“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.

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Resilience is a key component of mental toughness. Stanford football Coach Jim Harbaugh embodies it and his team is following his lead – all the way to their first National Ranking since 2001.

Harbaugh honed his resiliency during his tenure as an NFL Pro Bowl quarterback – a time when he studied with Dr. Jim Loehr.

“As an NFL quarterback, my job was to perform under pressure. During the heat of battle in a big game, I often only had seconds to make critical decisions — and those decisions could win or lose games. Loehr’s training system helped me mentally and emotionally to make more game-winning decisions than ever.”

Loehr defines emotional resiliency as “the ability to take a punch emotionally and bounce back quickly, to recover quickly from disappointments, mistakes, and missed opportunities and jump back into battle fully ready to resume the fight.”

Now as a Head Coach, Harbaugh has instilled a winning attitude and resilient culture in which players expect to win week in and week out. Here’s what Harbaugh had to say after the Cardinal bounced back from two road defeats to beat ASU and rock 7th ranked Oregon:

“Our guys don’t quit. They never give up. You cannot kill them. You can’t demoralize them; they won’t go away. Now we have to be relentless. We must be the hunter. Eventually, we want to kill you. We need to make that next step to get up there with teams like USC.”

Training Tip: Balance the ups and the downs. Bad losses, slumps and sassed opportunities are all potential sources of stress. Help your team handle the stress by encouraging them to keep fun in their lives. Remind them to go to the movies, hang out with friends, shop, etc. This means you too, coach! Planning for the emotional ups is a critical step to coping with the inevitable “emotional downs” of competitive sports!

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Just got off the phone with one of my former athletes who’s now coaching.  She’s pulling her hair out!  Gossip is running rampant on her team.

A top killer of team development is gossip.  What is gossip?  It’s any third party conversation.  What’s that?  Basically it’s talking about someone when they’re not there – you’re talking about them instead of talking to them.

What’s wrong with a little gossip?  We all do it.  Celebrity gossip is a billion dollar industry!  Gossip distorts the facts, causes confusion, creates cliques and ultimately impacts team performance.

So what can you do as a coach?  First, refuse to participate.  When you hear an athlete gossiping, insists that they speak directly to the person they are talking about.  Have a “no gossip” rule on the team.  This means team members refuse to gossip or listen to gossip.

On high performance team, if someone hears something and wants to know more, they go directly to the source.  No one participates in any third party conversations – cause listening to gossip is just as harmful as speaking it!

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Everyone enjoys a witty teammate, but sarcasm often sabotages a team.

Witty wisecrackers may see their remarks as clever, but because the distinction between a joke and an insult can be nebulous, they can easily damage relationships with their one-liners.

Check out the where the word sarcasm comes from – “deriving from a Greek word meaning “to strip off the flesh,”.  I definitely recommend sharing this definition with your team.

Sarcasm is so prevalent in teen culture that I’m afraid that young athletes might be losing the ability to be sincere.

So what is a coach to do?

Since “you can’t do a don’t do”, just telling them to stop will not be very effective.   I suggest introducing them to a new habit – acknowledgement, it’s a primary fuel folks run on.  Start by modeling acknowledgement for your players.  It’s not manipulation. Acknowledgement is about letting people know you’re paying attention to them.

If you want your players to acknowledge each other, start by acknowledging them on a regular basis.  Make sure what you say is truthful and specific – do not “blow smoke” – that’s manipulation.  When giving acknowledgement, speak in the first person.  Talk to them, not about them!

NOTE:  Since we usually reserve our acknowledgement for big results, be sure to notice the small stuff as well.

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I just got back from delivering 4 Positive Coaching Alliance workshops for the town of Sisters Oregon. The leaders are up to big things for a small town (pop . 1750). The goal is to a youth sports “council” comprised of members from community sport groups.

I met with coaches, community leaders, athletes and parents. On the way home, it hit me that an important piece in developing a culture or “the way we do things here”, is to create a written code. I’ve worked a bit with Blair Singer, author of The ABC’s of Building a Business Team That Wins: The Invisible Code of Honor That Takes Ordinary People and Turns Them Into a Championship Team.

A Code of Honor is a set of simple, powerful rules that govern the internal behaviors of any team, organization, family, individual and even a nation, Singer says. “These rules determine how individuals behave toward one another within the team. They are what people are willing to stand for, defend and be accountable for.”

Last fall I spent a weekend working with the Cal Women’s tennis team and incorporated Singer’s idea of a Code of Honor. Here’s what we did:

1. Worked as a team. Everyone had to participate and everyone had to agree on the point in the code.

2. First we looked for recurring behavioral patterns that posed a problem to the performance of the team i.e being late, blaming etc.

3. We then talked about the various incidents and how it impacted the team both positively and negatively. Players talk about how they felt.

4. Once we agreed upon one element of the code, we wrote it into a statement for example, “We keep all time agreements”.

5. We were careful not to “legislate mood” (especially important with women) by saying “Always be optimistic”. Instead we stated, “If you have something good to say, say it. If you have something negative to say, best to deal with it privately and not dump it on the group”.

6. We kept the list to maximum of ten items.

Here are a few other examples:
Pattern to Eliminate:  Pointing finger No blame and justification.

Code:  We all take Personal responsibility for our actions.

Pattern to Eliminate:  Arguments

Code:  Never leave an argument for tomorrow.

Pattern to Eliminate:Take things for granted

Code:  Celebrate all wins!

FYI – the team went on to the NCAA finals!

Good Luck!

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