8 Keys to Team Success

Below is an article that was found on Buzz Williams' new coaching site, MU Coach 2 Coach. This is an excellent site that talks about different areas behind the Marquette basketball program. Buzz Williams is one of the rising stars in the coaching profession, who has literally worked his way up through the ranks on hard work, committment, dedication and relationship building. The site can be found here...http://www.gomarquette.com/sports/m-baskbl/spec-rel/coach-to-coach.html

The article below was posted in the "Leadership Thoughts" section of the site. It talks about the keys to team success. Coach Williams states at the end of the article that, "even when you've played the game of your life, it's the feeling of teamwork that you'll remember. You'll forget the plays, the shots, and the scores, but you'll never forget your teammates."
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The Eight Keys To Team Success

by John Maxwell

The Benefits of a Team
Throughout my leadership journey, teams have lifted me to heights I never could have climbed alone. Here's a few ways my teams bring me success:
My team makes me better than I am.
My team multiplies my value to others.
My team enables me to do what I do best.
My team allows me to help others do their best.
My team gives me more time.
My team provides me with companionship.
My team helps me fulfill the desires of my heart.
My team compounds my vision and effort.
Invariably, great teams are the main ingredients of a leader's biggest accomplishments. In this edition of Leadership Wired, I'd like to share eight keys to team success.

Eight Keys to Team Success
#1 - Vision determines the direction of the team.
Teamwork gives you the best opportunity to turn vision into reality. However, to earn the support of a team, a leader must cast vision. A compelling vision supplies the team with direction and confidence. Transmitting a vision requires an emotional and logical transference. Emotionally, a leader must gain credibility, demonstrate passion, establish relationships, and communicate a felt need. Logically, a leader must confront reality, formulate strategy, accept responsibility, celebrate victory, and learn from defeat. When lacking either the emotional or logical component, a leader's vision may fall flat.

#2 - Values determine the foundation of the team.
Values influence the team and drive its behavior. Shared values define the team, and they play the following roles:
Glue -- They hold the team together.
Foundation -- They provide stability for the team to grow upon.
Ruler -- The measure the team's performance.
Compass -- They give direction and guidance.
Magnet -- They attract like-minded people.

#3 - Work ethic determines the preparation of the team.
Outstanding teams are comprised of teammates who understand the Law of the Big Picture: the goal is more important than the role. Coming together is a beginning, and staying together is progress, but only when teams sweat together do they find success.

#4 - Personnel determines the potential of the team.
Oftentimes, winning teams rise above losing teams on account of where the players are placed. Take a look at what I mean:
The Wrong Person in the Wrong Place = Regression
The Wrong Person in the Right Place = Frustration
The Right Person in the Wrong Place = Confusion
The Right Person in the Right Place = Progression
The Right People in the Right Places = Multiplication
Successful teams adhere to The Law of the Niche: all players have a place where they add most value. These teams funnel their people into positions where they can leverage each member's strengths.

#5 - Structure determines the size of a team.
An organization's structure should encourage flexibility, change, and innovation. Structure does not cause growth, but it does control the rate and size of your growth. Beware of broken processes and ill-defined systems. They have a way of stunting growth and squandering efficiency.

#6 - Relationships determine the morale of the team.
Winning is often a battle, and there are times in the life of every team player when he or she needs to fight. But if you fight all the time, you can wear yourself out. That's why it's important to pick your battles.
To gain a better perspective of when to fight back and when to sacrifice your interests, practice the following disciplines:
Spend time with people who are different from you. This helps you appreciate and understand how others think and work. As a result, you will be less likely to judge or battle others.
Give in on matters of personal preference or taste. Keep the main things the main things. If you don't save yourself for what matters most, then you'll wear yourself out and wear out your welcome with others.
Don't take things too personally. Always remember, hurting people hurt people, and they are easily hurt by others.
Practice the 101% principle. Whenever possible, find the 1% you agree on in a difficult situation, and give it 100% of your effort.
Be a servant leader. If your mindset is to serve rather than to be served, you will encounter less conflict.

#7 - Training determines the excellence of the team.
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich argued for companies to spend much larger sums of money for worker training. In his words, "If employers fail to upgrade their workers then they're trying to be competitive only with their capital. Anybody can replicate physical capital, but the one resource nobody can replicate is the dedication, the teamwork, and the skills of a company's employees."

#8 - Leadership determines the success of the team.
As The Law of the Edge states, the difference between two equally talented teams is leadership. Talented performers flock to the best and brightest leaders. In turn, these leaders lift the lids off of their people and uncork the latent talent inside of them.

Final Team Thought:
In the end, a team fails or succeeds together. The best way to serve the individuals on the team is to see that the whole team wins. Do that, and dreams can come true for everyone. Even when you've played the game of your life, it's the feeling of teamwork that you'll remember. You'll forget the plays, the shots, and the scores, but you'll never forget your teammates.

"One Shining Moments": Final Four Scouting Reports

And then there were four! Final Four weekend is upon us. It should be a memorable one. Below is an article from SI.com, scouting the four teams playing in Detroit. The article indicates that the scouting report information came from opponent's assistant coaches This post particularly focuses on Michigan State and a favorite play they like to run that involves two screens by Goran Suton.

The entire article, by Luke Winn of SI can be found here...http://www.fannation.com/si_blogs/tourney/posts/60421-final-four-xs-and-os-examining-the-stars

Goran Suton, PF/C, Michigan State (10.1 points, 8.1 rebounds)
Why He Matters: His shooting ability can pull Hasheem Thabeet away from the basket.Likely To Be Guarded By: UConn's Hasheem Thabeet or Stanley Robinson
Bread-and-Butter Play: "They'll use physical signs; this one was a downward thumb from Kalin Lucas. Lucas passes Travis Walton on the left wing, and then they have Suton set a back-screen for Lucas, who runs off of that and loops off a double-screen on the right block. At the same time, Suton moves out from the elbow to run a side pick-and-roll with Walton. They love to use these pick-and-rolls late in the shot clock; between this one and one they call by touching the forehead -- a simple one with Lucas and Suton at the top of the key -- they were successful something like 42 percent of the time with the clock winding down."

Scouting Points on Suton:
• "Suton is a face-up 4-5 man who presents a very difficult matchup for a lot of big guys, because they're not used to defending pick-and-pop stuff out to the three-point line. Michigan State uses Suton more like a three-man than they do a five, given how many screening actions involve him on the outside."
• "Suton isn't all that physical in the post; he's just smart. He'll pull the chair out from under you when he's guarding you, and try to get around and go for the steal on the post-entry pass. And he never leaves his feet, either, because he knows he's not a shot-blocker. He just forces you to catch the ball farther out than you're used to, and does things to get you off-balance."
• "He almost reminds me of a Bill Laimbeer, in that he's not the greatest athlete, or the best jumper, but just has a really high basketball IQ. He knows you're not comfortable guarding him outside, and he knows that he's more likely to stop you by pushing you out of the paint than letting you catch it in deep."
• "I wouldn't be surprised if UConn makes adjustments and puts Stanley Robinson on Suton instead of Thabeet, just to keep Suton from scoring on threes."

"Act As If..."

FIRST STEP IN BECOMING A WINNER:

ACT LIKE ONE

The New York Times By MELISSA JOHNSON
On March 14, 1998, I sat in a dark hotel room with both hands over my mouth to prevent my yelps from waking my teammate in the next bed.
A 6-foot-4 sophomore center at North Carolina, I was transfixed by the N.C.A.A. tournament game lighting up before me, a game that would persuade me to give up my full scholarship, million-dollar locker room, teammates who could dunk and fancy Nike luggage.
Sixteenth-seeded Harvard, a bunch of basketball nobodies, was battling top-ranked Stanford at raucous Maples Pavilion -- and winning.
A veritable banner-making machine, Stanford had produced more N.C.A.A. championships in women’s sports than any other college. It was a surreal and sanguine affair: the Crimson versus the Cardinal. David versus Goliath. Revenge of the Nerds.
No Ivy League women’s team had ever won a game in an N.C.A.A. tournament, and Stanford, though missing two key players to injury, was one of the strongest programs of the decade, having won the national title twice and owning a 59-game home winning streak dating to the 1993-94 season. In her spare time, Stanford’s coach, Tara VanDerveer, had led the 1996 United States team to an Olympic gold medal. She couldn’t have expected much competition from a college known for its SATs, not M.V.P.’s.
“Welcome to real basketball,” an event worker coolly offered the Cambridge women as they stepped onto the court after their cross-country flight. Meanwhile, the news media talked about them like smart little hors d’oeuvres: pigs in a blanket to the slaughter, brainiac bruschetta to whet Stanford’s appetite for the meal to come.
Yet, the Harvard women summoned the performance of their lives, including a 35-point exhibition by the all-American Allison Feaster. Miraculously leading by a point with 1 minute 32 seconds to play, they secured the win with a 3-pointer from a lanky, unassuming future E.R. physician named Suzie Miller, who wore her hair in double braids.
Stanford looked too shocked to be ashamed. With my television muted, the court erupted in silent pandemonium as I jumped up and down on the bed, waking my roommate after all.
The mastermind behind this astonishing victory -- the only time a No. 16 seed has beaten a No. 1 seed in the men’s or women’s N.C.A.A. tournament -- was a scrappy blue-collar Boston kid turned coaching icon named Kathy Delaney-Smith.
Wanting to learn from someone who could pull off this kind of magic, I transferred to play for her the next year, and she told me her secret.

Any decent athlete, salesman or Starbucks barista can put on a good
game face. But her philosophy, “act as if,” goes much deeper than mere swagger or theatrics. It’s a method -- a learned skill for convincing your mind that you already are what you want to become. The body follows where the mind leads. “Act as if you’re a great shooter,” she would instruct. “Act as if you love the drill. Act as if when you hit the deck it doesn’t hurt.” Negativity, even in the form of body language, was not tolerated.

What the overly analytical Harvard players might have lacked in comparative
speed or vertical jumping ability against Stanford, they made up with their
power of belief. In 1969 she picked up the whistle as a favor to a friend. A former synchronized swimmer who hadn’t had the opportunity to play competitive basketball, she was clueless but determined to do a good job faking it. She figured out drills as she ran them, read every sports psychology book available, and went undefeated in her first six years as a high school coach. “I started out fooling a lot of people,” she said. But the farce became the truth -- she won more games than any other women’s basketball coach in the Ivy League and emerged as one of the longest-tenured coaches in the country. Positive thinking is hardly a revolutionary notion in sports, but her brand has been so compelling because of the
authentic and irreverent way she lives it. My senior year didn’t go how either of us planned. Kathy was fighting breast cancer and I had blown out my knee. We both had surgery. Feeling like a failure, I captained the team from the bench, far from the star player I was supposed to have been. But I watched Kathy show up exhausted for practice every day, in pain and in a wig, bravely embodying her own mantra like never before. Pretending to be fearless. So I just tried to be like her. We didn’t win the league that year; there was no shot at the tournament. But we both got better.
Eleven years after Stanford, I asked Kathy what happened after the buzzer
sounded. She was approached for a postgame interview. Before the camera started rolling, she whispered to the commentator Ann Meyers and asked her not to let her
say anything stupid. “I’d never been on national TV,” she confided. “I was desperately acting as if.”

Melissa Johnson is an online director for BBC Worldwide America and an independent filmmaker. Her short documentary “Act as If” will be playing next month in the Boston International Film Festival.

One Shining Moments: Yelling or Trusting

Jay Wright is one of the most successful young coaches and with Villanova's recent appearance in the Final Four, he has solidified the Wildcat basketball program as one of the nation's elite basketball programs. This article talks about how the former Rolly Mossamino assistant understands the "modern athlete". The dictator type coaching style is long gone. The coaching profession has changed to fit the modernization of athletes and is now more about creating a culture of trust, leadership and a bigger focus on team unity. Coaches must now understand that they are not bigger than the program itself, it's not about them. It's about the players. The players make the program. It's about putting those players in a position to succeed...on the court and off the court. This article shows how 'Nova and Jay Wright have built that trust and how it can pay off when coaches and players respect and trust each other.

http://www.philly.com/dailynews/sports/20090331DickJerardiVillanovasWrightmakesanidealboss.html

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Jay Wright on the last two plays for Villanova against Pitt...

When Reggie Redding threw that unsuccessful long pass against Pittsburgh, some coaches would have gone berserk. Instead, on the final play, after a timeout that came between Pitt foul shots (so Pittsburgh would not be able to set its defense as it would just after a timeout), Wright gave the ball to Redding again.
"It's very easy in the huddle to tell kids what to do, very difficult to be that guy out of bounds," Wright said after the game. "Reggie did the right thing. We've got to trust him."
The safe play would not have been that long pass. It was a risk. It failed.
Wright could have played it safe on the next play. Instead, he went over what he wanted in that huddle and trusted his players. Even when one of those players forgot where to go and Redding looked like he might be in trouble, the last option came open at the last second. Then, it was Redding to Dante Cunningham to Scottie Reynolds to Ford Field.

"We always tell them in those end of game situations, we have to trust your decisions," Wright said Saturday. "And that was the point I made to the team. If that [long pass] would have cost us the game, we would have applauded Reggie for the guts to make the play."

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A couple of great quotes came out of the article...

"Coaches with good ideas and good players can win games. Risk-takers win championships."

The modern big-time college basketball coach is part CEO, tactician and big brother. It is the coach who can excel at all three that has a chance to win big.

"If it's not broken, break it," - Rick Pitino, Louisville