THE 6 R's OF RESPECTED TEAM LEADERS

It was interesting last night while watching the Arkansas-Texas A&M football game, that ESPN mentioned "The Team Captain's Leadership Manual" by Jeff Janssen. It's an outstanding book that has been a part of our Lady Tiger program for many years, having been written in 2004. It is a great book in that it has crossover appeal for athletes in any sport on any level. It goes into great detail on the many areas of leadership for student-athletes as well as how coaches can help develop those traits. It is complete with worksheets as well.

Here is but a very small sample of some of the things that Jeff shares in helping us develop leaders/captains:

Being a leader is a big privilege, challenge, and responsibility. To do your job effectively, you must bring out the best in your teammates and be able to deal with them when they are at their worst. Your success depends on your ability to develop and master the Six “R’s” of Respected Team Leaders. As you read through them below, honestly evaluate yourself on how well you fulfill each of the six important responsibilities.

1. ROLE MODEL

All leadership begins with self leadership. People will respect you as a leader only if you can walk your own talk and lead yourself effectively. You must model the commitment and work ethic you expect from your teammates. You must have confidence that you can achieve your team’s goals. You must maintain your composure when the inevitable storms of adversity strike. And you must do the right thing even when it isn’t the popular or convenient choice to make. You must continually model the attitudes and actions you want to see from your teammates.

2. REMIND

As a team leader, you must frequently remind your teammates about what is important - your common goal, your game plan, going to class, and making smart choices. Remind your teammates that all of the commitments and sacrifices they are making now are really investments in your team’s success and their future. Remind them that the time they spend practicing, studying, getting involved in internships, and doing community service will pay off immeasurably in the long run.

3. REINFORCE

You’ll also spend a lot of time reinforcing the positive strides your teammates make. Be sure to compliment them often to build their confidence and fuel a positive momentum and environment on your team. It’s surprising how fragile confidence can be for some of your teammates. It’s amazing what a simple word of encouragement can do for them coming from you. As Mother Teresa once said, “Kind words are short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” Acknowledge and appreciate your teammates often as a way to reinforce the positive things they do.

4. REASSURE

Because there are so many obstacles, setbacks, and adversities involved in every season and school year, you will need to reassure your teammates when they feel nervous, scared, frustrated, helpless, and hopeless. Give them a sense of hope and optimism even if your team has lost three in a row. Let them know with the right amount of rehab and rest that they can recover from that frustrating injury. As your mom once told you, you need to reassure your teammates that the sun will come up tomorrow.

5. REFOCUS

Your teammates will get distracted often over their careers. With the countless temptations and distractions available to college student-athletes like alcohol, computer games, parties, television, cell phones, gambling, etc., it’s no wonder that some people lose their focus. It is easy for your teammates to get their priorities out of whack. A leader’s primary job is to establish a vision for the team and then continually refocus the team back on the vision when they get distracted. Put simply, your job is to keep “the main thing” the main thing. For their sakes and yours, help your teammates refocus back on to what’s important when they begin to stray athletically, academically, and socially.

6. REPRIMAND

Last but not least, you must be willing to constructively confront and reprimand your teammates when necessary. You must hold them accountable to live up to and maintain your team’s and athletic department’s rules and standards. Confronting your less disciplined teammates is often an uncomfortable and sometimes scary task for most student-athlete leaders but one that must be done if your team and athletic department are going to be successful. Part of being a leader is getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. You must have the courage to constructively confront your teammates who aren’t willing to do the right thing. You may not be liked all the time when you hold your teammates accountable, but you will be respected, which is much more important anyway.

Find out a lot more about Jeff at: http://www.jeffjanssen.com/coaching/index.html

You can also sign up a few newsletter at this site while looking at all the other means he has available to help us as coaches

WOODEN: SUGGESTIONS FOR ALL TEAM MEMBERS

1. Never nag, razz or criticize a teammate.
2. Never expect favors.
3. Never make excuses.
4. Never be selfish, jealous, envious, or egotistical.
5. Never lose faith or patience.
6. Never waste time.
7. Never loaf, sulk, or boast.
8. Never require repeated criticism for the same mistake.
9. Never have reason to be sorry afterward.

From "The Essential Wooden" by John Wooden & Steve Jamison

MENTAL ATTITUDE: SEPARATING THE GOOD FROM THE GREAT

"The thing that separates good players from great ones is mental attitude. It might only make a difference of two or three points in an entire match but how you play those key points often makes the difference between winning and losing. If the mind is strong you can do almost anything you want."

-Chris Evert

LARRY BIRD'S WORKOUT FORMULA

"The way I see it, if I put two hours in by myself, then someone who is working out with somebody else has to put in four hours in order to beat me. That's the way I've always gone about it."

-Larry Bird

YOU NEED THAT PASSION

Dallas Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith:

“Winning is the ultimate prize and it takes hard work to achieve it. But it’s hard to win without having a passion for the game. You need that passion to make you play harder in the fourth quarter, when you’re dead tired. You need that passion on fourth-and-1 from the goal line. You need that passion to workout in the off-season, when you’d rather be playing with your kids.”

GREATNESS DEFINED

From: http://www.trainforhoops.com/

“Greatness is not about someone who has the ability to be great…Greatness shows up when someone might not have the ability but finds a way to succeed. They outwork their opponents, they outhit their opponents, they outfight their opponents. They want it more. Don’t give me the guy who’s supposed to be all-world and you’ve got to try and talk him into something. Give me the guy who has maybe just enough talent to be on the field but thinks he’s great, and who’s willing to do whatever he can do to contribute, to make the team better. That’s what I want…”

-Mike Singletary
Head Coach San Francisco 49ers

KAREEM -- A TEAM PLAYER

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the all-time leading scoring with 38,387 points. He won an NBA record 6 MVP awards. But more importantly to him is the fact that he won 6 NBA championships. He still holds many UCLA records but what he cherishes is three NCAA titles. In high school, his team won 71 consecutive games. He is obviously one of the greatest players to have played the game, but he is also one of the games greatest "team players." The following is a testament to his attitude and why he and his teams were so successful:

“I don’t get a big charge out of being

the leading scorer. The object of

competing is winning. I just try to do

what has to be done for us

to win. That might be anything at

the time — defense, rebounding,

passing. I get great satisfaction

out of being a team player.”

-KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR-
NBA Hall-Of-Famer

PARCELLS ON TOUGHNESS

“There’s a widely held assumption that if players can’t perform at 100 percent, they shouldn’t be asked to perform at all. All I can tell you is that in the National Football League there are very few people at 100 percent three weeks into the season — and that the teams that overcome their collective bruises and sprains are the ones that win.”

-Bill Parcells

THE GREAT ONES STUDY THE GAME

Tony Gwynn loves hitting a baseball, and he devotes himself to it. Several times each season, he reads Ted Williams’ The Science of Hitting, a book he first discovered and read while in college. He watches countless hours of videotape. At home he has a library of hitting tapes, continually fed by his five VCRs that record games via satellite dish. He even reviews tape on the road. When he travels for games, he takes two VCRs so that he can tape and edit every one of his at bats. And when he is not swinging the bat or watching tape, he is talking about hitting constantly—with teammates, at the All-Star Game, with great players such as Ted Williams. Gwynn just can’t get enough. Hitting is his joy. He has been known to arrive at social events with batting gloves sticking out of his pocket, having stopped to hit a few.

The 21 Indispensable Qualities Of A Leader

By John C. Maxwell

FUNDAMENTALS NEVER CHANGE

“Fundamentals are the most crucial part of my game in the NBA. Everything I did, everything I achieved, can be traced back to the way I approached the fundamentals and how I applied them to my abilities. They really are the basic building blocks or principles that make everything work. I don’t care what you’re doing or what you’re trying to accomplish — you can’t skip fundamentals if you want to be the best. The minute you get away from fundamentals, the bottom can fall out. You have to monitor your fundamentals constantly because the only thing that never changes will be your attention to them. The fundamentals will never change. It comes down to a very simple saying: There is a right way and a wrong way to do things. You can practice shooting eight hours a day, but if your fundamentals are wrong, then all you become is very good at shooting the wrong way. Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise.”

—MICHAEL JORDAN—

IT'S ABOUT THE PROCESS

From "The Winner's Manual" by Jim Tressel:

"Success is an everyday proposition. It isn’t defined by a championship game or the day you get your diploma, get drafted by an NFL team, make the big sale, land the account of a lifetime, or get your law degree. But the key to a successful life is in the journey and the process. It’s that emphasis on the journey to success that we work on each day, step by step.

To me, the process is what’s most fun in football, and I’m sure it’s that way for any profession. The process of going full bore into the season and balancing your purpose with your goals and the family you love and all the things you try to accomplish—it’s a daily adventure.

It’s important to let our goals spring from our purpose. It makes sense that if we’re going to do the best we can do, our best should come from who we really are."

JERRY RICE: THE MOST DETERMINED

Jerry Rice is to football what Michael Jordan is to basketball. He is simply considered to be the greatest to ever play the position of wide-receiver. Unlike Michael Jordan, he came from a small college into the NFL. To many, Rice is an ultra-talented receiver. But those close to him know better – they know all that he had to do to become the greatest. In his book, “Think Like A Champion,” Denver Bronco head coach Mike Shanahan wrote the following on Rice:

“Most people, for whatever reason, think natural ability is the most important power a person possesses. It’s not. People who achieve the highest level of success have an unbelievable work ethic, the desire to sacrifice. Everybody thinks Jerry Rice is the best receiver out there. He certainly is talented, but I guarantee you he’s not even close to being the most talented. He’s not the strongest or the fastest. Be he is the most determined. Jerry’s mind set was that nobody was going to work harder, prepare better, or sacrifice more. He convinced himself that he was going to outwork every receiver who came into the league relative to conditioning, lifting, studying — everything. He knew that people might not enjoy the practice, but you can’t get to be the best without.

Everyday during the off-season, Jerry would be up at 6:00 AM going through his strenuous stretching drills. He would run seven 5-yard shuttles, which he called “stop and go’s,” and fourteen more 40-yard dashes up and down the field. Then he would line up fluorescent orange cones across the field and weave in and out of each one six times at full speed, working on his acceleration and cutting ability. When he finished with the cones, he would run six more 40-yard dashes, and then 20-yard patterns until he was flat-out exhausted. Then he would lift weights in as quick a rotation as possible, no resting. Bench presses, seated bench presses, incline bench press, power lifts, dumbbell curls with increasing weights. I get tired just writing about it. It didn’t take me long to understand why every time we got to the fourth quarter of a game, while most of the players were slowing down, Jerry could run as fast as he did on the first play of the game. On the days he trained, Jerry would cap off his physical work with mental work. He would immerse himself in a game film of the league’s top wide receivers, studying how they ran their routes and what moves they used to get open. It was amazing to me how he had so many of the all-time records, and he was still working harder than anybody. It would have been so easy for him to be spending that time relaxing at the mall or on the golf course. But Jerry was sacrificing his leisure time to be considered the greatest wide receiver of all time. The only way was the hard way, he believed. And eventually, even though you may think nobody notices your extra effort, somebody usually does. Your work will pay off tomorrow, a year from now, five years from now, you don’t know when. But it will!”

HOW TO REBOUND FROM SETBACKS

From the magazine, "Get Motivated," comes an excellent article titled, How to Rebound From Setbacks: Ruben Gonzales, the three-time Olympian tells how he excelled in one of the Olympics’ most perilous sports --the lug.

Principle 1- Go All the Way: When you decide that quitting is not an option, you will soon be in the top 10 percent of your field. Odds are, ninety percent of your competition will simply give up!

Principle 2- Create a “Dream Team”: Ninety percent of success is determined by whom you associate with. So create a Dream Team of people around you who will encourage you through the toughest times.

Principle 3- Give Yourself a Pep Talk: It’s easy to get down when things aren’t going your way. After a bad luge run, sometimes I walk up and down the track for 20 minutes, saying: “I can do it! I will make it, because there’s always a way!” When you get down, pick yourself up and give yourself a pep talk.

Principle 4- Learn from Your Mistakes: High achievers believe that they will either do well at each task they tackle or they will learn something to help them win in future. As funny as it sounds, most successful people “fail their way upwards.” I was no different, crashing all the way to the top!

Principle 5-Recover Quickly: When winners make mistakes, they don’t waste time whining. They do whatever it takes to recover quickly, so they don’t lose their momentum. When a boxer gets knocked down, he has only 10 seconds to get back up. If he gets up in eleven seconds, he loses the fight. SO the next time you get knocked down, decide to act like a winner. Get up, take immediate action and make your dream a reality!

THE GREAT ONES LOVE TO PRACTICE AND PREPARE

A reason for greatness in the great -- they love to prepare:

"For me, it's not just about the game, I mean I love practice. A lot of guys don't. I like going to practice. I love to work on a Wednesday, getting a game plan, trying to put it in the words on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday and then taking the game plan and putting it to work on Sunday."

-Peyton Manning

PREPARATION AND COURAGE

"In playing ball, and in life, a person occasionally gets the opportunity to do something great. When that time comes, only two things matter: being prepared to seize the moment and having the courage to take your best swing."

-Hank Aaron