Your Playbook for Business Success

Another great quality for coaching is lightness.  When a coach can bring lightness along with all of these other qualities; it can create a good environment for learning and development.  If you think about it, most people find it difficult to learn when they feel immense pressure to perform.  The art of lightness is the ability to be able to hold two opposing energies like strong achievement drive and light heartedness at the same time.

There is a time and place for lightness of course, and great coaching leaders know the right time to use it.

Great coaching leaders have the ability to stay positive in the face of adversity and failure.  This another way they set the tone for the team.  If you think about the old adage, “If you can believe it, you can achieve it”, imagine how important it is to keep a positive attitude in today’s challenging and dynamic marketplace.

One of the best examples of this is the 2008 Super Bowl.  The Arizona Cardinals scored an electrifying go ahead touchdown by their star receiver Larry Fitzgerald with 2:39 left in the game.  The Cardinals’ defense had stopped the Steelers’ offense for most of the second half so it seemed like the Steelers might be defeated.

In the film of the game you see Coach Mike Tomlin very confidently say, “Let’s go, it’s our time to win this!”  Upon reflection later, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger said that Tomlin’s seemingly unfazed demeanor carried over to him and in turn went in to the huddle where Ben challenged his teammates to rise to the occasion to prove they were the better team.  How important was it that Tomlin was unfazed?  What would have happened if the quarterback saw doubt or concern in his coach’s eyes?

Great coaching leaders are patient when they need to be.  They are patient when they see people with potential working hard, doing the right things, and striving to improve.  They know excellence and mastery takes time and effort.  They are willing to invest time, energy and patience into those individuals who show a genuine commitment to the process and possess the qualities they are looking for in the other members if the team.

Great coaches are great pace setters. They are the ones who want it as much or more than anyone on the team. That kind of energy is contagious! The drive for excellence shows up in every-thing they do. Great coaching leaders are rarely distracted or discouraged in the face of adversity. They lead by example in terms of their own willingness to continually stretch themselves and their team. I think one of the great bonuses of being a coaching leader is that you always get to be holding the mirror up and working on yourself as well. For some of you that may not be very appealing! The bottom line is that great coaching leaders have an unending desire to get better, and they know that the quickest way to ruin a coaching relationship is to not practice what they preach.

That is not to say that you cannot show your faults. Transparency is a very important and endearing quality of great coaches. It is not to say that you are not going to have a breakdown or letdown occasionally. How you handle them will be very critical to your success, and will show determination and commitment to the vision at all times. Just be real; you can have faults.

So when I say, “working on you,” I am not saying that you have to be perfect, but you should expect of yourself what you expect of your teammates. Those expectations may be hard work, determination, focus, and professionalism.

If you are going to have a coaching culture and be a coaching leader, I would suggest that you engage in a formal coaching relationship. One of the best insights I received in my career was from a mentor, Larry Snead. He told me, “The organization mirrors the leaders.” As a coach, your team is only going to be as good as you are. You are the center spoke of a wider wheel, so keep working on you. 

Consider getting your own coach to help you work on you, and also consider giving others in your organization permission to coach you. Your humanness and transparency will be one of  the greatest ways to endear yourself to your team and build a high level of respect for you.

One of a coach’s greatest qualities is good instincts about people. What motivates them, inspires them, and makes them tick? Great coaching leaders have an uncanny and almost intuitive way of knowing what makes people tick. Part of the way they understand what motivates people is by taking time to get to know them, ask questions, and uncover their desires and ambitions. They know when to use that information in just the right moment to create outstanding results.

Vince Lombardi, the legendary football coach of the Green Bay Packers for eight years, was a master at this. One of his players, Jerry Kramer, an All-Star guard, tells the following story:

In one of the practice sessions early in his career, Kramer missed his blocking assignment on a play. On the very next play he jumped offside. He said, “Lombardi really jumped on me and reamed me out; he had me feeling awful! I felt like smacking him in the mouth!”

“I was in the locker room after practice, ready to hang it up and do something else. Vince came up to me and patted me on the back and said, ‘Son, don’t you know that someday you’ll be the best guard in this league?’ Those words lit a fire!“

This little vignette is a great lesson for aspiring coaching leaders. Lombardi knew at that moment on the field that Kramer needed a swift kick in the pants. He also had the instinct to know that Kramer was in need of a pat on the back in the locker room.

Had Vince Lombardi not had that intuition about Jerry Kramer, one of the greatest guards of all time may have gone down a different road!