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Post by groundchuck on Nov 15, 2016 14:15:47 GMT -6
It is the time of year when most of us are done. We are looking at the off-season, the longest nine months of our lives. One of the things we have done is an off-season character and leadership program. I am sure many of you have done the same in an effort to create, teach, and coach more leadership.
My question is this: Is it actually effective? To some extent your alphas are your alphas aren't they? If the alphas are idiots no amount of reading books, talking, and listening to speakers if going to help is it? Last year we had one of our most organized off-season programs to this respect. The group was not populated by many seniors.
If the alphas have turds as parents, and they are turds, and they lead the team to turdville did the character development program do any good or were the kids just going through the motions so say yeah I was there.
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Leaders
Nov 15, 2016 14:26:11 GMT -6
Post by coachluey on Nov 15, 2016 14:26:11 GMT -6
I'm of the same opinion BUT sometimes a kid put into a leadership role can surprise you with how well they lead. In our offseason program we have 6 leaders and in some cases they are great because they can control the group, get things done, and be successful. Others just cannot take a leadership role no matter how you teach them, they are followers in ever since of the word.
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Post by PSS on Nov 15, 2016 14:30:41 GMT -6
It is the time of year when most of us are done. We are looking at the off-season, the longest nine months of our lives. One of the things we have done is an off-season character and leadership program. I am sure many of you have done the same in an effort to create, teach, and coach more leadership. My question is this: Is it actually effective? To some extent your alphas are your alphas aren't they? If the alphas are idiots no amount of reading books, talking, and listening to speakers if going to help is it? Last year we had one of our most organized off-season programs to this respect. The group was not populated by many seniors.
If the alphas have turds as parents, and they are turds, and they lead the team to turdville did the character development program do any good or were the kids just going through the motions so say yeah I was there. Two years ago we went through the same thing. Great offseason but no senior leadership. We had several of our sophomore kids in the group. It led to a 1-9 season last year. A lot of things contributed to the poor season but I would say that the lack of senior leadership. That leads us to his year. Those sophomores are now seniors. They fed off of the disappointing season last year and pushed the rest of the team to work harder and to dedicate themselves to summer workouts. We've lost 3 games, one to the 4th rank team in the state (lost by 17), one to the 9th rank team in the state (lost by six), and another one on a last second FG. I really believe that the lack of good senior leadership can be the downfall. But you have to have leaders that are mature and goal driven. They know the heartbeat of the team and their team mates listen to them. Our team votes on our captains and they are the two best leaders we have.
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Post by Coach Vint on Nov 16, 2016 8:53:29 GMT -6
Understand that you don't choose your leaders, but you choose how you develop leaders. We made the mistake several years ago of choosing our captains based on who we wanted to lead. The problem is, two of the four weren't leaders. They were great kids, but not great leaders. From then on we had the kids vote on "leaders." When we divided them into teams we had 8 to 10 teams with a leader for each team. We took the top vote getters to be the team captains. The kids usually do a very good job of picking leaders. I worked with PSS last year, and the kids did a great job of picking captains and leaders.
We then ran a leadership development program for our leaders. We met with the leaders for 30 minutes for four days to do an introduction to leadership. We then met with them twice a week for 10 minutes. We developed their leadership skills. We had criteria they had to meet to stay a leader, and they had perks that went along with leading an offseason team. The entire team went through a character education lesson four days a week for 10 minutes a day.
We started this after our 2000 team severely underachieved. We went 5-5 with the most talented group I have ever been around. We blamed our leadership, but we should have blamed ourselves. We did nothing to develop our leaders. From then on we made a conscious decision to develop our leaders and teach leadership. We followed that up with several season where we overachieved. We had talent, but our leadership and character helped us to maximize our talent.
For materials we used John Maxwell, Stephen Covey, and Zig Ziglar Materials. I like The R.E.A.L. Man Program for teaching character. We took the off-season leaders to a NY Jets practice where they got to meet with Herm Edwards and a couple of the Jets. I was coaching in NYC at the time and the Jets and Coach Edwards were awesome!
Put your kids in positions where they have to lead. Put challenges in front of them where they have to lift up their group. Give them gradually increasing responsibility, and make sure they have clear expectations. Take some time to teach your leaders to lead and you will see better leadership. I don't care what your record is, there is something very satisfying to know you made the most out of the talent you were given.
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Leaders
Nov 16, 2016 9:37:59 GMT -6
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Post by nltdiego on Nov 16, 2016 9:37:59 GMT -6
Understand that you don't choose your leaders, but you choose how you develop leaders. We made the mistake several years ago of choosing our captains based on who we wanted to lead. The problem is, two of the four weren't leaders. They were great kids, but not great leaders. From then on we had the kids vote on "leaders." When we divided them into teams we had 8 to 10 teams with a leader for each team. We took the top vote getters to be the team captains. The kids usually do a very good job of picking leaders. I worked with PSS last year, and the kids did a great job of picking captains and leaders. We then ran a leadership development program for our leaders. We met with the leaders for 30 minutes for four days to do an introduction to leadership. We then met with them twice a week for 10 minutes. We developed their leadership skills. We had criteria they had to meet to stay a leader, and they had perks that went along with leading an offseason team. The entire team went through a character education lesson four days a week for 10 minutes a day. We started this after our 2000 team severely underachieved. We went 5-5 with the most talented group I have ever been around. We blamed our leadership, but we should have blamed ourselves. We did nothing to develop our leaders. From then on we made a conscious decision to develop our leaders and teach leadership. We followed that up with several season where we overachieved. We had talent, but our leadership and character helped us to maximize our talent. For materials we used John Maxwell, Stephen Covey, and Zig Ziglar Materials. I like The R.E.A.L. Man Program for teaching character. We took the off-season leaders to a NY Jets practice where they got to meet with Herm Edwards and a couple of the Jets. I was coaching in NYC at the time and the Jets and Coach Edwards were awesome! Put your kids in positions where they have to lead. Put challenges in front of them where they have to lift up their group. Give them gradually increasing responsibility, and make sure they have clear expectations. Take some time to teach your leaders to lead and you will see better leadership. I don't care what your record is, there is something very satisfying to know you made the most out of the talent you were given. Do you do the team one during the season? Pre season? What are some examples?
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Leaders
Nov 16, 2016 10:23:33 GMT -6
Post by Coach Vint on Nov 16, 2016 10:23:33 GMT -6
The best time to start is during the first week of off-season. We did character education with everyone from day one. We then had what was essentially a boot camp that took us up through the Thanksgiving break. We voted for leaders when we came back.
Once we had our leaders we started our leadership development program for the leaders. We did this for 6 weeks. 3 before Christmas and 3 weeks after. It was just the leaders. After 6 weeks we began another section, and the original leaders each picked a person from their group to go through the 2nd section of the program. It was very beneficial.
The team character education was 10 minutes a day, 4 days a week. Everyone participated. We introduced a lesson on Monday. On Tuesday and Wednesday we broke into our groups. Thursday we came back together as a team to review. It was very beneficial. Our kids grew and matured because of this.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 16, 2016 11:05:56 GMT -6
I look forward to the more experienced coaches replying to this as it's something my HC and I were talking about yesterday.
We got bounced out of the playoffs in the first week this year. We had a dozen seniors on the team, only 3-4 were upset with the result. Part of that is because our school has a long history of coming in last place in league and never even sniffing the playoffs so to make it to playoffs is a satisfactory finish for a lot of these kids. Our HC, who started a couple years ago, is working to change that mentality. The current junior class (next year's seniors) is thin on numbers and leadership. The bulk of next year's leaders will likely be juniors (this year's sophomores), primarily because they have the drive and will to win as well as the charisma to pull it off. With VERY few exceptions, (in my opinion) leaders and non-leaders are born that way. You can make them better and focus them but you're going to get a relatively little change for your efforts.
To me, leaders are like salesmen. The best salesmen I've ever known had relatively little education. Some of the worst salesmen that I've ever known had degrees in marketing and MBA's but couldn't sell an iced tea to a dying man in the desert. Your mileage may vary.
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Post by lochness on Nov 16, 2016 11:53:08 GMT -6
It is the time of year when most of us are done. We are looking at the off-season, the longest nine months of our lives. One of the things we have done is an off-season character and leadership program. I am sure many of you have done the same in an effort to create, teach, and coach more leadership. My question is this: Is it actually effective? To some extent your alphas are your alphas aren't they? If the alphas are idiots no amount of reading books, talking, and listening to speakers if going to help is it? Last year we had one of our most organized off-season programs to this respect. The group was not populated by many seniors. If the alphas have turds as parents, and they are turds, and they lead the team to turdville did the character development program do any good or were the kids just going through the motions so say yeah I was there. In cases like these, your efforts may not have the desired short-term impact on your program, but it may have tremendous long-term impact on some of the individuals you've invested the time in.
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