Saying something's "really good" means little. Coaches invest a lot of time figuring out how to win a few more games by being better than good.
What separates excellent teams from others? How much is skill? How many are soft skills?
Excellent teams:
- Excellent teams compete. They play harder for longer. That doesn't mean running up the score against bad teams.
- Excellent teams get and stay on the same page.
- Excellent teams show physical and mental toughness. They are "first to the floor" and do the dirty work.
- Excellent teams are Churchillian. They fight you end to end, on offense, on defense, and on conversion. They fight with skill and will and do not quit.
- Excellent teams do not give games away through lack of focus, lack of effort, or lack of ball security (turnovers). Remember Bob Woodward's Washington Post 'sign' FAA - focus and act aggressively
- Excellent teams apply more skill, but know skill alone is not enough.
- Excellent teams know and take good shots.
- Excellent teams willingly share the ball.
- Excellent teams win at home, on the road, and at neutral sites.
- Excellent teams sacrifice via shared vision, shared suffering, and shared achievement. They care for and about each other.
- Excellent teams are coachable, able to transform "Commander's Intent" into stepwise progress into a winning "end state."
- Excellent teams can beat other excellent teams. They don't buy 'hype'.
- Excellent teams use tempo, time and situation to their advantage.
- Excellent teams are resilient, capable of overcoming adversity.
Excellence is hard. And it takes way more than words.
Lagniappe. Consider reading Anson Dorrance's Vision of a Champion.
"Dorrance’s vision challenges us to recalibrate the reality of what really makes a champion a champion. It validates that champions aren’t who they are because they win. That actually, in fact, just the opposite is true. Champions win because of who they are. Champions are committed. They are driven and self-disciplined and willing to push themselves to the point of exhaustion, even when no one is watching and long before they ever set foot on a podium, hoist a trophy, or cut down a net."
These points that stood out to me:
- seek "continual ascension"
- find players who are warriors
- the "competitive cauldron" reveals the best player
- Dorrance prefers to show women only "positive video"
- Some girls/women avoid leadership to avoid "being seen as a bitch"... embrace leadership don't run from it
Lagniappe 2. Study Leadership
Lagniappe 3. Summary of Great Teams by Don Yaeger
A few points to embrace:
- Have core values, our 'raison d'etre', our why.
- Cultivate leadership.
- Fight for your culture every day.
- Have a plan, including depth. No depth, no plan.
- Be mentors. "Mentoring is the only shortcut to excellence."