Five Leadership Tips for Coaches

1. Don’t just train your wrestlers. Train your assistants - Some coaches may not think about this, some may not want to teach someone all their secrets but if you don’t train your assistants you will never be on the same page. If you are not all pulling in the same direction you will not get to your goals as quickly or you may have some dissention in the ranks.

You also are not helping the sport or your assistants grow. So many coaches guard their secrets tightly but in the end that is not helping share the knowledge that helps people achieve their dreams. Let go of the ego and train your assistants to be able to be a head coach.

As Tom Ryan says in elite wrestling “If something happens to me they may need to step in at a moments notice” You may not be able to have each assistant have his hand into everything you do but if you have three you could have one assistant helping with administration, one with practice, and one with academics or however you want to delegate it.

2.) Realize that it all begins and ends with the coach -. You are the leader and the guys look to you to lead. If you win chances are you wont get as much credit as you feel you deserve, if you lose you will think you are getting more blame then you deserve, No matter what the situation is it is your job to figure out how to improve there.

This is not to say that institutional and other factors cannot affect your win / lose record. Some D1 teams have 9.9 scholarships, some have only 2. I would never expect a 2 scholarship team to be able to do what Minnesota does but if you are working hard and bringing in good people your team will improve and your guys will be better people for being on the team. As the famous sign on Harry Truman’s desk said “The Buck Stops Here”.

3.) Be available and visible – In some circles this is called management by walking around. What this means to a coach is a great deal different then to a CEO. An executive can hide behind his office walls but as a leader a coach needs to get out of the gym. He needs to build relationships with people outside of the athletic complex and he needs to be involved in the campus community on the other side of that you need to be visible to your athletes. Standing in a corner and yelling at a wrestler for something in practice is not as effective of taking the time to work with him and break down what is going on. If you yell in practice at a kid for not focusing it could be for hundreds of reasons. Find out why, maybe he is dealing with something like the death of a family member, maybe he is sick, and maybe he just needs pushed.

4.) Hold yourself to a high standard of conduct - Always remember you are in a position of trust. Parents, administrators, the community and others are trusting you with their children. There will be times when you will in effect act as the athlete’s guardian, advisor, and mentor. This is a very heavy responsibility, it does not mean that coaching is all business or fun but it does mean that you will need to hold yourself to a higher level of accountability.

5.) Don’t ask your wrestlers to do something you haven’t done or wouldn’t do. Over time you will not be able to do everything in practice that the athletes do. We all slow down a step. I painfully coming to this reality as training is harder for me now than it was 10 years ago. Small injuries that took no time to heal before are taking more time and there are times that I need to watch practice not participate. That is the reality of it but I have done it and I will roll with the guys as much as I can.

Woody Hayes has said that one of the greatest lessons he learned from his mother was that you don’t tell people to go somewhere, you meet them there. If you have study tables, move mats, anything along those lines a coach needs to be part of this. He may not have to stay all the time but he needs to “meet the athletes there” If you have a space where you can work on recruiting while you supervise I have found this is a great tool. If you are struggling for what to talk to the recruit about you have part of your program to talk about in front of you. You can talk about the guy’s majors, the work they are doing, the exciting things going on in the program. The key is if you want them to take things seriously and be there then you need to take them seriously and be there as well.