“Start with the end in mind.” As I think about where to start in my journey as a first year football coach, this is a quote that guides me well. There are so many different topics to discuss and tactics to debate that I had a hard time determining what to prioritize. I think the first conversation to have is around:
What we are trying to accomplish (Mission Statement)
Why it matters (5 Why exercise)
How we know when we have accomplished it (Evaluation Plan)
Team Mission Statement: The mission of the football team I am helping coach is to build great fathers and husbands. Now we enact the 5 why exercise:
Five Why Exercise:
Why? Because sports is just a vehicle for driving us towards what we really need which is a community of responsible and competent men to lead their families in our communities.
Why? Because we need these men to serve in only the ways they can to help protect, provide, and be productive so that we can continue to grow and be prosperous.
etc…
Evaluation Plan: So, how do we know if we are meeting this mission statement or not? Do we do a survey 10 years from now? I think that we look at the characteristics of what makes great husbands and fathers and try to evaluate that in the here and now. Our football team has 4 culture values and 9 inequalities:
Values:
Communication: We communicate clearly, confidently, and with a purpose.
Honor: We value others greatly and hold them in high esteem.
Integrity: We do what we say we are going to do.
Perseverance: When things get hard, we push through.
Inequalities:
Gratitude > Grumbling
Growth > Comfort
Process > Result
Conviction > Emotion
Passion > Passivity
Toughness > Talent
Victor > Victim
Love > Fear
You > Me
Our belief is that our mission will be fulfilled if we can guide and mold our players to meet these values and inequalities. So, how do we measure these? First, a quick crash course in culture…
According to Edgar Schein, there are 3 elements to culture: assumptions, values, and observable artifacts. What this means is that the things we believe or assume about the world ultimately drive our very reality. Jordan Peterson once said that “you act out what you believe”. Our values and beliefs about the world ultimately determine how we behave and the decisions that we make which are OBSERVABLE. So, our goal is to try to connect certain values and decisions to the value and then find a way that we can measure it.
Value #1: Communication
Behavior
Verbal: # of “uhms”
Verbal: # of conversations deemed “Unconfident”
Verbal: # of times we practice active listening
Non-Verbal: # of times there is no eye-contact during communication
Non-Verbal: # of times hands on hips
This is the evaluation of how we will determine if we truly value effective communication or not but there is also another element which is how we help train them to be better communicators as well. What we plan to do this year is to:
Have them reflect consistently through surveys and journaling
Have them get up in front of others to teach
Conduct pre-game speeches
Conduct 3 training sessions on effective communication from John Maxwell
1 other training on organized thinking such as logic
Value #2: Honor
Behavior
Non-verbal communication: # of times eye contact does not exist between parties
# of times an upper-classman serves an underclassman
Quality of difficult conversations
# of times we uplift one another with words of affirmation
# of times someone takes extreme ownership and accepts blame
Value #3: Integrity
Behavior
# of violations of the contract
Value #4: Perseverance
Behavior
An assortment of 4th Quarter statistics in season
Non-verbal: sitting or laying down after conditioning
Non-verbal: Hands on hips or bending over after conditioning
HR monitors during workout sessions
Bench noise when falling behind in a game
Number of times a player is willing to have a crucial conversation to hold a teammate accountable to team rules
We do the same things for the inequalities and then come up with a score that we determine before the season that will point to us both objectively improving our culture and also meeting our mission statement.