The question coaches ask a lot is “How can I motivate my players?” The answer to this is twofold. First, it’s time that coaches STOP TRYING to motivate their players and start helping athletes CONNECT to their own motivation. Second, when coaches foster the right mindset, a growth mindset, in their athletes, then commitment and motivation will automatically show up without having to force it.
I’ve read Carol Dweck’s book Mindset: The New Psychology for Success and I recently participated in a talk she gave to Positive Coaching Alliance trainers. Dweck’s research on fixed mindset and growth mindset is essential for every coach to understand. To summarize, a fixed mindset reflects a belief that talent is inherent and cannot be altered—meaning we have fixed abilities, be they athletic, academic, artistic, musical, etc. A growth mindset involves a belief that you can develop talent—that talent is not fixed. Typically athletes with a fixed mindset tend to fear real challenges. Competition is seen as a threat as it “measures” an innate ability that they are powerless to change.
On the other hand, athletes with a growth mindset welcome challenge. Effort, learning and confronting mistakes is inherent in their framework. Someone else’s growth and improvement presents an opportunity and not a threat. They are empowered by the belief that they can work hard every day to develop their talents and maximize their own potential. Losing is an opportunity to learn and is therefore not a failure at all.
What does all this mean for coaches? How can we make sure our athletes remain learners with a growth mindset? Here are a few ideas:
- Watch your language! Our words tell our athletes what we believe and what we value. Praise effort, persistence in the face of set backs, learning, improving, strategy, choosing a difficult task, focus, overcoming obstacles etc.
- Present your staff as mentors in your athletes learning process
- Learn, teach and talk about how the brain works. Let your athletes know that effort and learning increase the number of neurological connections in their brain. This is what makes them better, smarter. Check out Dr. Dweck’s site www.brainology.us – she calls it “the owner’s manual for the brain.”
- Read Dr. Dweck’s book Mindset: The New Psychology for Success.
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Unfortunately, button pushers get a bad rap. They’re considered rude, inconsiderate, disrespectful, intrusive, self-absorbed and insensitive. They are the difficult people in life. Teachers send them to the principals office, coaches pull their hair out and bosses fire them.
I see it differently. I believe my job as a coach, partner and a parent is to push buttons and to welcome my buttons being pushed. Why? I’ve found that the best at anything – sports, public speaking, sales or surgery, have the fewest buttons and the ones they have are really hard to find.
Attempting to protect athletes or ourselves from button pushers is to do them (and you) a disservice. Our competitors are all about to pushing our buttons. The more buttons we discover within ourselves and the more we learn how to manage them, the better we will be under pressure.
So how do you know a button has been pushed? Here are some classic signs:
- Getting angry and upset at someone’s behavior.
- Feeling annoyed by something.
- Feeling taken advantage of
- Being rebuffed, spurned, made fun of or humiliated
- Feeling unappreciated, unimportant or devalued
- Feeling falsely or unfairly accused
Typically when one of our buttons get pushed it send us down an unwelcome path of anger, hurt or withdrawal. Unfortunately these patterns do not allow us to learn about ourselves. Remember, when a button gets pushed – you’ve just discovered another area for growth. So instead of reacting when a button gets pushed, stop, breathe and reflect. Stay calm – do not get angry or yell. Cool off before you say anything.
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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.
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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!
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We can get so consumed with our sport that we forget to have fun. Even before we reach high school, many of us are taught to repress fun as we go about the serious 
business of scholastic sports. Yet the physiology of fun is a close profile to the “zone.”
Laughter, humor, and play are powerful forms of recovery. They enable you to move almost effortlessly from negativity into a positive energy state.
Laughter is a natural breathing technique, and it has a cleansing and revitalizing effect as well. It originates in the solar plexus, the seat of bodily energy. Laughter alternatively relaxes and tightens your muscles and leaves them in a state of relaxation. It releases endorphins, which cause euphoria and reduce pain. Increasing evidence suggest that laughter is good medicine for both the body and the mind.
Here’s a great exercise for you and your athletes to kick off the New Year (& decade)
- Take a blank piece of paper and divide it into 4 columns
- Going left to right, name the columns as follows:
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- 2-5 minutes
- 5-30 minutes
- 30 minutes to ½ day
- ½ a day or more
- Jot down the things that are fun for you. Put them into the columns below according to the amount of time they take.
- Time how long it takes you to run out of ideas.
- Draw a line when you find the ideas are no longer coming quickly and you have to stop and think a while between ideas.
How many activities did you come up with? You might be interested to know that most busy adults run out of ideas after they’ve thought of 10-15. Ten year olds have easily generated 55 ideas in the same amount of time. How many could you think of quickly before having to really search for ideas?
Count up how many ideas you have in the first two columns and how many you have in the last two columns. Which is the larger number? What does this tell you about the problems you are having finding time for fun on a daily basis.
The last two columns give you ideas for your summer break. Continue to brainstorm ideas in the first two columns so you’ll have plenty to choose from this season.
Smile!
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