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:
- Why do we exist?
- How do we behave?
- What do we do?
- What is our strategy?
- What is most important, right now?
- 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
- The Advantage, by Patrick Lencioni
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, by Patrick Lencioni
- The Ideal Team Player, by Patrick Lencioni
- Cracking the Code: The Winning Ryder Cup Strategy: Make it Work for You, by Paul Anzinger and De. Ron Braund
- 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.
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