Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Leadership


Developing Leadership

First, read the book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't by Jim Collins. It tells how to go from a good corporation to a great one and much of it can be applied to teams and clubs as well. I believe what separates any good organization from a great one is the leadership. The coaches of the Tampa Bay Lightning had their team read the book before they won the Stanley Cup. Yes, it's Hockey and we are talking Wrestling but leadership skills generalize fairly well across sports.

For the most part leadership is the hierarchy that evolves in a community. You need to understand that you want to first develop a community. Build a feeling of belonging and then build a sense of responsibility to the community. For more on this read the article Team = Family. You also want to influence how the community builds. Make it a good one.

Emphasize the wrestler's responsibility to a community. You will have athletes with losing records. A lot of people would not want that in their team (I would love to avoid it) but the reality is we are not all going to be Cael Sanderson. The thing is that the guys that aren't winning the state titles have to put in to the collective effort it will take for your fourteen starters to get there. Let them know that you expect everyone to work hard and push each other and that if they do anything dumb they will be putting a black mark on the team. Look at the situation at Duke. Those guys may very well be innocent but they have put a black mark on the team's record that will be there for many years. The simple way for them to have avoided it was to be more responsible as a team and not have gotten into that situation. Especially, in season.

It starts at the top ­ The head coach does not have to be physically or mentally organized as much as his delegation needs to be. If he can set a model using a management hierarchy and stick to that then he can be scatter brained with things as long as he simply ensures that the tasks he delegated down get done. In college wrestling we are seeing staffs built not just on wresting ability anymore but on management and I think that it is great. The head coach gets the athletes the resources they need and then it works down the ladder. Just like a business.

Always build the guys up. There are enough people and influences telling teenage boys that they are bad and wrong. Trust in yourself as a coach that you can develop them into leaders and be positive about it.

Reward initiative ­ A big part of being a leader is simply stepping up and taking responsibility for something or asking for it. If a kid comes in and starts mopping the mats when no one told him to that is initiative. If an athlete gets a group together to do some extra workouts that is initiative.

Get the athletes to spend time together. You want to create a community. If all of your athletes are only together for two hours two times a week then they are just a team. It is when they start to spend time out together that they become a community. As a coach you can get some parents together and set up a structure of good activities for them to do (Community Service, Rafting Trips, Bowling, Etc.). Be careful here though because there is good leadership and bad and if you don't keep an eye on it there is a chance that negative leadership could become an issue for you.

Figure out what kind of leaders you want and need and talk to them about it. The Marines create great leaders year after year. More Marines are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies then Ivy League MBAs. The Marines have the core values that they believe are common to all marines and as part of boot camp they sit down and they talk about what the values mean as a soldier and as a person. If you want them to be leaders you need to generalize it off of the wrestling mats. To many times the best athletes become captains and the wrestlers follow them balance that with the ones that have taken on responsibility and handled it well. I think that a lot of wrestling teams develop hierarchies like gangs where the toughest kids are the ones that become leaders. There are many great wrestlers that do not make great leaders. Just because you can win a match does not mean people should follow you. A leader has to be able to manage others and himself. If you simply want the tough wrestlers to thump the weaker ones when they don't wrestle up to potential then I don't think you will see a lot of change. If you want the better wrestlers to get on the younger ones, show them what they did wrong and help bring them up to their level then you will see improvement. But at 17 years old I didn't know what it meant to be a leader besides setting an example and that is not even half of it.

Find a Low Ropes course and get your guys out there. These activities like Leadershape are something that colleges are turning to in order to develop leaders and it would give your guys an advantage at the next level. I think that alone would be worth it.

Invite some local leaders (Elected officials, Principles, Business Leaders, Military, etc.) to talk to your team. Banquets and summer picnics are great for this. Talk to your speaker about what you want and then ask them to relate that to the leadership they use in their lives and go from there.

Read some books on leadership styles and then help your athletes to understand how they are developing as leaders. Some people are great leaders when their backs are against the wall and then horrible when things are going well. The corporate world has a set of CEO's that are known as turn around artists and they go from bankrupt company to bankrupt company slashing coasts and saving them from defaulting there are other CEOs that run companies that we have never heard of some are flashy, some are humble. Sam Walton, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, and Warren Buffet are all effective leaders and they all have different styles.

Delegate, delegate, delegate ­ When you start to recognize who your leaders are becoming start to give them something to do. Any community has leaders and they can be good leaders or bad leaders. Don't let their hands go idle. Make a list of chores and tell your captains to make a plan to get it done. Make it clear that they shouldn't do it all themselves and make it clear that they shouldn't dump it on the freshmen. When they get it done look it over give them feedback and if it is not what you are looking for then have them do it over. I have a boss and if he does not like my work he lets me know and I make the changes that incorporate what he is looking for. That is another part of leadership Following.

My final suggestion is just to pay attention to the community. If you the coaches set high expectations and then hold your athletes to that standard you will get great things done. If you can build a supportive community where the athletes are working toward common goals that don't include negative things the leadership will come out naturally and you will just have to guide it to being the leadership you need. I am of the opinion that leadership is making sure that the ones below you are taken care of and people respect the leaders that will get their hands dirty. Get in there and erase the lines between the coaches and the athletes, have some fun, and build your team up. If you go in and crack skulls and you look for your leaders to do the same you are going to chase away athletes that in four years could have made a huge impact on your team. Build a community where leadership means that the good wrestlers work to bring the lower guys to their level and the lesser wrestlers work to push the great wrestlers to get even better.

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