Promote Your People
If you are in a position of leadership, work hard to promote your people every chance you get. One of your important responsibilities is developing and growing the people who work for you and giving them opportunities to grow in their career. You want to help them grow personally and professionally. If you are a head football coach or AD, you want to help your coaches to be able to pursue opportunities to better their carer. You want to help your coordinators become head coaches, and your position coaches to become coordinators. If you are a coordinator, you want to help your position coaches to become coordinators. If you are a principal, you want to develop your assistant principals to become principals.
One of the AD's I worked for used to say, "if people aren't fishing in your pond, you need to stock it with better fish." He loved when people would call about coaches on staff. When we hired coaches, he wanted to know what their goals were. He would then tell me as a coordinator to help them find opportunities to pursue their goals. He wanted to see guys have an opportunity to grow professionally and he worked hard to make that happen.
One of the hardest things to do is to get a head football coaching job in the state of Texas. There are often over 100 applicants for each job, and many of those applicants are more than qualified. Finding coordinator jobs is also very difficult. Most people are going to hire someone they know, or hire someone who is recommended by someone they know. Having people in your corner who can get you to the front of the line is important. It is much harder to get hired if you don't have connections who are respected. This is the same if you are trying to get hired at the college level. Help your guys when they have an opportunity to move up. And if you want to move up, ask your head coach and athletic director to help you do so.
It is important that you know the goals of your coaches. Know what they aspire to be so you can help them get there. You also can help them grow the skills they will need to take that next step. If you know you have a coach who wants to lead a program, provide him opportunities to learn about budgeting and personnel management. Take him through the day-to-day operations that exist behind the scenes. Help him to learn about the things you do that he doesn't see.
If you are a coordinator, do everything you can to help your guys become coordinators. Give them responsibility in game planning. Divide the game planning and practice planning tasks up among your coaches. Let them script practice. Divide up your game planning areas and allow them to take on more responsibility. Have them be involved in building the call sheet. Talk to them about the why behind what you are doing. And when an opportunity comes up for them to become a coordinator, help them get that opportunity.
Put your coaches in positions to address then team, or in football, your side of the ball. Let them gain the experience of speaking to a larger group. One great way to do this is during the off-season. Have a schedule for your assistant coaches to address the team as a group. Give them 5 minutes, a topic, and set a time. Work with them to develop what they will say. This will help your coaches, and allow the team to hear the message from multiple people.
Don't Wait For The Call, Make The Call
When one of your coaches goes through the interview process, the district they are interviewing with will due their diligence, the same way you will do your diligence when hiring someone. Your recommendation can be a difference maker. What is even more powerful is when you make a call before they reach out to you for a reference check. Don't wait for them to call you. If one of your coaches tells you they are going to apply for a job, make a phone call and promote them to the district or school that is hiring.
If one of your coaches comes to you and tells you they are interested in applying for a step-up job, have a conversation with them. Ask them why they are applying and how you can help. This is where you can make that phone call for them. It isn't your job to tell them what they should do with their career. Offer them any advice and insight you might have.
Recommendations
When one of your coaches applies for a job, you are most likely going to be asked for a recommendation. If you cannot give them a positive recommendation, then you need to have a conversation with the coach. And if you are at that point, you should have already had conversations with them.
If you have never said anything negative to the coach about their performance, then you should not give a recommendation that is anything less than stellar. To do so is disloyal to the profession. Never, ever give a negative recommendation behind a coach's back. If you are going to give a negative reference or recommendation, you need to have a conversation in person with the coach before hand. He needs to know why, and then he needs to know what the plan will be to remedy the deficiency.
If you have an issue with someone to the point where you would give them a negative recommendation, you need to facilitate a conversation or series of conversations. You need to either put together a growth plan to develop the coach in the areas of weakness, or if you think the coach is beyond development, you need to let them go. You need to be willing to have difficult conversations proactively.
There is nothing worse than a coach applying for the job, believing you will help them, and then later finding out that you stabbed them in the back. While most hiring processes have a certain level of confidentiality, always work under the assumption that your recommendation will come public. That means being proactive with your communication is important. Don't destroy trust or a relationship because you aren't willing to have difficult conversations.
Now, I am not talking about the lazy coach who doesn't do what is asked. I am not talking about the guy who shows up late and never does what you ask them to do, or they do it half-ass. These people know who they are and know they won't probably get a good recommendation. I am talking about people who work hard, driven, and are loyal to you and the program.
There are people who have aspirations they are not prepared for. There are people who will apply for a job they are not ready for. That is where development comes in. And that development starts with a conversation with them. How can you get them from where they are right now, to putting them in a position to be prepared to achieve their goals? It is easy to sit in your chair and decide if people are worthy of your endorsement. Anyone can do that. But the truly elite leaders are willing to visit with people and come up with a plan to grow them to achieve what they dream of achieving.
Growth and Mentors
The biggest piece of advice I can give coaches is to do everything you can to help the guys on your staff to grow. Provide them opportunities to expand their knowledge base and get out of their comfort zone. Promote your guys from within whenever possible. If you have a high school opening, talk to your middle school guys first. If you have a varsity opening, talk to your freshmen coaches.
Everyone needs to have a mentor. You might even have more than one. A mentor is a trusted resource that you can reach out to for advice and to bounce ideas off of. Typically you want to have a mentor who has been where you are. They would have the experience you have and be able to provide you wisdom from the that perspective. If you are in a position of success, then you can and should be a mentor to others.
If you are a head coach or AD, or a coordinator, there are many who would love to sit in your seat. Help them to achieve this. Your office chair is not a throne, but a place where you can help others to achieve their goals and dreams. Take great pride in helping to develop your coaching tree. You have an opportunity to be a mentor for coaches on your staff, and if you are an experienced head coach, for new head coaches. This is an outstanding opportunity to help others to get where you are.
I recently talked with a good friend who is a retired head coach and district athletic director. Dozens of his coaches went on to become head coaches. He takes great pride in this, and said he did everything he could to promote his coaches. If he heard about an opening, he would make a call for one of his coaches, often without their knowledge. He wanted to help them to be successful. When he had a coach who wanted to be a head coach but wasn't ready in his eyes, he did everything he could to get them ready. He met with that coach for 20 minutes a week over 12 weeks. He said that changed the trajectory of that coach's career. Be willing to invest in your coaches.
Grow Where You Are Planted
While we have focused on promoting people and helping them take that next step, the most important job is the job you have right now. Make the most out of your current opportunity. If you do a great job where you are, you will increase your opportunities for career growth. If you are focused on the next job, you will not be able to be your best at this job. As a head coach or coordinator, you want to make sure your guys know that you will support them in their career growth, and to that to the best of your ability, you need them to make the most of this opportunity.
Head Coaching Academy
Here is a unique idea for AD's. Host a Head Coaching Academy once a year for all of your coaches who aspire to be head coaches. If you are in a school district with multiple schools, this is an opportunity to grow your own. Invite your coaches in all sports and host this over one day. Feed them lunch. Have current and retired head coaches deliver the presentations. Teach them everything that goes into being a head coach beyond simply the games. You could have district leaders host small group interview roundtables. This would be a powerful event that would impact your coaches. This is something being done by a few school districts and state associations, but it should be done much more often.
Use your position of influence others and help them to get to where you are. Give them the support, tools, and feedback they need to be successful. Give them a positive recommendation that helps them get that next job on their career journey. And if you can't give them a positive recommendation, talk to them and have that conversation. Then, help to grow and develop them until you can give that glowing recommendation.
When I was a defensive coordinator we adapted this to our defensive preparation!
All three of these courses are detailed, with everything you need to be more explosive and to score more points.
The course on communication gives you a detailed approach to your gameday communication. I give you a system and a process to improve the quality of conversations, leading to improved play calling on game day. This course has received outstanding reviews from coaches at all level of football. A coach with multiple state titles told me this course helped them to be much more efficient and explosive this season.
My two RPO courses take you through a systematic process of installing RPO's into your offensive system. RPO's put the defense in conflict, forcing them to defend all 53 yards of width and all 6 skill players every single play. I not only give you a system, but I teach you the methods to develop your own RPO concepts.
No comments:
Post a Comment