Dan Tudor

by Mandy Green, Selling for Coaches

When coaches are deciding who they should offer a roster spot or even a scholarship to, intuition and gut feelings can play a major role in the decision making process for many important things, including identifying potential leaders out of several players they may be recruiting. They all may appear to be equally talented and qualified and to choose the best fit for your program can be a daunting task. The choice you make can have a lasting impact on the success of your program.

For your program to continue to grow and be successful, you need leaders on your team. Coach, I am writing this article in an effort to help you fully understand the difference between those who are great players and those who are great leaders of players.

Effective leaders within your program have the vision to see what needs to be done, are not afraid to take action, will hold their teammates accountable, and will motivate and energize their teammates to perform to their potential. Having strong leadership within your team in place, you’ll find it much easier to build a strong, respected and prosperous program.

Identifying recruits with leadership potential is not always easy. However, to ensure your programs continuing winning performance, you need to identify these people and nurture their leadership potential.  Its beginning to be a reoccuring theme at our SFC Recruiting Conferences because coaches know that it is important, yet lack some of the necessary skills to accurately identify that potential in athletes.   

Leaders aren’t necessarily the high performers – they may not demonstrate the greatest technical skill in your sport or even be a starter. High-potential leaders are often the people who want more and do more. They’re the ones who embrace changes and try to help others. They make your program better in terms of performance and culture.

So, how do you identify those recruits who potentially have what it takes to lead others?

It’s common for college coaches to label high achievers as potential leaders. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple: If players perform well, that really only shows that they’re well suited to their sport.

Let’s look at two examples:

• Gina, is a very good point guard. Her teammates admire the work she does on the court, and it’s very likely she’ll be one of the most highly recruited point guards in the country because of her vision of the court and defending ability. However, she is very quiet and leads by her actions.
• Natalie is an above average point guard but not necessarily extraordinary. What stands out is that she has forged great relationships with every single player on her team. Because of this, whenever coaches feel a change needs to occur within the team, the coaches count on her to see the benefits and motivate her teammates to accept them.

Who is the real leader?
 
Chances are that Natalie is a more promising leader than Gina. You won’t know, though, until you look a lot deeper and observe many more behaviors both on and off the court. What’s clear from the start is that player performance, by itself, is not a reliable indicator of real leadership potential.  In working with college programs to help build strong team-building initiatives for our clients, I see this mistake being made by coaches on a regular basis when we start work with a college.

I believe that most every athlete can develop leadership qualities, but some recruits may already be more advanced in their ability to do well in leadership roles.  It’s up to you, Coach, to make the right call and identify the right players as soon as possible. 

There are six identifiable behaviors that will usually tell you if one of your athletes has this high leadership potential. For SFC Premium Members, I’ll be telling you about these six traits, and give you 34 questions to help you identify them.  You can look for these personal attributes in the players that you are recruiting, as well as those members of your current squad.  If you aren’t a Premium Member yet, sign-up before this Thursday.

And, if you want help in identifying the characteristics and traits of your current players – on and off the court – you can now use the same psychological reports that the NFL and Major League Baseball use to evaluate their prospects before they select them in the draft.  They are turning into a reliable barometer for college coaches to use in quickly and accurately identifying how their team will perform, as well as who the leaders (and followers) will be.  Click here to learn more.

by Mandy Green, SFC Recruiting Solutions Consultant

Coaches who successfully recruit players use their leadership development program as a tool to draw in high-potential recruits that otherwise would go to another program.

Why?  Because most high-level recruits understand that they need to develop great leadership skills to be the best college player they can be, and to be successful after college. 

An even more important question: Do you have an established leadership development plan? 

If so, you should sell your leadership training program to recruits by telling them (and showing them) how invested you are in helping them develop as a leader. Recruits that are keenly aware of the importance of self-development will be impressed that you want to make an investment in them.

Don’t have a leadership development plan?  Here four suggestions for getting one started.

1.  Evaluate what you already have in place.  Make a list of what you what you have been doing and what you would like to be doing.  What worked well?  What needs to be changed? 

2.  Develop your definition of leadership. Spend some time thinking about what leadership means to you and what it might look like in your program. With this definition in mind, you are ready to communicate your expectations to those who may be ready to lead.

3. After you’ve defined your leadership expectations, you need to demonstrate these qualities in your daily decisions and interactions. Modeling the leader behaviors that you want to see in others has a dramatic effect on your program by shaping its culture. Demonstrating the leadership values and behavior you believe in lets people know that you take your leadership role seriously and that you have high standards for leaders. Your prospective leaders will take their cues from you when they see you set challenging goals, deal effectively with failure and adversity, respond quickly to opportunities, guide the team through tough problems, or sensitively deal with an upset player.

4. Develop an outline for how you are going to develop your leaders. A mistake a lot of coaches make is that we talk about the need for leadership but don’t teach people how to do it.  Don’t assume your team has the skills needed to be a good leader.  Make a list of the skills needed on your team, then map out a plan for how and when you are going to teach and develop each skill.   

Once you have formed an outline of how you want to develop your leaders and what "success" looks like, you must start implementing the program within your team. Keep in mind that leadership development takes time, patience, and persistence. 

Author Jeff Janssen, in his book The Team Captain’s Leadership Manual, says that effective team leaders impact the most important areas you hold near and dear as a coach: Your success, sanity, satisfaction, and significance. 

Developing the leaders on your team will not only create a more successful culture within your program, it will also establish an environment that will attract future leaders in your upcoming recruiting classes. 

Mandy Green is an experienced college coach who is an expert in sports psychology strategies and team development techniques.  SFC has developed a special one-day training course for college coaches and their current athletes that focuses on team leadership development and using your team to effectively recruit athletes during on-campus visits.  To find out more about this new on-campus workshop for coaches, email her at mandy@sellingforcoaches.com.