Providing Insights on Leadership and Success. Coach Bechler is a John Maxwell Leadership Team Member.
SPECIAL GUEST POST FROM DAN CHRISTENSEN
Most athletic directors have sat in coaching interviews that felt productive in the moment but became difficult to evaluate afterward.
The conversation was good. The candidate was engaging. The committee liked them. They seemed confident, prepared, and aligned with the department.
But when it came time to compare candidates, the room struggled.
Having a good team captain can make your job easier. Conversely, if your captains struggle to lead effectively, then your team will most likely underperform during the year. Team captains can often make or break your season.
You’d probably love to have a Derek Jeter, Sue Bird, Tim Tebow, or Mia Hamm-type captain, but those are exceptions, not the rule. No matter who wears the captain’s armband or dons the “C” on their jersey, you want to be training them and helping them develop their skills for this leadership position.
As you think about selecting your team captains, maybe you’ve always done it a certain way. Maybe you’re ready for a change. No matter how you select your captains or how successful this process has been in the past, you should always be evaluating your methods so that you can be as good of a coach and have as strong of a program as possible.
SPECIAL GUEST POST FROM DAN CHRISTENSEN
When athletic directors hire a coach, it is natural to focus first on the program.
Can this person recruit?
Can they coach the sport?
Can they build a competitive roster?
Can they connect with student-athletes?
Can they create a healthy team culture?
Those questions matter. But there is another question that deserves just as much attention:
Hey Coach, if you’re like me, you’re constantly trying to get better and improve. You probably see things differently now than you did five years ago, one year ago, or even yesterday. In my 20+ years of coaching and athletic administrating, I had my fair share of ups and downs, but I also felt that I got better every year. Leaders are learners and I wanted to always be learning.
I’m a product of those people I’ve been associated with and the environments I was a part of. Oftentimes in coaching, we do things the way others close to us did them. We may coach similar to the way our old coach did back in the day. We might run some of the same plays. Our communication might resemble their methods, as well.
However, through the years I realized that if I’m going to get better and improve as a coach, I must constantly be re-evaluating and honestly assessing some of my actions, words, and philosophies. Especially toward the end of my career in organized athletics, I tried to be as coachable as possible and be willing to adjust, adapt, and pivot when it was necessary.
SPECIAL GUEST POST FROM DAN CHRISTENSEN
We see it happen all too often when our team at Bechler Leadership is doing a school’s search. Candidates come into the interview process not prepared to present themselves in a way that will help them win the job.
We did a national study with college athletic directors and those in the hiring process, for college coaches to understand what kinds of questions work best for them and help them understand the candidates the most. Based on those answers, here are four quick tips for coaching candidates about how they should better prepare: