As strength and conditioning coaches, we can utilize every method known to mankind to create healthier, stronger, and faster athletes. However, without vocal team leaders guiding the direction of their team’s efforts and abilities; those increases in performance will be rendered insignificant.

How many times have you seen teams containing multiple all-star athletes but still manage to lose games, tournaments and championships?  On the underdog teams, is it usually one person who has a tendency to overpower the opposing stronger team or is it usually the collective efforts of a coordinated team who operates a one unit all walking in lock-step?

The leadership development process at Wichita State is often times no different than many of the classic military style models currently being used today.  Our leaders exemplify several characteristics that we have found absolutely necessary for our teams to perform at a high level.

We want all of our athletes to have opportunities to lead.  This helps foster leadership abilities as well as gives an appreciation to the difficulty of leading a team.  These leadership opportunities allows for greater appreciation of the leadership model and the current athletes in this position.

“A leader guides a team, not rules a team. He or she charts a course, gives direction and develops the social and psychological environment” (Martens, 1987).

Great team leaders do two things and two things only:

• Team Leaders accomplish the mission.
• Team Leaders take care of their team.
  • The team’s best interest guides every single decision made by the team leader.

Too often, unsuccessful team leaders confuse the order of these tasks and prioritize the team’s ego or feelings over accomplishing the mission.  At Wichita State, mission objectives take priority over the team.  This means that if an athlete asks to be excused from a lift or a conditioning session because they have a hard exam to study for, the leaders will have to ask “what is best for the team and mission objective?”

Mosher (1979) suggested that team leaders have three main responsibilities:

• Act as a liaison between the coaching staff and the players.
• Act as a leader during all team activities.
• Represent the team at receptions, meetings, and press conferences.

First, team leaders should ensure constant flow of information between the coaching staff and players. To this end, the captain should establish regular team and/or individual meetings with players and coaches.

Second, team leaders should lead by example, such as arriving early for practice, always working hard during practice, leading warm-up sessions, encouraging Teammates, and helping younger players.

Third, team leaders should help coaches develop team norms and schedules. Finally, team leaders should conduct themselves in a professional manner before, during, and after games, with respect to their teammates, opponents, and officials.

Teammates can make a leader’s job extremely easy or insanely difficult and as a coach it is our responsibility to help facilitate the right environment for our team leaders.  At Wichita State, teammates have two responsibilities;

• Great teammates hold themselves to very high standards
• Great teammates demand those standards out of every single teammate.

Our weight room standards are visible in every team training manual, on every workout card, and throughout the weight room and my office.  There is no escape of knowing the standards.  Our Wichita State Strength & Conditioning Standards are;

• Relentless Effort
• Precision Execution
• Vigorous Partner Coaching
• Selfless Unity

After we established our culture and standards at Wichita State, the hardest task was creating a common understanding of our high standards.  Our athletes found other through trials and tribulations that testing the limits of effort, sub-par execution, or poor partner coaching resulted in negative behavior reinforcement.

Every athlete in our program must abide and hold themselves to these high standards during every session; any less would result in individual or team behavior reinforcement. It was not long until our athletes demanded those standards out of every single teammate.  They knew if they did not, that the team would figuratively “live or die” by the actions of their teammates.  Before long, everybody’s head was on a swivel demanding the utmost demanding standards out of everybody.

At Wichita State, our incoming recruits are introduced to a simple philosophy; every single session our athletes are going to improve on the following two tasks.

• We are good team leaders and good teammates.
• We prepare every single day to fill both roles.

Every athlete that walks through our doors knows that on any given day they may be called up to be the team leader for a particular exercise, workout, conditioning drill, or session.  This means that the youngest freshman on the team needs to prepare to step into a leadership role at any given time.  This also means that the oldest veteran needs to be receptive of receiving directives from a freshman who has little playing experience.

Our Wichita State Athletes understand that every single day they need to be ready to either be a great team leader or a great teammate. In addition to their team responsibilities, they also know they need to ruthlessly prepare every single day to fill both roles. We teach our athletes exactly how to prepare for these two different roles.

Wichita State has committed to a warrior ethos of consistent small improvements done daily.  Our system is built on three fundamental principles that influence our preparation.

• Wichita State athletes are mentality and physically tough.
• Wichita State athletes don’t make excuses and we don’t let others make excuses for us.
• Wichita State athletes work ruthlessly hard.

This is the X’s and O’s of strength and conditioning.  As a profession, we should all be doing this as this is our primary responsibility.  I think it’s dangerous to approach everything in this handout if you are not addressing first our primary responsibility; being a strength and conditioning coach (Baechle & Earle, 2008).

To prepare our athletes to be both physically and mentally tough, we have identified a need to train our athlete’s minds as well as their physical bodies.  We hold many one-on-one meetings to discuss goal setting, challenges, and realistic expectations of training.  It is during these one-on-one meetings that we can begin to build the foundation for the four C’s of mental toughness training.

Challenge

Some athletes consider challenges to be learning growth-opportunity, whereas other athletes may be likely to consider a challenge as a threat.  Those who embrace challenge may have a mindset for self-development whereas those who avoid challenge may do it out of fear of failure or aversion to effort (Dweck, 2007).  During our meetings and training sessions, we setup the environment where athletes embrace challenging scenarios as a “learning opportunity” rather than a “test”.  This allows for athletes who struggle or lose to embrace an ideology that their “learning” from the experience.

Control

Some athletes believe that they can exert influence over their environment or that they can make a difference and change outcomes.  Whereas, other athletes feel helpless and perceive that outcomes of events are fixed and out of their control.  Our staff tries to empower athletes by giving them simple choices over their environment, i.e. the music, exercise selection, or warm-ups.  We do not allow the coaches to direct every single decision where as we want the athlete to take ownership over the control of their workout.

Commitment

Athletes differ in their likelihood to persist with a goal or work task.  Some athletes, in the face of difficulty, will persist till the skill or task is completed.  Other athletes may easily become distracted, bored or divert their attention to competing goals.  We setup environments where we break down goals or commitments to micro-goals.  We coach our athletes to climb Mount Everest “one step at a time”.  Often times, athletes can lose commitment to a goal or task when the result looks too overwhelming or too far away (Goleman, 1998).

Confidence

Athletes that have high confidence have the self-belief to successfully complete tasks which may be considered too difficult by individuals with similar abilities but lower confidence.  At Wichita State, our staff does everything in our power to build the confidence of our athletes through proper progressions and challenges.  As Harter (1981) wrote about in her research titled “A Model of intrinsic mastery motivation in children”, an athlete’s perception of competency or ability to succeed in a task is highly influential on their intrinsic motivation for that particular task.

At Wichita State, our athletes have learned to accept responsibility and not make excuses for performance.  If our roles as coaches is to prepare athletes for the challenges of tomorrow, than a realistic and transferable skill is accountability.

We don’t allow athletes to make excuses for themselves nor their teammates.  We also don’t allow athletes to accept any excuses.  This has created a culture where athletes are consistently honest with each other and everybody is held to the same accountable actions as everybody else.

We receive a lot of athletes who have talent that delivered them division one scholarships.  The downfall of that statement is that these athletes have relied off of their talent versus their work ethic.  We aim to change that continuum in the direction of relying off of their ability to work extremely hard.  Talent gets you to the starting line; work ethic delivers you to the checkered flag.

It is not uncommon for our staff to physically challenge athletes to do what they believe is impossible.  Conditioning sessions are perfect environments for teaching athletes how to work “ruthlessly hard” as a team.

• Establish your core principles and standards.
• Get sport-coaches, athletic-trainers, support-staff, and athletic-directors all on board.
• Educate teammates and team leaders on core principles and the standards.
• Hold every athlete accountable to the standards and principles.
• Identify your “leadership council” and give them easily ‘winnable’ leadership opportunities.
• Meet and mentor your team leaders after every mission.

The Confronter

An athlete who has a confronter personality type would feel more comfortable in situations where an issue needs to be addressed.  They are the pitbull of the team and should not have an issue vocalizing a problem or a concern with a teammate. Casting the confronter in a role where they need to address an athlete who is not following the standards should not be a conflict of personality for the team confronter.

The Inspirer

This athlete is one who can endure the toughest of situations with a smile on their face.  No matter how grim the situation is, this athlete can find a way to motivate their players to continue on.  Their spirit and pep gives the team a reason to continue on and a source of energy to feed off.  Many times during conditioning sessions, I will turn to the team’s inspirer and remind them that their team will need his/her enthusiasm throughout this session.

The Nurturer

Athletes that have a nurturer aspect to their personality are those individuals who are willing to talk with fellow athletes about “off-the-field” issues.  They are the team “Mothers and Fathers” who listens, consoles, and heals the wounded ego or heart.  When an athlete is struggling with performance, receiving harsh feedback from sport coaches, or having off-the-field issues; I will go to the team’s nurturer and ask him/her to use their talent to console this athlete through this difficult period of time.

My mentor and dear friend wrote an excellent article on the importance of having these three personality types within a leadership council.  Since my time at Michigan State, I have adopted the practice with all of my various leadership committees (Wakeham, 2010).

Autocratic Leadership

Autocratic leadership does not allow for the involvement of its participants in decision-making. The use of commands and punishments are common (Zhang, 1997).  Think of all the coaches you’ve witnessed this by.  I can think of many coaches who held all the power.

Democratic Leadership

Democratic leadership cultivates participation from athletes in decision-making. This form of leadership engages and motivates athletes, by making them feel needed and important (Zhang, 1997).

In my short coaching experience, there is nothing that rallies the masses more than a democratic leadership council (Dale, 2005).  I have witnessed many sport coaches struggle at maintaining leaders and athlete motivation while autocratically leading their team, stifling athletes in a “my way or the high way” mentality.  I have also been around very successful coaches who setup a perception of control or democratically driven model of coaching.

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