Coaching Mastery course with John O'Sullivan & Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch - Part 5

Coaching Mastery course with John O'Sullivan & Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch - Part 5 - Captains

Published: Fri, 07/29/16

Yes!! You are making winning the right way your habit by filling your mind with fresh, new, positive momentum!

Coaching Mastery – with John O’Sullivan

Many of you know that I work closely with John O’Sullivan and the Changing the Game Project. John’s is an internationally known writer and speaker, as well as a former professional soccer player and longtime coach. We share a lot of each others content as we work to transform youth sports and make it a better place for coaches to coach, and for players to play.

This week – for the first and only time in 2016 – John is releasing his amazing online video series called “Coaching Mastery.” He first ran this course in the Fall of 2014, and since then coaches from nearly every sport, from over a dozen different continents, have called it one of the most unique and inspirational coaching courses they had ever done. I was lucky enough to be one of the select few coaches John offered it to last year, and the things I learned really blew me away.

See, this course is not your traditional X’s and O’s course. It is all about things such as the psychology of performance and leadership, how to build a winning team culture, and even how to educate your team parents so they don’t drive you up the wall. He has some amazing interviews with some of the world’s leading experts in sport science and psychology, coaching, and leadership. The things you will learn in this course will take yoru coaching, and your teams, to a whole new level.

This course is truly one of a kind.

If you are interested in this type of coaching, John has asked me to invite all of you to his FREE video series, where over the next 2 weeks you will learn many of these things, and hear from some amazing experts. You also get a free eBook copy of his international bestseller Changing The Game: The Parents Guide to Raising Happy, High-Performing Athletes and Giving Youth Sports Back to Our Kids just for registering for the FREE series. All you have to do to get over an hour of this one of a kind coaching and leadership training, plus a free book, is go here and sign up:

Click here to get started

I know I am looking forward to the 2016 version of Coaching Mastery and I am confident that many of you will get a ton from this free video series. Its all new content, and I can’t wait to get started.

Again, if you want to join, just sign up here.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this course.

(I am an affiliate for this course, so if you decide to sign up – please sign up through one of the links above – Thanks!!)

Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch

Part 5 - Captains

It's easy for coaches to be control freaks. I am. It's very hard for me to give up control of anything. I have trouble giving up control to assistant coaches, so it's even harder for me to give up control to kids, i.e. captains.

But that is the old me, the one who often would get distracted by winning instead of developing young men. And ironically, the winning actually happens more for teams that have full buy-in. So this has become a huge learning point for me, developing captains that lead the team. Here is the breakdown:

Why are they important?

It’s your chance to develop the next generation of leaders! Teach them to be problem solvers, don’t do it all for them.
Buy-in. Work with the captains for establishing your team’s standards. Brainstorm with them on how to handle discipline – it starts with them!
Ask the captains what they are seeing in the game. Gametime should be minimal instruction – let the captains be your vocal leaders. Janis Meredith from Positive Sports Parenting teaches parents to use the acronym WAIT – Why Am I Talking – this often applies to coaches too. Listen more, talk less.

How do you pick 'em?

Your captains are held to a higher standard. If they are cutting corners when you are running laps then they probably aren’t good candidates to be a good captain.

There a tons of theories on how to pick them: do the coaches pick them, do the players vote, or a combination of these choices (coaches narrow it down to 5 then players vote, or visa versa.) I don’t know if there is an absolute wrong or right, but here’s what I have found works well:

Let the kids vote for 3 people
Tally the results, then look it over to see if there is a big gap between the totals. That can help you decide if there are 2, 3, or 4 captains.
You then pull aside each of them individually and let them know the responsibilities of being a captain. This is your chance as a coach to vet out anybody you have a concern over.

When do you pick em?

Waiting until the season starts is too late for a school team. Ideally at the end of a season, have all the non-seniors (returning players) vote for next year’s captains. That way you can be meeting in the offseason with the captains to plan for next year’s season.

How do I train them?

My friend Adam Bradley has developed a resource that is entirely dedicated to training captains how to lead teams. The cool thing is knows kids have short attention spans so he has made all the lessons in his 8 week character development series into games. It's an awesome resource, go check it out:

Leademup.com

What about non-recurring teams (travel teams, youth sports teams)?

All of the above applies, except for the timing. You probably will want to have several weeks of practice then have the team vote. Since you won’t have the benefit of an offseason to plan with the captains, the coaches will have to establish the standards and get buy in from the captains as early as possible.

Next week we'll talk about your biggest supporters, or your biggest headache: how to partner with parents in building your championship culture.

Team first - Link to post
Team Cornerstones - Link to post
Positive Environment - Which dog are you feeding? - Link to post
Recognition & Rewards - Link to post
Captains
Parents
Building Trust
Seek First to Understand
Coaching your own kid
Perspective & Giving Back

NEW WYC PODCASTS

WYC 086 – Championship Culture – Live from the Way of Champions Transformational Coaching Conference

Today’s episode is a bit different from the norm, instead of interviewing a great coach, this week’s episode is a compilation of the interviews I did while at the conference. There are a few sound bites with me sharing a lesson I learned, and definitely don’t miss the 18 minute interview with the leaders – I call them the 3 J’s – Dr. Jerry Lynch, John O’Sullivan, and James Leath. So hopefully this is a great way for you to be able to absorb a little of the great content even if you weren’t able to make it out to Colorado.

Go to podcast episode

I love hearing your stories and experiences, both the positive ones and frustrations you're having - just reply to this email and it goes straight to my inbox.

Make winning the right way your habit starting today,
Craig

Craig Haworth is the founder of Winning Youth Coaching, a site dedicated to helping coaches and parents make youth sports an awesome experience for the youth and the parents. He interviews coaches from around the world and posts them on his podcast, which currently has over 85 interviews and has been downloaded over 80,000 times. He writes a weekly note to coaches and parents. He is married to his high-school sweetheart and they share the blessing of 3 children and live in Franklin, TN. You can sign-up for his weekly note here, find him on twitter at @craighaworth1, or visit his website winningyouthcoaching.com.

"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men"

- Frederick Douglass