“People may doubt what you say, but they will always believe what you do.” —Nannie Helen Burroughs It’s easy to pipe up out of frustration in the locker room and chastise your team(mates). But, what speaks loudest are the quiet, nondescript actions – or inaction – in the thousand of lost minutes that came prior. …
According to renowned Italian and EuroLeague coach, Renato Pasquali, passing is a relationship formed with others. When you do not pass to an open teammate, you are sending them a message: “I did not trust you with our team’s advantage.” Each Pass Sends a Message Here’s a look at the different types of passes and …
In looking back at the past week, I was reminded of these excerpts from Phil Jackson‘s book, Sacred Hoops: Basketball is a sport that involves the subtle interweaving of players at full speed to the point where they are thinking and moving as one. To do that successfully, they need to trust each other on …
Build a team, hire staff, recruit players, with extraordinary expectations, to do tasks extraordinarily. This will be rewarded with extraordinary results. Championship performance doesn’t necessarily result in championships. But, surrounding yourself with people who have developed championship-like habits, increases the likelihood that the championships will follow. As a worst case, they’re going to max out …
Dan Pink, in this TED Talk on the science of motivation, does a great job of ‘making a case’ that what businesses do is contradicting what science has proven to be true. There are many take-aways in this one. And, if you have 18mins to stick sit through it, it think you find it insightful. If …
How do you develop loyalty when it doesn’t exist? How do you transform an organization’s or team’s culture? What things are loyalty killers? These questions are ongoing challenges for all of us who seek to move ourselves, our teams – and others – from good to great. The Godfather, Michael Corleone, built his empire on …
Growing as a kid, I was a HUUUUUUGE(…!) Isiah Thomas and Detroit Bad Boys fan. I had pictures of Isiah, Joe Dumars and Vinnie ‘The Microwave‘ Johnson plastered all over my room. And, I even modeled my game after Zeke. My career in professional sports, in a way, followed Isiah’s path too. Like him, I …
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” —Albert Einstein Think about this quote for a second and ask yourself, does this thought apply to the way you develop an athlete? To borrow a thought from writer/teacher/coach/mentor, Dick DeVenzio, I continually ask athletes, to ask themselves, …
A newly minted friend in the US, William Sheldon, spoke about culture recently. He said, and I’m paraphrasing here, ‘culture is held (or staged) in conversations.‘ Culture is defined, and lived, in the way we talk about ourselves and each other; it’s found in our interactions. Think about that for a moment. Read it again… …
It all starts with some TLC. Not tender loving care, that is, but knowing the difference between a teaching activity, learning activity and competing activity. Let me explain… TEACHING vs. LEARNING vs. COMPETING In order for a coaching staff to run more effective practices, coaches need to apply a little TLC. T = Teaching Activity …