1. Purpose: Why do you coach? As I mentioned in my another post, loving the sport isn’t your purpose (it’s your passion)…why do you coach? Why do you have player meetings?  And stress about your practice plans? Why do you watch so much film? What is my why?  I believe that athletics creates better humans (I’m biased, I know) and I believe us coaches equip our athletes with the tools they’ll need to make the world a better place and I’m honored to have a part in it.
2. Passion: Do you love your sport? Is there a fire in your bones for it?  Then that will translate over to your players and they’ll be infected by your zeal.
3. Perspiration: I feel like this is obvious, but you should be working hard, Coach. Like, really hard.  You’ve got to work hard to create relationships with your players.  You’ve got to work hard to know the different personalities on your team and how to motivate them.  You’ve got to work hard to keep your team chemistry balanced.
4. Plan: How will you handle the inevitable quarrels between teammates? How will you handle having to bench a starter?  How will you prepare your team to be clutch at the end of a competition?  How will you make sure they’re ready for post-season?
5. Patience: Can you wait for your “potential player” to bloom? Can you try different ways of teaching your leaders how to lead? Can you trust the process?
6. Persistence: I think it’s a great idea to write down your coaching goals. That way, when you hit the inevitable speed bump, you won’t be moved.
7. People: Coaches don’t succeed alone. We need mentors and assistants.  We need recruits to buy into what we’re saying.  We need families who support the coaching staff in the background.  We need an administration who’ll advocate for us.
8. Principles: Do you want to be a win-at-all-costs coach? Do you want to sacrifice your values in order to win more games?  I think a coach’s goal should be to win with honor.
9. Perspective: My guess is our definition of success will change as we grow as coaches, as we gain a bit more life experience, and as we’re humbled by our profession.

It’s hard to feel successful.  It requires a lot of work.  Let’s get ready to put the effort in so that we can be whatever our version of success looks like!

Are you tired of walking into practice and seeing lackluster effort from your players?  Have you had it with trying to get your female athletes to care about the team as much as you do??

Click here to find out more about Coach Dawn’s eBook: Motivating Female Athletes

Comes with a FREE PowerPoint presentation called Guarantee Your Success: Using John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success To Increase Your Team’s Cohesion.

 

Pursuing practical and effective methods to enhance coaching longevity would serve the best interests of athletes, athletic programs, and coaches. Here are recommended strategies to reduce stress and burnout in the coaching profession.

This  article was provided by the Coaches Network

By Michelle Moosbrugger, Ph.D.

As a coach, do you strive to facilitate positive development in your athletes?  Do you form strong relationships and pride yourself on your team’s improvements on and off the field while displaying professionalism?  If so, you certainly appear to be a coach that an administrator would like to retain for years to come.   However, many perceive coaching to be demanding and stressful, which may lead to withdrawal from the profession (Frey, 2007).   Pursuing practical and effective methods to enhance coaching longevity would serve the best interests of athletes, athletic programs and administrators, and coaches.  Coaches and administrators can play a role in supporting retention.

Coaches can apply strategies to reduce stress and burnout, and position themselves for longevity.  Recommended strategies for coaches include:

• Recognize enjoyment.  If you love what you are doing, a long career is more probable and palatable!  Try making a “Love of Coaching” list.  Identify aspects of your job, your athletes, and your sport that you truly enjoy.  Keep the list in a place where it can be accessed during challenging times.
• Be competent.  Maintaining a current level of knowledge by attending professional development events, reading, and networking will enhance your coaching competence, as well as your confidence!  By exposing yourself to new ideas, you may ignite your thirst for continual learning.
• Evaluate the match.  By choosing to coach at a college/university/school/club with a philosophy that matches your own, and provides the financial support and facilities you need, you are reducing potential sources of stress.  Likewise, carefully evaluate prospective staff members, like assistant coaches, to ensure they are competent and a good fit for your coaching philosophy.
• Create a support network.  Based on a study by Judge et al. (2015), social support aided in reducing stress related to daily tasks of track and field coaches.  Social support can be attained by building trusting professional and personal relationships.
• Employ coping strategies.  Coping with coaching-related stress should emphasize proactive rather than reactive strategies, and a combination of perceptual and behavioral strategies.  Organization and management, including prioritizing, using technology, and delegating would proactively reduce the potential for stress.  Self-awareness and maintaining a positive outlook exemplify perceptual strategies while exercising and settling on a routine method of planning practices represent behavioral strategies.
• Balance.  Work-life balance is critical to longevity.  Scheduling “me time” and focusing on your family on specific days or certain parts of each day – or involving your family at team events – will help to support balance.

Given the expenses of seeking and hiring new coaches, retention of effective coaches clearly benefits administrators.  Strategies for administrators include:

• Evaluate the match.  Ensure the prospective coach is a good fit for the college/university/ school/club to reduce the likelihood of future problems.  Be honest about financial support and other resources so prospective coaches can make a decision about the position with relevant information.
• Encourage professional development.  Providing opportunities for coaches to attend workshops and conferences will enable them to continue learning and enhancing their competence and confidence.  Offering time and financial support are imperative to enable professional development.
• Provide feedback.  Celebrate coaches’ successes on a regular basis!  Coaches do not often receive the feedback or verbal persuasion that would ultimately enhance their self-efficacy (perception of ability to complete a task successfully).  With increased self-efficacy, coaches are more likely persist in times of difficulty.
• Consider the scheduling.  How can you best support work-life balance in relation to the scheduling of facilities and coaching obligations?  Does the scheduling allow for coaches to spend quality time with their families and take a break as needed?
• Employ mentoring.  Veteran coaches may revel in the opportunity to serve as mentors for novice coaches.  This is a win-win situation, as veteran coaches will feel empowered and valued, while new coaches have the chance to learn, grow, and receive feedback.

 

Frey, M. (2007). College coaches’ experiences with stress – “Problem solvers” have problems, too. The Sport Psychologist, 21, 38-57.

Judge, L. W., Kirkpatrick, K., Bolin, J., Blom, L. C., Dieringer, S., & Bellar, D. (2015). Understanding the occupational stress of collegiate track and field coaches during the championship season. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 10(5), 769-782.

 

Michelle Moosbrugger, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Physical Education and the Graduate Coordinator for the PEHE Department at Springfield College. The Springfield College Physical Education and Health Education Department offers master’s degree programs in Advanced-Level Coaching, Athletic Administration, Physical Education Initial Licensure, Adapted Physical Education, and Advanced Pedagogy.  Post-master’s programs include a Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study in Physical Education and a Ph.D. in Physical Education: Teaching and Administration.  With the Springfield College teacher-coach model, students in the Advanced Level Coaching program interact with experienced, highly successful coaches in the classroom and on the playing field.  The curriculum and embedded fieldwork aid coaches in developing leadership and administrative skills while improving athletic performance.  Recent graduates of the Advanced Level Coaching program are employed as head and assistant coaches in NCAA Division I, II, and III institutions.  For more information on any of the graduate programs, please contact Michelle Moosbrugger at mmoosbrugger@springfieldcollege.edu

Do Your Personal Goals Take a Back Seat to Coaching? Here are 12 ways to help you carve out more time in you busy schedule.

This post was provided by Busy.Coach

By Mandy Green

Carving out time in our busy schedules to accomplish things outside of our coaching lives isn’t easy. After all, we coaches are all too versed in the multi-role lifestyle. We’re coaches, we’re significant others, we’re parents, we’re colleagues, and we’re friends.

Whatever your goals are outside of coaching–starting a coaching blog, running a 5K, losing 10 lbs, and so on–if you’re not working toward achieving them, you probably have a long list of excuses which purportedly explain why you’re still in stand-by mode. And lack of time because of your coaching job is very likely to be at the top of that list.

Coach, do you sometimes feel like you are “sacrificing” your work for personal goals?

I found this definition of sacrifice: “to give up something for something else considered more important.”

If what I am saying rings true for you, you need to stop using a lack of time as an excuse and start making the time to pursue what you want. But how do you find time when you’re incredibly busy?

Below you’ll find 12 ways to make time to achieve your goals.  Obviously, there are more but I just wanted to give you a few ideas to get started.

1. Can you spend less time in front of the TV or playing games (sorry Chris Logan J?
2. Can you enroll the kids in an after-school program to give yourself after-work hours to work on you and your goals?
3. Go to bed at the same time as your kids so you can get up earlier.
4. Go to bed forty minutes later and work on your goals at night.
5. Use Your Lunch Hour.
6. Use Your Commute.
7. Block out the time for when you are going to work on your goal. By scheduling time to work on your goal, you know exactly when you’ll be working on it, instead of just leaving it up to chance.
8. Use Scraps of Time. Keep in mind that you don’t necessarily need to have a large chunk of time to work on your goals. If all you can carve out are fifteen minutes here and there throughout the day, use that time.
9. Can you negotiate with your employer that you’ll work longer hours Monday to Thursday, and then take Fridays off?
10. Work On Your Psychological Discipline. Keep in mind that making time to work on your goals is, to a large extent, about psychological discipline. A lot of the reasons that we use to explain why we don’t have time to work on our goals are just excuses that we’re using to avoid the hard work of writing, exercising, learning a new skill, and so on.
11. It’s not so much about how much time you have to work on your goals, as it is about the quality of your goal-achievement time. That is, when you’re working on your goals, are you completely focused on the task, or are you trying to answer emails and catch up on Twitter as you write? Work on your goals with laser-like focus.
12. Give Yourself Permission to Work on Your Goals. When the world around us is swirling in chaos, we often feel that taking the time to work on our goals is a luxury that we can’t indulge in at the moment. However, working on your dreams isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. Write yourself a permission slip if you need to; but get to work on your goals.

No matter what goals or aspirations you might have, no doubt there is at least some form of sacrifice required for progress. And the only person who can determine whether or not it’s worthwhile is YOU.

So I encourage you to look at what’s really important. When you are making a decision between your personal and work goals, carefully evaluate the risks and rewards. What will be left behind? What will take its place? What do you really want, and what are you willing to give up in return? What price are you willing to pay? And how much is too much?

These aren’t easy questions. They force you to look at the whole picture and how your career impacts other areas of life. It’s not just about the money, or the title, or the lifestyle. It’s about ALL of these things and what they mean as a whole—to you, your family, and your future.

Coaching is a rewarding profession. Coaching is a tough profession. It takes a lot of hard work to work your way from rookie to successful head coach. In the process most of us pass through these 5 Stages in our careers.

The following post was written by Coach Dawn Redd-Kelly and originally published on her coaching blog, Coach Dawn Writes

Let me tell you what I think about coaches: we’re crazy in our preparation and dedication, we work long hours and love it, we give up our nights and weekends, we mentor our student-athletes, we demand big things from them and even more from ourselves, we’re passionate in our belief in our team and our love for our sport, we believe in the power of sport to have a positive and long-lasting impact in our athlete’s lives.  So when I saw “The 5 Stages of Your Career” over at Bob Starkey’s blog, I wanted to expand on it over here.  It’s interesting to figure out what stage you’re in and those that you’ve already gone through…or have you circled back around to some you thought you were finished with?  Check them out and see what you think.

The 5 Stages of Your Career

1.       Survival: Don’t Know What You Don’t Know
Coaches, you remember what this stage felt like don’t you?   Or maybe you’re in the middle of this stage now and feel like you’re flailing.  I remember being beyond clueless…that’s back when I thought I just needed to know volleyball to be a volleyball coach!  Turns out also I needed to formulate a recruiting plan, balance a budget, create practice plans, order equipment, manage assistant coaches, and make in-game adjustments.  Color me unprepared, but thank goodness for a veteran coach who took me under his wing.

2.       Striving for Success: You Want Folks to Recognize You Can Coach
Your motivation?  Winning, plain and simple.  You’re obsessed with conquering the competition and put in hours and hours of your time to make it happen.  Being the best is what drives you and to be the best, you need the tangible accolades that go along with that:  lots of W’s in the win column, all-league awards for your team, and maybe a coach of the year for you.

3.       Satisfaction: You Relax, Set Another Goal, & Want To Get Better
Now that you’ve achieved a few of your goals, you can relax and know that you’re a good coach and you have the respect of your peers.  You attend conferences to network and visit with old friends as much as you do to learn some new things…you’re getting established.  Each year you set new goals to accomplish that will push you and your team forward…you’re focused.

4.       Significance: Changing Lives For The Good
At this stage you’re more concerned with how you impact your teams and your legacy than you are with personal glory…after all, you’ve already accomplished a lot.  Now you want to make sure your teams understand the value of sport and hope that you’re teaching them how to be better people, not just better players.  With all of your experience and years in the game, you’re very knowledgeable.  And because of the success you’ve had in your career, this is the stage where people solicit your opinion and ask for your help with their coaching conundrums.

5.       Spent: No Juice Left, Can’t Do It Any More
The busses, the trips, preseason, recruiting, the hustle, the grind…you’re over it.  You’re ready to hang with the family and actually make it home before nine o’clock at night.  And your weekends?  You want them back.  Not even the prospect of that super sweet and talented recruiting class that you just brought in is enough to bring you back into the fold.  As much as you love your sport, you’re just not that fired up about the season this year…it’s time to hang it up.

So what stage are YOU at?

 

Coach Dawn Redd-Kelly has authored a book on motivating females athletes. Many coaches have found this book to be helpful in coaching females in their program

Are you tired of walking into practice and seeing lackluster effort from your players?  Have you had it with trying to get your female athletes to care about the team as much as you do??

Click here to find out more about Coach Dawn’s eBook: Motivating Female Athletes

Comes with a FREE PowerPoint presentation called Guarantee Your Success: Using John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success To Increase Your Team’s Cohesion.