Winter One Without Hockey | Part Two: For Coaches

By Rick Van Arnam

In a prior article, I wrote that winter 2017-2018 is my first one without hockey since 1998.  And by that I meant it is the first winter in nearly two decades that one of my kids is not playing hockey.  In that article, I shared a few lessons that I learned for parents of aspiring college hockey players.   

This article is for coaches and rises above the dedicated work they already do with their teams to challenge them to think even bigger.  This article encourages coaches to think about the program they lead, and comes not from a position of understanding X’s and O’s of hockey, because I don’t, but from a perspective gained in working with leaders to build healthy organizations.  That, I believe, is the desire of every coach responsible for a hockey program, within which sits the team.

My work today consists of helping executive teams and their organizations create healthy organizations by following models and processes by New York Times Best-Selling Author Patrick Lencioni.  Lencioni may be best known for his book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.  This is an amazing book about teams and one that is read by team members and leaders everywhere: across all business segments, within large and small organizations, and at all levels of sports.  Just last season, Aaron Rodgers cited the book as a helpful resource that helped turn the Packers’ season around after an abysmal start.  You can read Rodgers’ article by clicking here.

Over the years, I have given copies of this book to numerous coaches and have had several conversations with coaches about the book’s concepts, especially around accountability.   Universally, they love the book, but I’m left with believing that most coaches don’t know how to implement the book’s ideas.  More importantly, they are missing a guide to help them think outside of the locker room and think about the program.  What follows are my observations to help coaches build healthy programs and teams.

Slow Down…to Speed Up

In the work I do to build cohesive teams, we spend a lot of time early on slowing down to work on trust, to agree upon a few norms to guide behavior, to set a new standard for peer-to-peer accountability, and to agree upon the collective results.  In my opinion, there is no shortcut to this – it requires a team spending a different kind of time together outside of a locker room.  This time should be without distractions and in a different setting, one conducive to getting to know one another at a deeper level.  It is even different than the time teams often spend on what is called “team building” which often includes tackling physical challenges or solving outdoor puzzles together.  I believe these exercises can help, but should be a reward or complement the actual work of putting members in a room to have real conversations about one another’s backgrounds, personal challenges, and personality preferences.  Coming out of those conversations should be decisions that are agreed upon in terms of what is acceptable behavior inside and outside of the locker room.  That really establishes the baseline for accountability and permission for peer-to-peer accountability as the team’s standard.

In nearly two decades working with all kinds of teams, the number one obstacle heard for not doing this is, “we don’t have the time to do this kind of work.”  Think of this time as slowing down, to speed up, like a race car that breaks going into a corner so it can speed up in the straightaways.  If you truly want to build a cohesive team, you have to start by investing some amount of time in the process, and I think it can be started in one full day.  If you want to go faster, avoid drama, and really go after peer-to-peer accountability toward a collective result, slow down up front.  You’ll be glad you did.

The Locker Room v. The Program

This is the area in which I think coaches have the greatest opportunity to create a sustainable, competitive advantage.  Read this carefully!

In his 2012 book, The Advantage, Patrick Lencioni lays out four disciplines necessary to create a healthy organization.  The four disciplines are: Create a Cohesive Leadership Team, Create Clarity, Over-Communicate Clarity, and Reinforce Clarity.  Here, I want to focus on the second discipline, Create Clarity.

If Creating a Cohesive [Leadership] Team is about the locker room, Creating Clarity is about the Program.  Coaches spend a lot of time managing the locker room – who should be in the locker room, who plays where and how much, what kind of systems should be run, and how is the team’s chemistry.  These are all good and important topics that need weekly attention. 

I’m not convinced, though, that coaches know the answers to a few basic questions about their program.  If the coaching staff together were to answer and align on the answers to these questions, it would actually make managing the locker room from week-to-week easier.  And here is the kicker…I actually believe that this kind of clarity will lead to a program that wins more than it loses.

The Six Critical Questions are:

1. Why do we exist?
2. How do we behave?
3. What do we do?
4. What is our strategy?
5. What is most important, right now?
6. Who must do what?

Start at the Beginning

All six questions should be answered, but some are easier than others and some will change year-to-year.  The answer to question three, What do we do?, should be simple and straightforward without a lot of adjectives.  It may be as simple as, “We play college hockey.”   Question five, What is most important, right now?, should change annually. It should be the one big thing, thematically, that the team should focus on, probably for a season.  It becomes a qualitative Rally Cry that the team adopts as a solitary, overarching focus for the season to improve desired quantitative outcomes like wins/losses, goals for/goals against, or power play/penalty kill effectiveness.  It could be, purely as example, Road Wins or Prove People Wrong. 

The answer to all six questions are used as a system to lead the program; the first two questions are the most important and shouldn’t change.  The answers to those first two questions should guide recruiting activities, be used to reward players, and to make discipline decisions.  To develop clarity, start by answering the first two questions. 

I suspect that most followers of college basketball fall into one of two camps with regard to Mike Krzyzewski’s handling of Grayson Allen, Duke’s talented shooting guard with a track record for tripping opposing players.  Coach K. suspended Grayson Allen indefinitely last December after the guard’s third tripping infraction.  Allen was re-instated after one game. 

Whether you agree with Coach K’s handling of the situation or not, he had it right when he said, “I’m a teacher and a coach. And I’m responsible for that kid.”  Most who play at Duke, or any other Division I program, will never play professional sports.  I think Coach K knows that and that is why he felt that removing Allen’s captaincy and re-installing him after one game was what that player needed to develop as a person and team member.  Coach K believes, I think, that the purpose of Duke basketball has a lot more to do with teaching and coaching young men to become better men than it does winning National Championships.  Winning National Championships is simply what happens when you combine that purpose with clarity around the remaining five questions.

The second question focuses on core values or what I like to call the “secret sauce” that differentiates one program from another.  This should also be about fit – does a player “fit” the program? At its most effective best, I like to see Core Values described uniquely and authentically.  Core Values are more often discovered within a team’s most valuable players who may not always be the players with the most talent.  To discover these values, I think a coaching staff could simply identify who these players are, maybe looking back over the past few years, and describe the players who would be missed the most if not on the team.  What is it about those players that make them stand out?  Those two or three desired characteristics form the basis for core values – those traits that are over-communicated and that you recruit for, instill in the team, and reinforce daily.

Core values should not be confused with permission-to-play values or those minimal behavioral standards required to even get a look.  A phone call should answer the question if a player has permission-to-play values; core value evaluation takes longer and requires observation and conversation with pointed questions.

The Hardest of the All Behaviors: Peer-to-Peer Accountability

Let’s face it; peer-to-peer accountability is difficult.  In all of my work with teams, most of which has been with adults in corporate settings, the hardest of the five behaviors to master is accountability.  If you are like me, you may have been taught that it is a parent’s job, a boss’ job, or a coach’s job to hold individuals accountable.  While that does work, it may achieve only compliance and not commitment.  On teams, commitment is the goal.  If peer-to-peer accountability is difficult for older adults, it is even harder on teams where there are classes (freshmen, sophomore, etc.), annual transitions, and youth.   Nevertheless, I think it should be pursued.  And here is how.

As a team, simply have team members discuss (see Slow Down … to Speed Up) and agree on a few standard operating norms for team behavior.  This should be done with all team members present and in an environment where all have a chance to weigh-in.  Weighing in allows for better buy-in.  If team members agree together, it should be easier, not necessarily easy, to address a team member when that standard is not met.  Ideally, that would be in front of the team.  

I’ll admit that this process is easier on paper than in practice, but I don’t think it shouldn’t become the expectation.  Where leadership and coaching becomes an art is to develop a sense for what behaviors should be addressed in front of the team and what behaviors should be addressed one-on-one.  I believe if the expectation is that behavioral standards are addressed in front of the team, team members won’t want to be that player who lets his or her teammates down.  Even if the discussion takes place one-on-one, I encourage a report-out to the team afterward.  If there was a reason to have a one-on-one meeting, everyone knows it.  The report-out allows everyone to hear from the coach and/or player involved.  This avoids speculation and creates clarity on the team about what happened, what was done, and allows the team to agree on what is shared or not shared, outside of the locker room.

At the end of the day peer-to-peer accountability is not just about the team, but also about the program.  When faced with the most difficult situations around accountability, reach back to the program’s reason for existing; it will make it clearer what should be done.

Best Advice | Go Offsite, Quarterly

To answer the Six Critical Questions, a coach should take the staff offsite and work through the questions together.  If you are a coach and have a minimalist staff, I think it is okay to invite some outside wisdom, knowledge, and experience to help.  But keep the group small.  Read The Advantage, especially the section on Discipline 2.  Keep your answers short.  Name the core values uniquely and authentically and be able to describe each in clear behaviors. I think you could get through all six questions in a day.

Once a quarter, spend a day offsite.  Look inward at your staff – build that team.  Spend time going through the Six Critical Questions evaluating how well you are doing as a program against those answers. Spend time planning and evaluating around Question 5, which is likely, the current season’s Rally Cry.  Think of these quarterly offsite meetings as your chance to work on the program versus in the program.

Establish a cadence to build a cohesive team, which likely begins with an offsite day as early as possible to onboard new team members and re-set the team’s playbook for the upcoming season. The playbook I’m talking about is an overlay to any playbook containing the systems a team will run.  It should be a simple, one or two-page “cheat sheet” that contains the agreed upon team norms and behavioral standards that the team reviews weekly and talks about frequently.

Creating a healthy program may not be the first reason a coach was attracted to the position, but it will make the journey more enjoyable, rewarding, and fun – which likely were the reasons to get behind the bench in the first place.  

Best Resources

1. The Advantage, by Patrick Lencioni
2. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, by Patrick Lencioni
3. The Ideal Team Player, by Patrick Lencioni
4. Cracking the Code: The Winning Ryder Cup Strategy: Make it Work for You, by Paul Anzinger and De. Ron Braund
5. Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, by Daniel James Brown

About the Author

Rick Van Arnam is a Principal Consultant with The Table Group and founder of Paine Mountain, Inc., a Veteran Owned Small Business.  He works with CEO’s and executive teams to help create cohesive teams and healthy organizations.

He is an avid hockey fan and spent countless winter hours flooding a Vermont pond where he and his wife Connie raised their family.  They now reside in Wilmington, North Carolina. 

Winter One Without Hockey | Part One: For Parents

By Rick Van Arnam

Winter 2017-2018 will be my first one without hockey since 1998; by that I mean, the first winter in nearly two decades in which my son or daughter is not playing organized hockey.  2003 and 2010 were partial winters, in a sense, because I was deployed to Afghanistan, but still I remember knowing at odd hours Kabul time when Connor and Elana were stepping on the ice in a rink somewhere in New England.  In another sense, there were partial winters because of concussions, other injuries, or study abroad. Even in those partial winters when hockey was dormant, there was always a confident hope that I would again see one or both play while I stood in the stands with a cup of coffee.  But today, that confident hope has thoroughly melted, replaced by wonderful memories that have far outskated fewer disappointments. 

What follows are a few lessons I’ve learned.  These are tailored specifically for parents whose kids aspire to play college hockey.  Part two will offer some advice for coaches. 

The First Question

If your child is good enough to get interest from a college coach, the first question that will be asked is, “How are your grades?”  The first truth is that by the time a coach approaches your skater, he/she will already have formed an opinion on your player’s ability to compete at the college level.  The second truth is that the coach’s opinion will be more accurate and better informed than yours.  Playing college hockey is more about the classroom than the rink.  Make sure your player is doing all he or she can in the classroom to not just make it onto campus, but to confidently succeed in the classroom.  The final truth under this heading is that there are quite a few players still playing hockey in college not just because of their hockey ability, but because their academic ability compensates for some hockey skill that is lacking.

The Better-Prepared Person

A college assistant coach gave me this advice when we were weighing an option to send our eldest child to private school.  By this time our family faced a convergence of challenges, which included a deployment to Afghanistan, fewer hockey options in our rural setting, and the desire to ensure our kids were being challenged academically.  We did have junior hockey options and a local university at which our kids could take classes supplementing their high school curriculum, but life-balance would not have been in-balance. The advice that we took was established on the truth that no matter what decision we made, playing college hockey was not a guarantee.  What was far more certain, though, was that a student who graduates from a challenging high school program – for us this was prep school – would likely emerge a better-prepared person.  It is difficult to argue against the rigor of a prep or private school where student-athletic-life balance is emphasized and resources are deeper.  If a student takes advantage of all that is offered, he or she will emerge a better-prepared person during the college admission process - and for life ahead.

What a Hillbilly Learned and How It Applies to Private School

                                                                                              

In years spent listening in the bleachers and arena lobbies, the one comment I heard over and over again from parents is that “we can’t afford private school.”  Private school may not be free and there can be costs not on the bill, but there is financial aid available – sometimes abundant financial aid.  My advice here is simply to do the investigative work.

In his book, Hillbilly Elegy, author JD Vance makes a case for tapping into “social capital”: mining a network of interested mentors, extended family and friends to consider otherwise unthinkable options.  By way of Appalachia, the Marine Corps, and The Ohio State University, he discovered that Yale Law School was actually more affordable than state law schools and that his candidacy was made more attractive because of his personal history, which while it had achievement, was filled with dysfunction. 

I think it is fair to expect some sacrifice, but it is also fair to remember the better-prepared person advice.  You will never know what might be possible if you don’t ask. If your player is achieving in the classroom, please recall the first question advice, because that gives even more reason to investigate.

Skates and Cleats

This scenario is no joke.  Every spring, USA Hockey Camps kick into high gear and are soon followed by a circuit of summer hockey schools.  At both, there will be a classroom session where players and sometimes parents hear the advice to play multiple sports.  One would think the advice is somehow paid advertising by soccer, lacrosse, or baseball coaches in the way that it is so easily dismissed.  For the most talented and high-potential hockey players, there will come a time when solely focusing on hockey will be the right decision, but for most players, the decision is made way too early and perhaps should not be made at all.  Truthfully, had our kids not attended private school, we likely would have followed in this trap.  But from my experience, I watched one of my kids make the largest hockey strides in the two years he returned to playing three sports (soccer, hockey, baseball/lacrosse).  Those were also prep school years where playing a different sport each season was required.

The arguments in favor of this are simple – playing multiple sports develops the entire athlete and provides a break from hockey.  And there are some compelling examples.  The most intriguing example might be Chris Hogan, who excelled at football and lacrosse in high school, and played lacrosse for Penn State graduating in three years. He then returned to football using his final year of eligibility to play at Monmouth University.   Hogan recently helped the New England Patriots win their fifth Super Bowl.  Another example is St. Lawrence University’s all-time leading scorer among defensemen, Gavin Bayruether.  Bayruether played multiple sports at Holderness School and many thought he would play college lacrosse early in his prep career.  In lacrosse, he played attack and had a knack for both scoring goals and dishing out assists in the close quarters around the net.  Those skills translate well to the rink and help explain why he has been so effective at getting pucks on the net.  He will have a legitimate shot at making an NHL roster in the coming seasons and scored in his first AHL game one week after playing in his final college game.    If you enjoy a sport, don’t stop playing it just because you think you have to in order to get better at hockey.  Think of it as developing the athletic skills that will multiply your hockey skills.

Only a Few

Less than a few players in a Pee Wee team photo, despite all those who want to, will actually play hockey in college.  And the one or two who will make it might surprise you.  The reasons for this are numerous and include loss of interest, injury, another sport, stalled development, poor off-ice decision-making, and grades.  Unfortunately, I think most parents understand that playing college hockey is somewhat a law of numbers and will encourage year-round hockey or specialization.  If you accept that playing college hockey is limited, consider the next piece of advice.

Observe and Hold Back

Does your player, on his or her own, pick up a stick and practice? Find ice? Shoot pucks? Make up crazy games inside and outside the house that involve any shape of hockey stick and projectile?  If your player is spending hours each week doing those things, without you insisting, laying on a guilt trip, or offering an allowance, take that as a positive sign.  The motivation to play hockey has to be internal.  It is not something you can pass on, force, or buy.  By simply observing, parents will note where passion really lies.  Introduce activities, but observe for passion.  Even DIII hockey programs will begin off-ice workouts as soon as school convenes and will continue some form of workout through the spring semester. It’s a long season; passion is what makes it fun and worth it. 

Three Questions

I learned this from Harry Sheehy, who is the Athletic Director (AD) at Dartmouth and former head basketball coach and AD at Williams College.  He came to Bear Pond Books in Montpelier, Vermont to talk about his book, Raising a Team Player.  He advised asking your player three questions after a game.  The first question is, “Did you have fun?”  That question reminds both parent and player that the greatest game on Earth is really played because it is fun.  Listen to an NHL player being interviewed before a playoff game or an outdoor contest.  It’s not scripted that the word “fun” is in every interview.   Hockey is a fun game.  Period.  Not unlike the Observe and Hold Back advice, ask and listen.  You’ll gain some important insight.

The second question is, “What do you remember most?” and the third question is, “Now what are you going to work on?”  These last two questions are open-ended and invite an open-ended answer.  Those questions should make for a better conversation and help you avoid becoming the overbearing parent in the car on the ride home.

Final Disclaimer

Winter one without hockey will be just fine.  Like retiring from the National Guard, I will continue to discover the joy in a free weekend.  I’ll subscribe to the NHL network and watch nightly.  I’ll continue to follow college hockey and look forward to the NCAA tournament in March and April.  I’ll take my son to the University of Michigan for a pair of weekend of games at Yost.  

Like every valuable lesson in life, I learned these from the mistakes and missteps I made along the way.  Admitting and sharing these lessons help me enjoy even more the wonderful memories unique to a hockey family.

About the Author

Rick Van Arnam is a Principal Consultant with The Table Group and founder of Paine Mountain, Inc., a Veteran Owned Small Business.  He works with CEO’s and executive teams to help create cohesive teams and healthy organizations.

He is an avid hockey fan and spent countless winter hours flooding a Vermont pond where he and his wife Connie raised their family.  They now reside in Wilmington, North Carolina.