Don Meyer Leadership Seminar: Nashville, September 6, 2011
1. The following statement was discussed during the workshop: “Your example is not the main thing in influencing others; it is the only thing.” Explain what this means. Provide examples.
If you are in a position of leadership, people are watching. Depending at what level or what kind of leader you are depends on the eyes that are upon you. The words that come out of your mouth mean little compared to the actions that you perform. Those actions must connect to your words or you lose all credibility. Credibility may be considered “the only thing” when it comes to leadership because without it, you are not a leader.
Examples are dependent, often, on the opinion of the person observing. Certain individuals like a basketball college coach like John Calipari and even President Barack Obama is dependent on your opinion of them if you believe that they “walk the walk”. I believe it has more to do with the leaders that are in the daily lives of those that they lead. When you see a teacher/coach/administrator arrested for a DUI, the actions are not consistent with positive leadership. It is hard for these leaders to recover to the point that they were before their failure. Unfortunately, many of the greatest leaders/people that have ever walked the earth will be known only to God as they did their good deeds by not keeping score and under the anonymity of life.
2. Explain the acronym “TEAMS” and describe what each letter represents. How do you plan to apply these characteristics in your professional and/or personal life.
TEAMS – Tough, Effort, Attitude, Motives, Servant Leader
Tough is mental toughness. Mental toughness is everything. You can be physically tough, emotionally tough and any other kind of “tough” you want to be, but mental toughness is what gets us through anything. We must be mentally “tough”.
Effort is how much time you are putting in. If you are putting in the extra time and working intelligently, you are showing good effort. Lots of movement done in an ignorant way is not effort.
Attitude. I think the best example of that comes from the book Fish! By Stephen Lundin, Harry Paul, and John Christenson in which they describe how we choose our attitude…every day. A positive attitude is easy when things are going well, but when they are not; we must continue to be positive which takes us back to mental “toughness”.
Motives describe why we do what we do. Are we doing them for us to look good or to genuinely help? I think this is something that we struggle with if we strive to have unselfish motives. Because as we do things to help, it is natural for us to feel good about it, to want attention for something we have done therefore we must fight to be less selfish. By doing so, we will lose the negative motives.
Servant leader is everything. I have found that the more I care less about myself, the better my life is. I think the goal here is to give it all, as Jesus Christ did for us, and expect nothing in return. This is another thing we will struggle with as we grow in being a true Servant Leader.
I have tried to implement these in my daily life as teacher, coach, but more importantly as father. It is my job as the man of my house to make sure I practice these parts of TEAMS and to pass them on to my children. I realize also that I am going to fail, probably more often than is needed, but I have to get up, dust myself off and continue on.
3. Explain the “Lamar Hunt Goals” and describe how you plan to apply these goals.
1. Determine what you really want.
2. Find out what it will cost.
3. Decide if you want to pay the price.
We use this often in dealing with our basketball program. I coach a high school program, so we get quite a few players each year who start with conditioning and don’t make it through. It doesn’t make them bad people if they do not decide to continue they have just decided what they really want and they are not ready to pay the cost.
We also use it with players that do make it through our conditioning. What do they want? Do they want to start? Do they want to play? Do they want to just be on the team? In each example they have to decide the cost for what they want and they have to decide to be willing to pay the price. However, hard work does not guarantee success, but not working hard does guarantee failure.
We have found that when we have unhappy parents and maybe even unhappy players when we sit the players down and have an honest conversation, they admit that their decision to pay the price does not equal what they said they wanted. However, that price does equal what they really want or are “ok” with because of what they are willing to give up.
4. Explain how the “Sound, Solid, and Simple” concepts are applied to teamwork. Describe how you plan to implement these concepts.
In all things, we should be Sound. Sound is described by Coach Meyer as fundamentals and servant leadership. We need to have the basics to anything that we do in life or with our basketball program. Start from the ground level, build to the big picture and then let them play.
Solid is character, team attitude and work ethic. We hope that from day 1 through the summer our example as a coaching staff and what we will accept shows what we believe solid is.
Simple is what I call the KISS method. We try to implement the keep it simple stupid for the players, but also for me as a coach. I believe that if you are sound and solid, you can be simple and be highly successful.
Bob Knight believed that if you did what you did it wouldn’t matter what the other team did. They played man to man defense and ran a motion offense his entire career. Teams were able to scout them and know what was going to happen, but his teams were able to do what they do, to execute.
5. “Get mad; Cool Down; Act Mad” – Explain the concept. What does it mean to you?
It means to respond with wisdom, love, firmness, and positive self-control when not happy with behavior, performance or the response of others.
What this means to me is to not react with our first feelings when not happy. I believe that the first thing we do when confronted with something negative is to react in a negative way. It may be saying something negative or, God forbid, doing something physically that hurts someone. This means to get mad, but don’t react. Calm down, think it out, and then let them know in a firm way that you are not happy. We will do less harm to them and ourselves if we act in this way.
6. Explain “Mark McCormack’s Rules” – How do you plan to implement these rules?
Mark McCormack believes that you should get a system, any system; stick to it; and write everything down. In basketball, you should get a style of play in all ways that you believe in and when things are not going your way, stick to your beliefs.
Last year we struggled and many people wanted us to change what we were doing and we did manipulate a few things. But we stuck to the “style” that we had come up with maybe to the detriment of the team, but we stuck to our style. Changing styles in the middle of the season would not have made things better and may have made things worse for us.
We have always written down our practice schedules, but I plan on writing down even more stuff. I plan on carrying a notebook with me everywhere I go in case new ideas come up. We can’t expect to remember everything and good to great ideas can be lost without writing it down.
7. Explain how you will use the “Stop and Think” card and the four questions that are asked.
What we have done is gone to vistaprint.com and made our own type of cards. We use the Stop and Think, but also the same questions and on the back we have printed my mobile phone number, my home number, and my wife’s mobile number. We put the thoughts on the front to help them remember, but we put our numbers on the back because as leaders, we believe that if they find themselves in situations that they need to be removed from, I want them to call me…24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it is my responsibility and my wife agrees and is supportive of this idea.
Also, we took the card and on vistaprint.com, we have created a banner that we have up in our locker room. An assistant coach said that what we need to do is put plexiglas over it which we have done, and then have a ceremony about following the Stop and Think banner and understanding that to not follow is a sign of selfishness. The assistant said that we should have all the players sign the plexiglass with a dry erase marker which we will do. Finally, I am going to take a picture of the banner signed and give copies for the guys to put in their lockers at school.
8. Explain the “3rd Place” concept.
Third place is a place for you to get away, to recharge your own batteries. What I got from it was that there is your family “place”; there is your professional “place” there needs to be a “place” for just you. You have to have alone time to read, pray, to prepare for the day or to wind down at the end of the day.
If you don’t do this, if you don’t find a Third Place, you will wear down and not be as effective a leader as is needed. It will allow us to pour out our cup, fill it, and pour it out again.
9. Explain how you will implement the “plan, prepare, practice, and play” model.
Everything we will do in the future will be as Lon Kruger put it. We must not be satisfied with what we are accomplishing because if you are not moving forward you are moving backwards. We must do all of these things as if we lost our last game.
It is usually after a loss that a sense of urgency comes across the program. That sense of urgency should exist all of the time. In preparing to win, you must have the will; you must be willing to give the effort to prepare to win and doing so as if you lost your last game.
10. What is a “Need Assessment”?
What IS subtracted from What Should=the Need.
I believe that as a servant leader that you should look around and not complain about what is, you shouldn’t complain about how no one does anything. I believe that as a servant leader you should look around and be willing give of yourself and do more than is expected not for yourself, but to help others.
I truly believe that Jesus Christ willingly died for my sins and if I believe that then I need to pay back the greatest gift ever received. I should be willing to give away and help others trying to earn a grace that has already been given and that I could never earn.
11. How do you plan to implement the “Beswick Scale”?
I think the best way to implement it is to understand who we are dealing with on our basketball team. We need to understand what we have and where or how to put them in situations that will make them successful individually, but more importantly, as a team.
12. List the 5 C’s (the five daily vitamin C’s). Explain each in more detail.
Concentration
Courtesy
Communication
Compete
Consistency
Concentration is being able to focus on the moment to “know the situation”. We must be able to make the main thing, the main thing. We have to be able to filter the needless information and overblown situations into information and situations that are serious and need to be dealt with.
Courtesy is realizing that every single person we encounter is dealing with something. That something may be big or may seem big to them, but we should treat everyone the way we want to be better, in fact, probably better than how we want to be treated. I recently gave the Baccalaureate speech at our graduation and I said there are certain words that can open doors and calm situations immediately. Some of those words are “Thank you”, “I’m sorry”, “I love you”, and “You are welcome”.
Communication is making sure they hear what you are saying. Because you may know what you want accomplished and you know the words you are using, but if they don’t understand it doesn’t matter what great idea you have. There are certain words that you should avoid in communication such as “You never”, “You always”, “all people”, and other sayings that leads to confrontation.
Competing is something I believe you have to do every day. To me, it goes along with mental toughness. You compete when you get up every single morning with a good attitude to go and make a difference. You will compete in trying to get your classes to be better, to get students to think. You will compete at practice to get players to do things they don’t think they can do as well as the team itself. You will compete in getting proper rest and using your Third person, and you will compete again the next day doing it all over again…hopefully better.
Consistency is doing what I said with competing, every day. It is living and leading with actions for the words you use. If you are not consistent people will see it, in fact, they will seek it. They will seek to try and find your inconsistent behavior.
13. Which concepts in the Family section really struck a chord with you? What changes do you anticipate that you will implement as a result of the suggestions provided in this section?
All concepts in this section struck a chord. We will implement the “What I won’t do for my friends” on a banner in the locker room. We will go over “The Easy and the Hard” every day before practice. We want to enforce and reward positive behavior.
I believe that if when I finish all they can say is that I was a good basketball coach then I will have been a failure. I want to use the podium I have to stand up for more than wins and losses. I want to stand up for more than being revered as a basketball person. I want to stand up for Christ and spread what I believe a servant leader should be to as many students and players as I can until my time is finished here as a teacher and coach.
