If a team is a reflection of its head coach, then the Cal men’s basketball team is in great hands.

Smart. Steady. Calm under pressure. Professional. These are just a few of the characteristics I’d use to describe Cal head coach Mike Montgomery.

He has certainly put his mark on the program in his first two seasons as the Golden Bears head coach.  I was one of the fortunate ones crammed into Haas Pavilion on Saturday to watch the Montgomery led bears end a 50-year wait for a Pac-10 title.  It was awesome.

As much as I enjoyed the game itself, I found my self studying Coach Montgomery and taking mental notes.  What was the difference?  What did Mike’s crew bring to the party to turn things around is such a short time?

Now, I don’t know and “X” from an “O” when it comes to basketball strategy.  But I do have a keen eye when it comes to coaching in general.  Here are my observations:

• Coach Montgomery sits most of the time vs pacing the sidelines
• He appears poised and in control to his players and the fans
• He talks calmly to his assistant coaches and his athletes
• When Coach Montgomery does rise to his feet and raise his voice – he does so with purpose, poise and passion.
• He uses “trigger words” and signals to get his point across rather than shouting a long unintelligible monologue that no one can hear.
• Finally, he let’s his players play through their mistakes and cold spells vs yanking them off the floor at the first sign of trouble.

So it’s basically the same players yet a drastically different result.  And what does that tell me?  It takes good to great “horses” to win yet it takes good to great coaching to win championships.

Successful coaches are passionate about mastering their craft – not just the Xʼs and Oʼs of their sport. Sport specific knowledge is important, yet it doesnʼt separate average coaches from great coaches. There are a lot of brilliant people in every sport who canʼt coach a lick.

Great coaches realize that there is so much more to their craft. They study and understand group dynamics, motivation, personal growth, goals, communication and so forth.  They love the game, they love learning about the game and this feeds how they teach the game.

Check out this excerpt from a recent article about Jim Caldwell, first year head coach of the Super Bowl bound Indianapolis Colts.

A book-strewn table in Caldwell’s office is testimony to his intellectual energy and insatiable curiosity.

“The Drunkard’s Walk” is one of the titles. It’s physicist Leonard Mlodinow’s plain-speaking examination of probability theory and random events and their impact on human existence, from physics to football.

Another is the Bible. This is the one for which Caldwell reaches first after arriving at the Colts’ Northwestside complex, usually between 5 and 6 a.m. What he reads is grist for meditation during the pre-dawn run that comes next, weather be darned.

“Exalt thyself and be humbled, or humble thyself and be exalted,” he might say in a team meeting a few hours later. Or perhaps, “Talent beats hard work only if talent works hard.”

Said safety Jamie Silva, “I bring a pen and pad into our team meetings and write down the things he says. Somebody could write a book if they followed him around for a while.”

Caldwell’s curiosity didn’t arise with his appointment as an NFL head coach. It was evident throughout the 32-year apprenticeship that brought him to that position.

As an obscure young assistant coach at Southern Illinois, he began writing letters to college head coaches, anyone who did something unusual, especially if they did it unusually well. Caldwell typed his question at the top of a sheet, left space for a scrawled answer and included a stamped, self-addressed envelope.

Bear Bryant answered. So did Tom Osborne, and a legion of others.

Caldwell sought, studied, sorted, absorbed. He came to believe that speed is crucial, particularly at this time of year, when fatigue is prevalent and a step or two can be decisive.

For nearly a third of a century, he took notes on every meeting conducted or talk given by the half-dozen head coaches under whom he worked. The notebooks, about 50 of them, fill a shelf in his office and box on box in a storage facility in Winston-Salem, N.C., where he maintains a home.

No wonder then, Colts defensive Robert Mathis would say: “A first-year head coach just coming in, he’s about the most prepared a guy could ever be. He’s on top of everything.”

That’s a good thing, because his players were watching.

“When you’re dealing with a guy like Tony Dungy, which is the highest of the highs, and then you have a new coach come in, you’ve almost got to have a drop-off,” linebacker Clint Session said. “We did not have a drop-off.”

Source: Phil Richards, IndyStar.com, 1-22-10

I’ve found this same theme in each of the interviews I’ve conducted for Inside World Class Coaching.  The five coaches who combined have won over 35 National Titles – time to hit the books!

I recently had the chance to spend an evening listening to legendary football coach, Lou Holtz.  Ok, so there were about 2,000 people in the room – I still felt like Lou was talking directly to me.

I’d never given much thought to the skinny, bespectacled coach before that night.  Yet Lou Holtz, the only coach in the history of college football to lead six different teams to bowl games, made a lasting impression on me that night.

Here are some of the insights that will stay with me:

• “Coaching is coaching.  You get to help other people be successful. That lasts a lifetime.”
• “Being a coach is a chance to be significant in life.”
• The title “coach” comes from above (the administration); the title “leader” comes from below (your players).
• A coach (in any sport) needs four things to be successful:
  1. A vision for the program.
  2. A plan to achieve the vision.
  3. To lead by example everyday.
  4. To hold people accountable.

• When his son Skip asked his dad about what to say to a new team for the first time, Coach responded, “You tell them that you come here to become us. We are not here to become you. And that’s based on five assumptions I make about every player I’ve ever coached:
  1. You want to graduate;
  2. You want to be a champion;
  3. You want to be a great performer;
  4. You want to have respect for your teammates;
  5. And you want to contribute positively as a member of our society.”

• He told an incredible story about the importance of trust on a team.  On his South Carolina team that went 0-11 in his first year, he quipped, “Records can be deceiving. We weren’t as good as our record indicated.” It was a difficult year, he admitted, one in which his wife had major cancer surgery for the second time, his son fell into a coma and his mother died.

The next year, Coach learned that two former players from that 0-11 team were arrested for selling drugs.

“I was so mad because I wanted to know why those players didn’t trust me,” Holtz said. “Nobody said anything. And then Jonathan Martin stood up and said, ‘Coach, I trust you. A lot of my teammates trust you. But I look around and see some people I don’t trust.’  And then Andre Dixon said, ‘I’ve got to lock my locker when I take a shower.’

He told them to go home, make three columns on a piece of paper and write down the following:

1.    Things I don’t like about myself that I can’t change,

2.    Things I don’t like about myself that I can change and

3.    Everything I did last year I regret.

Coach ordered a tombstone and met with the team the next day. The entire team buried those papers. “We made the commitment that we would trust our teammates, on the field and off the field”, Holtz recalled.

That South Carolina team would go on to post the third-best single-season turnaround in college football history, going 8-4 in Holtz’s second season and defeating vaunted Ohio State in the Outback Bowl.

Yes, looks can be deceiving.  I never thought I’d glean so much from a short, skinny man in glasses!

I love this time of year for a reflection on what passed and what’s to come.

Here are some questions to help you review 2009 and set goals for 2010. These are also great questions for your team to discuss when they return from break!

COMPLETING THE OLD YEAR:

1. What was your biggest triumph in 2009?

2. What was the smartest decision you made in 2009?

3. What was the greatest lesson you learned in 2009?

4. What is your biggest piece of unfinished business in 2009?

5. What are you most happy about completing in 2009?

6. Who were the three people that had the greatest impact on your life in 2009?

7. What was the biggest risk you took in 2009?

8. What was the biggest surprise in 2009?

9. What important relationship improved the most in 2009?

10. What else do you need to do or say to be complete with 2009?

CREATING THE NEW YEAR

1. What would you like to be your biggest triumph in 2010?

2. What advice would you like to give yourself in 2010?

3. What is the major effort you are planning to improve your results in 2010?

4. What would you be most happy about completing in 2010?

5. What would you most like to change about yourself in 2010?

6. What are you looking forward to learning in 2010?

7. What compliment would you like to receive in 2010?

8. What do you think your biggest risk will be in 2010?

9. What brings you the most joy and how are you going to do or have more of that in 2010?

10. What one word would you like to have as your theme in 2010?

This week we feature Dave O’Neill, Head Coach for the top ranked California Women’s Crew Team. Dave shares his best team culture building tips in 7 minutes or less! This is MUST see advice that you don’t want to miss!