Leadership Archives - Football Toolbox

Creating Teammate Accountability

February 10, 2021 by

Have you ever coached a team that was talented but something was just missing and as a result it simply underperformed?

If the answer is no

… then either you haven’t been coaching long or you are one of the all-time great coaches.

The truth is a lot of teams fall short of expectations.

But why?

According to Dr. Cory Dobbs, Founder & President of The Academy for Sport Leadership, teams often become so focused on tasks and strategies and their commitment to the “team” begins to wane.

In the video clip below Dr. Dobbs discusses a case study he conducted with a team that was underperforming.

He shares the process he used to help them develop teammate accountability and become a more successful team that was focused on transformation, relationships, and harmony.

If you are a coach that is interested in the new science of leadership, teamwork, and teambuilding then you will want to check out Dr. Dobbs’s new masterclass: Coaching for Leadership.

In this groundbreaking course he shares his 3 Big Ideas:

A Leader in Every Locker
Coaching for Leadership
Teamwork Intelligence

*The Football Toolbox subscribers: Use coupon code “Toolbox25” to receive a 25% discount on the course at checkout here: Coaching for Leadership Masterclass*

Healthy Coaching Staff Conversations

May 20, 2020 by

Focus on the Coaching Staff

HEALTHY CONVERSATION: THE STARTING POINT

The most valuable resource in any organization is the human resource. The second most valuable resource may just be the way we talk to one another. That’s because we spend a considerable part of our work lives in conversation—it’s the way we get things done. And the way we talk and relate to one another is expressed in conversation. So it’s appropriate to suggest that conversation determines the quality of our work and our work life—for better or worse.

To that end, while it’s self-evident that we have more tools for communication than ever before, our exchanges seem more fragmented and our relationships more disconnected causing us to miss out on the promise of conversation. Therefore, we need to get smart about how we talk to one another.

Over the past decade and-a-half I’ve witnessed many dysfunctional coaching staffs. The primary dysfunction is rarely a result of coaching strategy, tactics, or philosophy. Rather, it is manifested in the way the staff members talk with one another. The complexity of coaching a team requires a coaching staff to think together, which is accomplished through conversation. Unfortunately this is often where the wheels fall off the team bus.

Think of a conversation as a dynamic, interactive process that unfolds over time among individuals. For the most part, the objective of deep conversation (we’ll save shallow conversation for later) is to solve a problem—either task related or person and performance. The implied goal of communication is to “share” one’s reality. The flaw is that reality is produced by our individual filters and colored by our unique experiences.

To build a high-performance coaching staff necessitates conversational participants connect rigorously (intensity) and relationally (intimately). Rigorous conversation is communication that is authentic and stimulates a search for reliability, while relational conversation is designed to promote healthy working relationships and a stimulating environment. The essence of rigorous and relational conversation is not only to share one’s reality, but to create a reality that includes the voices of all participants.

The coaching world resides in a complex setting—mixing human behavior and real-time decision making. Most coaches (head and assistant) don’t want merely to survive the decision making process; they want to be effective, or even excellent at what they do. To do so requires the coaching staff to understand that conversational experience is a vital part of the message. That is, communication occurs from an emotional, ego-driven perspective as much as it does from a logical mindset.

The emotional aspect of conversation often is a trigger to a quick death of communication. When someone disagrees with us, we get angry or defensive, and, depending on the status difference, we are likely to dismiss the other’s input. After all, we simply want the other person to see the world as we see it.

I believe we can transform the way your coaching staff works. I think rigorous and relational conversation is the answer. I make this assertion because I know that small-scale conversation is the beating heart of any team. One conversation, moment, or incident, can have a profound impact on an individual or a team. One comment, question, or discussion can inspire and provoke fundamental change. Truth be told, rigorous and relational conversation is the only way to build harmonious, constructive, and mutually beneficial relationships that produce high performance.

New to the Second Edition of Coaching for Leadership!

The new chapter sets forth a practical and applicable agenda for change and improvement. The reader is introduced to seven vital elements of change; seven shifts of traditional mental models that lead to the new core principles necessary for creating a player-led team culture. Click here for more information about Coaching for Leadership

About Cory Dobbs, Ed.D.

Cory Dobbs is the founder of The Academy for Sport Leadership and a nationally recognized thought leader in the areas of leadership and team building. Cory is an accomplished researcher of human experience. Cory engages in naturalistic inquiry seeking in-depth understanding of social phenomena within their natural setting.

A college basketball coach, Cory’s coaching background includes experience at the NCAA DII, NJCAA, and high school levels of competition. After a decade of research and development Cory unleashed the groundbreaking Teamwork Intelligence program for student-athletics. Teamwork Intelligence illuminates the process of designing an elite team by using the 20 principles and concepts along with the 8 roles of a team player he’s uncovered while performing research.

Cory has worked with professional athletes, collegiate athletic programs, and high schools teaching leadership and team building as a part of the sports experience and education process. As a consultant and trainer Dr. Dobbs has worked with Fortune 500 organizations such as American Express, Honeywell, and Avnet, as well as medium and small businesses. Dr. Dobbs taught leadership and organizational change at Northern Arizona University, Ohio University, and Grand Canyon University.

Implementing Leadership Tactics to Foster Player Accountability

May 11, 2020 by

By: Adam Dorrel, Head Football Coach at Abilene Christian University

From the Hudl Blog

Coach Adam Dorrel gives us an inside look at the process he uses to encourage internal accountability from his players.

He also discusses the books and podcasts he uses as inspiration.

You will need to click the play arrow to view the video.

There is narration with the presentation, so please make sure that your sound is on.

Click the play arrow to see the video.

Are You Trustworthy?

February 27, 2020 by

Are You Trustworthy?
Dr. Cory Dobbs
The Academy for Sport Leadership

Make no mistake about it: trust is a cornerstone of every relationship. With it you can build a great coaching staff and team of student-athletes. Without it, well…

Every leadership act and the reception of those acts involve trust. It is expressed in every encounter; it is something we experience in every interaction with another human being. Healthy relationships are the product of trust and the foundation of cohesive teams. And unhealthy relationships, those lacking in reciprocal trust, invites distrust, deceit, selfishness, isolation, and rips relationships apart.

It’s safe to say that your coaching colleagues and players demand trustworthiness. But what exactly is trust?

Trust is a multi-faceted concept that leaders can gain, and lose. In order to better understand trust, we must consider its four dimensions. Here’s a framework I use to analyze trustworthiness.

Cognitive Trust: Cognitive trust is knowledge-driven. It emerges from one’s knowledge of the situation and expressed by alignment of a coach’s words and actions. This allows a player to predict whether or not a coach is to be trusted in certain situations.

Affective Trust: This is the emotion-driven element of trust that can create either great depth of relationship, or shallow transactional interactions. Affective trust arises from one’s feelings generated by the level of care and concern demonstrated by the coach.

Procedural Trust: This is the process-driven component to leadership trust. To achieve objectives every team has a wide range of systems or procedures—ways of doing things. Your offensive/defensive style and philosophy are bounded by procedures. Coaches are seemingly always “selling” their system and looking for “buy in” by the student-athlete.

Purposive Trust: This is the mission-driven component. Shared values and shared goals, as they relate to the growth and development of the student-athlete, form the foundation of purposive trust. This type of trust refers to your actions having or serving a purpose that benefits all today and tomorrow.

These are not trivial distinctions. Your credibility is at stake daily. You can be trustworthy in three dimensions and distrusted in the other dimension, and therefore labeled as untrustworthy. However, by detecting the dimension that is holding down your trustworthiness, you can correct course and earn the trust and confidence of others.

New to the Second Edition of Coaching for Leadership!

We are pleased to announce a new chapter to the second edition of the best-selling Coaching for Leadership. The chapter, The Big Shift: Unlock Your Team’s Potential by Creating Player-Led Teambuilding, connects the previous edition of this book to its origin, as well as to the future of team sports. The new chapter sets forth a practical and applicable agenda for change and improvement. The reader is introduced to seven vital elements of change; seven shifts of traditional mental models that lead to the new core principles necessary for creating a player-led team culture. Click here for more information about Coaching for Leadership

“Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will care.” -Your Student-Athlete The world of coaching is changing. In Coaching for Leadership you’ll discover the foundations for designing, building, and sustaining a leadership focused culture for building a high-performance team. To find out more about and order any of the Sport Leadership Books authored by Dr. Dobbs including Coaching for Leadership, click this link: The Academy for Sport Leadership Books

About Cory Dobbs, Ed.D.

Are You a Leader of Character?

November 21, 2019 by

Cory Dobbs, Ed.D.
The Academy for Sport Leadership

Time and again, through my own eyes and those of student-athletes, I have seen the impact of poor leadership. Leadership from the ranks of the players and leadership from the coaching staff, when not actions of character, almost always turn out badly. Teams underperform, players drift from the team, coaches ratchet up bad behavior and the result of poor leadership—characterless leadership—destroys opportunities for members of the team to grow, develop, and enjoy their sport.

Today’s most effective coaches do more than win games; they imbue their program with character. Indeed, they lead with character.

Simply put, leaders of character take serious four universal practices: tell the truth, keep your promises, give forgiveness, and treat others as you want to be treated. When coaches and student-athletes commit to these four behaviors, they are viewed as people of character. These traits are respected and admired. Together, they illuminate “leadership character.”

Sports are supposed to infuse participants with character. Indeed, the first requirement to be a coach is to be a person of character. If this sounds like a tough stance on who should coach, it is. Coaches have traditionally been valued for their teaching skills, decision making, and the best always strive to understand and empathize with their players. Great coaches believe that student-athletes have an intrinsic value beyond their contributions on the playing field. But the distance between a great coach and a good coach is quite wide.

No matter what the final record for the season happens to be, if poor leadership, from the coaches or the players, is a part of the process, the experience for each and every participant is sure to be one of disappointment. It’s likely to have included many frustrations for the participants and at times created disillusionment, anguish, and sadness. Characterless leadership is simply that impactful.

Peter Block, author of Stewardship, has defined stewardship as “holding something in trust for another.” In sports, that something the coach holds in trust is the student-athlete’s experience. The coach committed to the growth and development of players recognizes the tremendous responsibility to do everything within his or her power to nurture integrity, hold players accountable to one another, guide them to own their mistakes, and teach the young student-athlete to let go of the past.

Based on all my years coaching, and observing (research from the outside looking in) coaches and student-athletes, I find the coach capable of humility and deep self-awareness to be the one most likely to have leadership character. The capacity to bring out the best in people demands character. The mark of a great coach—teacher—is that he or she lives and models the four universals of telling the truth, keeping one’s promises, letting go of others’ mistakes, and empathizing with others.

And, a second article from Dr. Dobbs:

Pumping Iron: Not-Invented-Here

Today every student-athlete lifts weights. But this hasn’t always been the norm. If you look at the black-and-white photographs of athletes from the 1960’s you’ll see mostly underdeveloped physiques. Weightlifting began on the fringes in the 60s, and mostly in the form of machines for training. At that time, most coaches assumed that weightlifting would harm an athlete’s fine motor skills. So weight training remained on the periphery.

But then, a movie released in 1977 exploded on the scene and overnight created the strength industry. A little-known Austrian bodybuilder, Arnold Schwarzenegger, breathed life into competitive bodybuilding. Hollywood saw an opportunity and acted quickly. Pumping Iron, a docudrama, focused on Schwarzenegger and his dedication to lifting weights to build a Mr. Universe body, triggered a movement that spilled over into almost every sport on the planet.

A fatal flaw of sports has been to shy away from training and operating methods that don’t originate within the field of the sport. This bias is revealed in the aversion to things not-invented-here. Not-Invented-Here is the automatic negative perception of something (such as an idea or belief) that does not originate in one’s field. Have you read Moneyball? Data analytics and those that wanted to explore their value were rejected, until the Oakland A’s on-the-field success proved this new way of building a team. Today, if you look closely, you’ll see that data analytics have found a comfortable place in the world of sports.

Here’s a short list of ideas about Not-Invented-Here. Google each and learn a little more.

-CTE (see Dr. Bennet Omalu and Concussion the movie)
-Free Agency (see Curt Flood)
-Sport Psychology (see Thomas Tutko)

-Great Performers are Made, not Born (See Anders Ericsson)

-A Leader in Every Locker (see Cory Dobbs, Coaching for Leadership)

-Karl Dunker, (see Functional Fixedness)

Let me encourage searching for ways to improve your players, programs, and organizations by any means necessary. Don’t approach improvement and innovation with a fixed-mindset and get caught in the trap of rejecting something because it was Not-Invented-Here.

Cory is the Founder & President of The Academy for Sport Leadership. A former basketball coach, Cory’s coaching background includes experience at the NCAA DII, NJCAA, and high school levels of competition. Cory has worked with collegiate athletic programs and high schools teaching leadership and team building as a part of the sports experience and education process.

“Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will care.” -Your Student-Athlete The world of coaching is changing. In Coaching for Leadership you’ll discover the foundations for designing, building, and sustaining a leadership focused culture for building a high-performance team. To find out more about and order Sport Leadership Books authored by Dr. Dobbs including Coaching for Leadership, click this link: The Academy for Sport Leadership Books