5 CORE CONCERNS FROM EVERY TEAMMATE

This comes from www.sportleadership.com and will make it into our team notebook this year.

Dear Team Captain:

As a team leader your task is to evoke excellence in others. Great leaders are eager to help someone else improve at what he or she wants to do. The key question you should ask on a daily basis is "How do I contribute to a teammate's competence in a respectful, dignified, and effective way." The answers will help you become an effective team leader.

Here are five core concerns that you should be aware of as you work to build respectful relationships with your teammates.

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Concern #1: Appreciation

Every member of your team wants to know that their thoughts, feelings, and actions are valued by the coaches and teammates. Everyone on the team puts in a tremendous amount of time and energy to achieve shared goals. Try to find ways to show your teammates appreciation for their commitment to the team. Encourage teammates to demonstrate appreciation for each other.

Concern #2: Association

Your teammates wants to be treated as an integral part of something meaningful. They want to be valued by teammates and not excluded from team functions away from the playing field. That is, each student-athlete will make a deeper commitment to the team when they feel a strong sense of association.

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Unfortunately, sport teams all too often breed an in-group out-group mentality. Injuries too can seem alienating to team members. When teammates can't participate because of injuries be sure to keep them close to you and the rest of the team.

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Concern #3: Self-Management

Student-athletes want to be respected for their ability to make decisions in their best interest. Most of your teammates will possess a desire to be self-directing. However, this does not mean they don't want your help. It just means you need to help them set their direction and stay on course.

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Concern #4: Status

Every team member is concerned with his or her status on the team and their "relative position" to teammates. Bench players, in particular, want to be given recognition and not to be treated as inferior to others. While it is generally evident who the best players are on the playing field, the contributions others make in the various roles should not be relegated to second-class status by you and your teammates.

Concern #5: Role

Each of your teammates desires a role to play and truly wants that role to be fulfilling. It's common for athletes to perceive their role in an ambiguous way. Through patience your guidance can help teammates understand, accept, and grow in their respective role. You can point the way by helping teammates make sense of their role on and off the playing field. Your teammates will be seeking and serving in a variety of roles throughout the season. Some more vital than others. Always pay attention to your teammates and help them to find value in their role.

In summary, each teammate will have a different perception of how his or her 5 Core Concerns are being met. Perceptions should be visible in their various behaviors, attitudes, emotional reactions and thought patterns. Your leadership task is to continually work at identifying underlying problems and find solutions. This is best done when you actively engage in honest conversation with your teammates building solid relationships. Great leaders care to know their teammates.

THE IMPORTANCE OF YOUR CHARACTER

Each day, as a student-athlete, you make personal choices that help define who are you are and what you want to be. Because you are part of a team, often those choices you make can effect not just you but your teammates as well. It should be a enough to motivate you to give thought to those decisions and to understand why it is so important to your future. Here is what the late Jim Rohn has to day about this topic:

Personal success is built on the foundation of character, and character is the result of hundreds and hundreds of choices you may make that gradually turn who you are at any given moment into who you want to be. If that decision-making process is not present, you'll still be somebody-you'll still be alive-but you may have a personality rather than a character, and to me that's something very different.

Character isn't something you were born with and can't change, like your fingerprints. It's something you must take responsibility for forming. You build character by how you respond to what happens in your life, whether it's winning every game, losing every game, getting rich or dealing with hard times.

You build character from certain qualities that you must create and diligently nurture within yourself, just like you would plant and water a seed or gather wood to build a campfire. You've got to look for those things in your heart and in your gut. You've got to chisel away in order to find them, just like chiseling away rock to create the sculpture that previously existed only in the imagination.

But the really amazing thing about character is that, if you're sincerely committed to making yourself into the person you want to be, you'll not only create those qualities, you'll strengthen them and re-create them in abundance, even as you're drawing on them every day of your life. That's why building your character is vital to becoming all you can be.

HELP YOURSELF BY HELPING YOUR TEAM WIN

"We're OK with guys coming to Purdue expecting to make it to the pros but they have to understand that you get to be a pro by making your team win. Coaches are looking for players who make their team better. It's true for college coaches looking at high school players and it's true for NBA coaches looking at college players."

-MATT PAINTER

Head Coach Purdue University

TALENT IS NOT ENOUGH

Terrell Owens made the following comment this past week on why he is no longer with the Dallas Cowboys:

"By no means do I feel that I left that team because of talent. Obviously, there have to be some other factors."

Really? You think? It is incredible that an athlete of his special athletic gifts has been unable to master the other parts of his game like attitude and teamwork. He is a living example of the theory that those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.

Without question he has made a great deal of money and compiled some strong numbers but will he be satisfied years from now with his true legacy.

He could benefit from reading John Maxwell's "Talent Is Not Enough." The follow quote lends one to believe he is not learned the necessary lessons yet:

"Again, I still stand by the things that I said and what was done," said Owens. "I know that honestly it wasn't my fault."

JOHN MAXWELL: "But truth be told, being a winner, in the purest sense of the word, has nothing to do with your performance, your salary, or your earning potential. It has to do with your value and whether or not you have owned it."

VISUALIZING THE DESIRED OUTCOME

"Let's assume that what is desired in your serve is more power. The next step is to picture your server with more power. One way to do this might be to watch the motion of someone who gets a lot of power in his serve. Don't over analyze; simply absorb what you see and try to feel what he feels. Listen to the sound of the ball after it hits the racket and watch the results. Then take some time to imagine yourself hitting the ball with power, using the stroke which is in as much visual and tactile detail as you can. Hear the sound at impact and see the ball speed toward the service court."

From "The Inner Game of Tennis" by W. Timothy Gallwey

(Recommended reading by Pete Carroll)

FAITHFULNESS TO YOUR VALUES

TAMIKA CATCHINGS: "I've played all over the world in many different countries and with many different teams. When I leave those places, I don't know if I'll ever see those people again. So I want them to remember that I had a certain kind of strength about me and that I lived by my Christian principles. Whether I'm playing in Korea, Russia, Turkey or right here in the United State, my faithfulness to my values boils down to one huge question pose by Coach Wooden: Will I compromise my integrity when temptation is great?"

COACH WOODEN: "Loyalty is the foundational quality that gets us through hard times. Will we compromise our integrity when temptation is great? Or will we remain loyal to our beliefs and core values? I wanted my players to become people of integrity. When we have integrity, we are not going to do anything that will be demeaning to anybody else, either on or off the court. And with integrity, we will never consider letting our teammates down."

From "The Greatest Coach Ever" by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT GOAL SETTING

From Brian Tracy, author of "Goals" --

Only 3% of adults have clear, written, specific, measurable, time-bounded goals, and by every statistic, they accomplish ten times as much as people with no goals at all. Why is it then that most people have no goals?

Myth One: “I already have goals; I don’t need to set any.” People who say this also say that their goals are to be rich, thin, happy, successful, and live their dreams. Buy these are not goals, they are wishes and fantasies common to all mankind. A goal is like a beautiful home, carefully designed, revised continually, upgraded regularly, and worked on constantly. If it is not in writing, it is merely a dream or a wish, a vague objective with no energy behind it.

Myth Two: “I don’t need goals; I’m doing fine.” Living your life without goals and objectives is setting off across unknown territory with no road signs and no road map. You have no choice but to make it up as you go along, reacting and responding to whatever happens, and hoping for the best. If you are doing well today without written goals and plans, you could probably be doing many times better in the future if you had clear targets to aim at and the ability to measure your progress as you go along. It is vital to have goal setting objectives.

Myth Three: “I don’t need written goals; I have them all in my mind.” The average stream of consciousness includes about 1,500 thoughts a minute. If your goals are only in your mind, they are invariably jumbled up, vague, confused, contradictory and deficient in many ways. They offer no clarity and give you no motive power. You become like a ship without a rudder, drifting with the tides, crashing into the rocks inevitably and never really fulfilling your true potential.

Myth Four: “I don’t know how to set goals.” No wonder. You can take a Masters degree at a leading university and never receive a single hour of instruction on goal setting and achieving. Fortunately, setting a goal is a skill, like time management, teaching, selling, managing, or anything else that you need to become a highly productive and effective person. And all skills are learnable. You can learn the skill of goal-setting by practice and repetition until it becomes as easy and as automatic as breathing. And from the very first day that you begin setting goals, the progress you will make and the successes you will enjoy will astonish you.

Myth Five: “Goals don’t work; life is too unpredictable.” When a plane takes off for a distant city, it will be off course 99% of the time. The complexity of the avionics and the skill of the pilots are focused on continual course corrections. It is the same in life. But when you have a clear, long-term goal, with specific plans to achieve it, you may have to change course many times, but you will eventually arrive at your destination of health, wealth and great success.

One last point. Goal setting has been called the master skill of success. You have two choices in life: You can either work on your own goals, or you can work for someone else, and work on achieving their goals. When you learn the master skill, you take complete control of your life and jump to the front of the line in your potential for great achievement.

"TO HAVE" OR "TO BE" -- WHICH ARE YOU?

There are two conflicting mentalities in any organization: to have and to be.

People with a to have mentality are obsessed with what they can get out of their jobs: a bigger salary, and all that it can buy; promotions and status; recognition and fame.

People with a to be mentality concentrate on what they can give to the organization: their best efforts to help the team succeed.

From "Finding A Way to Win" by Bill Parcells

THE IMPORTANCE OF A MENTOR

"Find a mentor. No matter who you are or what your profession is, we all need someone who can keep us grounded and speak truth into our lives. Find people who have built their lives on a solid foundation, and humble yourself to learn from them. I’ve never known a successful athlete, business person, or anyone else who has made an impact on the world who didn’t stand on the shoulders of other great men and women."

From "Coming Back Strong" by Drew Brees

A CHAMPION'S GREAT ASSET

"I always felt that my greatest asset

was not my physical ability,

it was my mental ability."

-BRUCE JENNER

4 THINGS WINNING TEAMS HAVE IN COMMON

Look at hundreds of winning teams, and you will find that their players have four things in common:

1. They play to win:

The difference between playing to win and playing not to lose is often the difference between success and mediocrity.

2. They have a winning attitude:

Team members believe in themselves, their teammates, and their dream. And they don’t allow negative thinking to derail them.

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3. They keep improving:

The highest reward for their efforts isn’t what they get from it, but who they become because of it. Team members know intuitively that if they’re through improving, they’re through.

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4. They make their teammates more successful:

Winners are empowerers. As Charlie Brower says, “Few people are successful unless a lot of other people want them to be.”

From John Maxwell's "Teamwork Makes the Dream Work."

DON'T BECOME A VICTIM OF YOURSELF

The following comes from the late Jim Rohn and was sent to our players today via an email. You can only climb to your potential when you take full and complete responsibility of your life. Here is what Jim Rohn says:

Don’t become a victim of yourself. Forget about the thief waiting in the alley; what about the thief in your mind?

It is not what happens that determines the major part of your future. What happens, happens to us all. It is what you do about what happens that counts.

You say, “The country is messed up.” That’s like cursing the soil and the seed and the sunshine and the rain, which is all you’ve got. Don’t curse all you’ve got. When you get your own planet, you can rearrange this whole deal. This one you’ve got to take like it comes.

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Walk away from the 97 percent crowd. Don’t use their excuses. Take charge of your own life.

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Take advice, but not orders. Only give yourself orders. Abraham Lincoln once said, “Since I will be no one’s slave, I will be no one’s master.”

You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of. You don’t have charge of the constellations, but you do have charge of whether you read, develop new skills, and take new classes.

Your paycheck (playing time) is not your employer’s (coaches') responsibility; it’s your responsibility. Your employer has no control over your value, but you do.

THE LONG-TERM EFFECTS OF SELF-DISCIPLINE

"What we do on some great occasion will probably depend on what we already are; and what we are will be the result of previous years of self-discipline."

-H.P. Liddon

THE MOST REWARDING THINGS

“The most rewarding things you do in life are often the ones that look like they cannot be done.”

—Arnold Palmer

PEYTON MANNING STILL STRIVES FOR IMPROVEMENT

The following written by Paul Kuharsky for ESPN.com:

How does Peyton Manning, the league’s first four-time MVP, get better for 2010?

Head coach Jim Caldwell has seen the process up close as a participant. He knows just the sort of meticulous deconstruction of the 2009 season Manning has done with quarterback coach Frank Reich in search of bullet points to concentrate on for 2010.

“He’s a very unusual guy,” Caldwell said. “Every year he kind of goes through this process where he and Frank will sit down and they’ll take a look at what he was able to accomplish last year, he’ll look at all his strengths and weaknesses. He’ll review every single snap of every game he played. And not just glancing over it, but I’m talking about detail. They’ll take notes of ever single throw, every single play call, every single check.

“And then from that he’ll go through it and then make a determination on where he thought he could improve on that setting. He’ll dissect his entire season that way and then he’ll set new goals for himself in terms of what he thinks he can accomplish. And he seems to certainly keep moving forward, each and every year you see he gets better… I don’t think there is any limitation on him, on what he can improve upon.”

How long does it take? A week? A couple?

“Months,” Caldwell said. “Plural.”

Read the entire article: http://es.pn/cAVzjI