The future of leadership is braver leaders and more courageous cultures .”
In addition to minimizing your own power , the best coaches often bring in people , like me , to help their teams tap into their highest level of performance . It has been said never to underestimate the power of an outside voice . That power lies in the fact that an outside consultant has no power over your team . There is great energy in having someone lead authentic conversations with your team to help the flow of feedback . There are also ways in which you as the leader can and should work to shift or minimize how much you lean on power over players and assistants to help your staff and student-athletes reach for their highest potential . Without consistent practice , you are likely to see people drift back toward recognizing and verbalizing only the best about you and your job as their coach , overlooking hard things that need improvement .
As Catmull points out in his book , “ People , in general , would rather talk about what went right than what went wrong , using the occasion to give additional kudos to their most deserving team members . Left to our own devices , we avoid unpleasantness .” As a leader interested in building team trust and team transparency , you must be over the top about creating an environment of full disclosure if that ’ s what you want . Coaches who mistreat those who offer criticism or overreact to news brought to them by direct or indirect sources jeopardize team connections each time they fail to appreciate the feedback they ask for .
FAILING , RISK AND FEEDBACK
“ Telling the truth isn ’ t easy .” This is a quote from “ Creativity , Inc .” as Ed Catmull describes the process of reinventing a Disney Animation culture that had undergone years of underperformance . The feedback structure for Disney Animation , before the Pixar / Disney merger , resembles many fledgling structures athletic teams fall into : a structure based on hiding weakness and placating those people higher up in the hierarchy . So what did these two executives , Catmull and John Lasseter , do to immediately course correct ? By the way , these two executives were revered by everyone at Disney because of their huge success at Pixar . What did they do to fix the broken feedback structure ? The answer is , they did anything and everything to remove hierarchy and anything they could do to invite and celebrate candor . They were , after all , setting out to create a separate and new culture , but one based on that which they already created at Pixar . When asked to describe the culture at Pixar , these same founders described it as “ a culture of candor and freedom and the kind of constructive self-criticism that allowed our people , and the movies they made , to evolve into their best selves .” Don ’ t we all want the same freedom for our growing student-athletes ?
In Marc Brackett ’ s book , “ Permission to Feel ,” he describes an issue that leaders in every walk of life must overcome if their goal is to build a high-performing team . “ The problem here is that , as humans , we have an authority bias that ’ s incredibly strong and unconscious — if a superior tells you to do something , by God we tend to follow it , even when it ’ s wrong . Having one person tell other people what to do is not a reliable way to make good decisions .” That is why connection is so tightly linked to the ability of a team to perform at its highest level . Striving for synergy or for making the sum of your team ’ s parts greater than the whole , is to strive for a culture that activates unseen power .
That Disney Animation started producing winning films again was not an accident . They did it with basically the same people who had been creating duds . They did it because they worked hard to make it safe and inviting for their workers to say hard things . Simply put , they fixed the feedback loop .
The emotional intelligence that must exist for you to ensure you are garnering real feedback from your team is high . Read their faces , notice the responses of your people when implementing ideas , and keep digging for true feedback until you are sure that the culture-building systems you ’ re adding are not actually causing more harm than good . The implementation of systems meant to improve your culture calls for a good amount of artful skill and experience . So take some swings , but be sure to expect and readily accept and celebrate adjustments along the way .
To operate most effectively and to grow , we need our people to take healthy risks in their communication with us and their teammates , and in their training and competition . For the most part , great coaches agree on this . However , even great coaches often send mixed signals — telling their student-athletes to take big risks and then reacting negatively or punishing them when they take risks and fail . They send signals of comparison and exclusion rather than reinforcing belonging . One example of that comparison signal is to use a scarcity mindset . In this scenario , coaches intending to motivate their current players bring up the prowess of a recruit not yet on campus . The inference , or direct statement in some cases , is that if they don ’ t perform better , the veteran ’ s position will be taken over by next season ’ s freshman . Note to coaches : that ’ s NEVER a good idea . It doesn ’ t benefit the incoming freshman who will be struggling to belong , and if there is any benefit to the veteran , it is short-lived , cruel , and fractures trust in themselves and with you . Another example of these mixed signals is the coach who implores their player to take a big swing then reacts as if the world just ended when that player did just that and failed . Or yet another is the coach who says they have an open-door policy but gets defensive or petty with their staff or student-athletes when they hear truths they either don ’ t agree with or don ’ t like . They make passive-aggressive comments after the fact or react with punitive policy changes in response to feedback given .
The future of leadership is braver leaders and more courageous cultures .”
-BRENÉ BROWN
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