If you had a “magic wand” and could have your program look anyway you wanted, what would it look like?  This wand is special and designed to give you exactly what you want – so be specific!

I originally learned this concept as “begin with the end in mind” from Stephen Covey’s book the 7 Habits of Highly Successful People.”  Now that I have kids, it’s all about magic wands and super heros!

Life is constantly changing and challenging us.  Around every corner is yet another problem, issue or concern.  We often look backwards for a solution.  We ask, “How did I handle this situation before?  Will that work again?  How can I improve on what I did before?”  Unfortunately, this approach often gets us more of the same – just a slightly different flavor or color!

Remember – if you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you’ve always gotten!  Not sure where this came from yet it pretty much sums up sports psychology!

Time for the wand!  You can have exactly what you want.  Start to look at your program this way.  There are no limits.

Clarity of vision is crucial to team success.  Once you have a clear picture of what you want, then you can put together a plan for achieving it.  Spend some time now (in the off season) and get clear on what you want in your program.  Be specific.

Create what you want this season.  Be open minded.  Ask lots of questions – like “What else do I want?”  Breakthroughs come from questions not answers!

Once you are clear – share it with other.  The more you put your vision out there (to assistants, administrators, players, parents etc) the more real it becomes.

So speak your vision to anyone who will listen!

Success can be tough.  While UCLA Softball won its 11^th title in program history this week, the Arizona Wildcats, with 6 titles, finished runner up for the fifth time in it’s history.

I interviewed UA Coach Mike Candrea at the beginning of the season.  While his words inspired me, some of them haunted me.  Success is tough – it breeds expectations. Coach noted, “The expectations are very high. It’s a unique situation here because when we finish second, the College World Series people say, “What happened?” They don’t say, “Great job!” You’re not going to get a ticker-tape parade just because you got to the College World Series. That’s expected.”

With only two seniors and six freshmen on this year’s squad, Candrea had his work cut out for him despite the annual expectation of a national title.  It’s too bad runner up is not enough anymore.  One more win and the press coverage would have been different.  They would have splashed the Wildcat home page with photos and banners.  Instead, there’s no mention of the Cats title run.  Candrea put it in perspective, “It’s always tough to end the season on a losing note, but there’s many kids that dream of getting to the College World Series and getting to the championship series.”

It’s informative to go full circle and examine the foundation for another Championship season. Here are a few highlights from my interview with Coach Candrea:

Wake Up Call

I’ve always found that it’s much more effective to be tougher on kids early on and ease up on them than try to ease up on them and get tougher. My first meeting many times is a little bit of a wake-up call to the recruits because you’ve spent a few years recruiting them and filling their heads with all these good things about how great they are and how much they contribute. Then all of a sudden, reality sets in. You tell them, “Here are the expectations. If you don’t follow the expectations, here’s the door.”

I lay it on the line pretty well the first day about what the expectations of this program are and what I expect out of someone who puts on the Arizona uniform and represents this program, university and community.

A lot of it deals with the recruiting process and getting the right type of kids who understand the expectations here. Secondly, it’s a matter of whether you’re going to allow the tail to wag the dog or the dog’s going to wag the tail. I’ve always been a firm believer that discipline is the foundation for success.

Coaching Philosophy – The 3 C’s

The first one is being competent at what you do. One of the great parts of coaching is trying to get young kids to become students of the game. That’s something that I have always been in my life. Something that’s missing for young kids today is the desire to understand their sport inside out, forward and backward. Any good coach has to be competent at what they do because the players are the recipients of their hard work and efforts.

The second thing is that you need to be consistent in how you are as a person and your approach to things. I have a consistent approach and have our players are aware that my approach is one of our strengths.

The third and probably the most important thing is that you care about them as individuals. One thing I’ve found is that kids will forget about the X’s and O’s that you teach them, but 10 years from now, they’re going to remember whether you really cared about them as an individual and helped them grow, especially in the game of softball.

With a coaching philosophy deeply influenced by Taoism, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Deepak Chopra, Jim Sochor helped turn a mediocre UC football program into a Division II dynasty.

My first exposure to Coach Sochor came years ago through my work with Positive Coaching Alliance.  I was instantly smitten.  His presentation and presence captivated me.  When I started Inside World Class Coaching, Coach Sochor made the short list.

I recently had the privilege of interviewing Jim and walked away again in awe.  I now refer to him as the “Yoda of Coaching.” I kept muttering to myself: “This guy is a football coach, a very successful one.  I can’t believe he thinks like this.  Amazing!”

In 1970, when Coach Sochor took over as head coach, the team had not had a winning season for 22 years let alone won a championship since 1915. Under Sochor, UC Davis won 18 straight league championships, more than any other football program at any level in NCAA history.

“Everyone else was bigger, faster, stronger and more talented than our UC Davis players,” he said. “So we had to figure out how to best compete, and that was by believing in ourselves.”

Here are a few other insights from the “Yoda of Coaching”:

• I tried to make football fun and yet held every athlete accountable for his own actions. Negativity — “whining” or “scapegoating”  — and emotions like fear, anger, envy and doubt were to be avoided.
• I never once coached a game that I didn’t firmly believe we would win.
• We can program our state of minds – when you’re feeling good about yourself, you can do anything.
• I always talk up to my athletes. I’m very big on the positive aspects of coaching. Coaches should “gild their soliloquy” constantly; better your own self-talk, and raise your own level of expression and consciousness.
• Our power truly is inside ourselves – realizing this, we’re unstoppable.

To hear the entire interview go to www.InsideWorldClassCoaching.com

“The more you do on the front end, the fewer problems you’ll have on the back end.”  This is one of my all time favorite Jack Clark quotes.

California defeated BYU, 19-7, Saturday night at Steuber Rugby Stadium to win the 25th national championship in program history. The Golden Bears finished the year at 26-0, their first perfect season since 2002, refusing to allow BYU to repeat as champs in the two teams’ fifth straight meeting in the title match.

“There is a lot of trust and a lot of commitment,” Clark said. “Those are words that are used by people every day. When you’re on a sports team, those words become real. And each one of these boys lived up to their commitment.”

The road to Clark’s 21st title as Cal’s head coach started last fall.   I had the pleasure of interviewing Coach Clark in September as the inaugural guest of Inside World Class Coaching. Here are a few of the highlights from the “front end” of championship number 21:

First team meeting

Our objective is to give the individuals within the team, and then the team collectively, a roadmap for their success. We set out what the team rules are and what our expectations are of them individually and collectively. We establish how we operate, how the machinery works, how we communicate, what our values are, and that they’ll be asked to add to the team.

Program Values

1. We expect everyone to put the team first and themselves second.
2. We believe in constant performance improvement. We’re not very neurotic about winning games, but we’re pretty neurotic about getting better. We have an expectation that we’re going to get better, and we’re pretty upset if we don’t. We may never get to be great, but we will get better.
3. We believe in merit. The currency the players have and exchange within the team is based on what they’re doing in the moment and not what their potential is going forward or what they did last year. That’s the merit.  We want to create a meritocracy.

Defining Leadership

We say leadership is the ability to make those around you better and more productive. We don’t say that leadership is being a senior or the star player.

We’re not interested in a team where the minority leads the majority. We’re interested in a team where everyone feels the responsibility of contributing back to the middle and back to the leadership of the team.

Cal Rugby Brand

We’re successful. We do it right. We’re sportsmen, and we’re fair sportsmen. We don’t cheat. We respect the game, and we respect our opposition.

We’re student athletes. Our players typically go on to very substantial careers and are known as very successful men. We have a team GPA of over 3.0.

We’re not that satisfied. It’s pretty hard to win year after year and to be at the top of the medal stand year after year. You get there by having an attitude of, “Whatever talent level we have, we’re going to try to overachieve it, be competitive and get better.”

It’s kind of a sobering responsibility for the team every year. You’re walking onto a team that is known for that. What is your choice? Are you going to add to that brand or detract from it? It’s zero sum, really. It’s a conscious choice.

“Teamship” > Team Building

We don’t sit around a campfire to talk about it. That’s not our technique. It’s this whole idea of teamship and team building. How is it that you’re a good teammate? What are we trying to build together? It’s at the core of athletics. Our players are experts in it.

We talk about teamship and team building, who we want to become, and how we want to be thought of. We talk about it on Day 1, Day 2 and Day 9, and the first day and the last day of the year and every day in between. It’s never too far from our consciousness.

Antennae Up

My antenna is always up around teamship. I listen to how they talk to each other and the tone they use. If a player is out of step with our idea of teamship, I talk to them about it. I earn my paycheck. I bring them in. It’s very personal to me. I don’t want to lose anybody. It’s a failure to me to lose somebody. It’s a reflection of my work. I’m going to try my damnedest to not let that happen.

Am I willing to remove somebody from the team who just doesn’t follow our values? Yes, of course. You have to.

No matter how long we coach, no matter how much we grow as people, some of our athletes will still bug us!   I loved it when my athletes became juniors and seniors – they finally knew how best to deal with me.  The first few years were often an arduous training process on how to best interact with one another.

I am all about shortening the learning curve whenever possible.  In my recent Inside World Class Coaching interview with Cal swim coach Teri McKeever, I discovered a brilliant way to address our pet peeves with our athletes–tell them up front!  Coach McKeever is all about effective and efficient relationships with her athletes.  In order to avoid the headaches and lost time around reacting to things that drive her crazy, she simply tells her athletes up front what works and doesn’t work for her.

McKeever’s list isn’t right / wrong, good or bad.  It just is.  She’s been coaching long enough and worked on herself long enough that she simply knows what her pet peeves are AND that they are likely not going to change.  So instead of dealing with the frustration of training her swimmers how best to approach her, she simple tells them early on.

“Certain things bother me so it’s best if you learn it now.  If you want something from me here are the best ways to get it:”

Examples include:

• Be On Time!
• Help set up the pool
• Be warmed up and ready to go when practice starts.
• Don’t bring up an individual issue right at the beginning of practice.
• If you want an individual meeting, tell me in an email and let me know what it’s about so I can prepare.

Coach McKeever and her assistant  also hand out a sheet detailing who handles what.  It includes

• Equipment.  See assistant coach.  Don’t come to me if your paddle broke – see Kristen.
• Scholarship.  See me.  Don’t go to assistant to talk about your scholarship.
• Recruiting
• Travel

This way the athletes know who to go to for things AND they get to see in black and white that’s a lot more to coaching than just showing up for practice.

Ok coach, your turn.  Spend a few minutes writing out your “Pet Peeve” list or your “How to best get along with me list” and share it with your team.

Good Luck!