by Mandy Brettingen, Coaching Development Specialist
Those that get into coaching are generally prepared to handle the fundamental game strategies, the “X’s and O’s” of the sport. And, they usually have a natural desire to become better recruiters since so much of their job depends on their ability to sign solid prospects.
But these same college coaches are often blind-sided by demands made on them from managing,
building, and training their current team, recruiting their future team, managing their staff, dealing with their administration, game day preparations and executions, fundraising, and administrative duties. These day-to-day challenges can frustrate even the most experienced college coaches and cause almost every sports leader to wonder whether guiding a team is worth all of the extra headaches.
Every coach that I know, including myself, spends almost every minute of every day worrying about taking care of every detail of their program, and tend to neglect the most important part of the equation: Themselves.
A vital step in managing your college coaching career is getting to know yourself. This is true whether you’re just beginning your career, established in one but wishing you could change in some way, or happy where you are but still wanting to improve certain aspects of your situation.
Stop worrying about all of the other stuff that has to get done for a second. Sit down, close the door, and try to develop a better understanding of yourself-your values, your tendencies and your methods of operation as a coach. Self-knowledge is the foundation on which successful coaches build their careers. Without a strong sense of who you are, both as a person and a coach, your chances of staying in the game are slim at best.
In other words, to define and navigate your coaching career path, you need to identify three main qualities about yourself:
1. Your most passionate core coaching interests. What about coaching do you like and not like? What do you like or not like about Recruiting? Team building? Team management? Administration? Game day? Etc.
2. Your deepest coaching values. Values are the things that we’re most naturally drawn to and they form the basis of how you approach your life. When you define your values, you have something concrete to check-in with when making decisions and setting priorities. When we live and coach according to our values, it doesn’t feel like hard work. It’s much more fulfilling. Defining your values is an ongoing process and you may find that over time they change slightly or their importance alters.
3. Your strongest skills. Each one of us has our own unique set of talents. If developed consciously, these talents can become our greatest strengths, and propel us to new levels of success in life and coaching. However, the most common mistake we coaches make is focusing on the development of our weaknesses, rather than on the development of our talents. Why not become more of who you already are?
How do you go about identifying your core coaching interests, values, and skills? You have four sources of information to which you can turn to begin this clarification process:
• You
• Your colleagues, friends, and family
• Your team
• Assessments
Look inward by blogging or journaling – To use yourself as an information source, look deep within yourself to identify key themes. The blog can be a place where you can record in writing or drawings the personal knowledge that you are gaining about yourself as a coach, your philosophy, your values, and any other factors. It is beneficial to get these thoughts and feelings about yourself and about your coaching ability out in some way so they don’t build up and contribute to unproductive thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Self-reflection will allow you to engage in self-evaluation to reflect on, evaluate, and alter their own thought processes and experiences and from there will be identify areas that may need to be changed.
Consult your friends, family, and colleagues -The people who know you best often become excellent sources of information about your work interests, values, and abilities. If you are too shy to ask them in person, send them an email. Collect all the responses and look for common themes. These themes will provide clues to your interests, values, and skills.
Your team – Asking your team to give feedback about you as a coach accomplishes two things. One, you gain valuable information about what somebody who is being coached by you thinks your strengths and weaknesses are. And two, you empower your team to be the ones to offer constructive criticism in an effort to do things better.
Assessments – Using coach-specific checklists or worksheets can help you clarify your core interests, values, and skills. Attached is a coach’s self-evaluation assessment. It can be a useful tool for you to use as you start to identify your strengths and weaknesses as a coach.
Coach, you need to spend time on yourself. By regularly attending to your development and updating your skills, you can increase your value to your program and to your team. You will also get more satisfaction and stimulation from your work. For those that are SFC Premium Members, you will be getting more ideas from me tomorrow on how to get to know yourself better so that you can advance your college coaching career.
