The following comes from my friend Don Yeager who recently wrote about Coach Pat Summitt in regards to goals and rules for her team:Before each of the 34 seasons that Summitt has been a head coach of some of the most accomplished teams of all time, she and her captains have committed a set of goals to writing.
“We always make sure,” Summitt says, “that our plans for the season can be achieved. Setting goals is incredibly important to success. But if you set a goal that seems impossible to achieve— if you go into a year saying your goal is to win the national championship—then you risk losing morale, self-discipline and chemistry if you falter early.
“Set a goal that stretches you, requires exceptional effort, but one that you can reach,” says Summit, the bearer of more championship jewelry than any coach in women’s basketball history.
“We might set a goal that we win 20 or so games, that we win a conference championship, that we make the NCAA tournament. If we do those things, the truth is we have a chance of winning the national championship. But I would never want that to be the only goal.”
The key to her on- and off-court success, Summitt is famous for saying, is remembering that “winners aren’t born, they are self-made.”
“And the only way to ensure you become a winner is to set goals every day, and hold yourself and your teammates accountable for reaching those goals,” she says. “Setting up a system that rewards you for meeting your goals and has penalties for failing to hit your target is just as important as putting your goals down on paper.”
As an example, Summitt says that if her team were to set a daily goal—reducing turnovers during scrimmages is an often-set objective—that she would let her players know that reaching the objective would result in a more relaxed shooting drill to end their practice. But failing to meet the goal meant the entire team had to run sprints.
“They get to choose,” Summitt says about her players, “whether they run or whether they shoot. It makes the goal so much easier to keep in sight. Reward or consequence. Their choice.”
Much as goal-setting should be done with care, so should rule-making. Summitt says she has long known that the fewer rules a leader sets down, the fewer rules will be broken.
Much as goal-setting should be done with care, so should rule-making. Summitt says she has long known that the fewer rules a leader sets down, the fewer rules will be broken.
“I don’t have many rules for my players,” she says. “But the rules I have are important, both to me and to the good of our program. We don’t just set rules on top of rules, and we’re always clear that the breaking of a rule will produce a certain result.”
Summitt says the next challenge for most leaders is to remain firm in the application of those consequences if goals are not met or rules are not followed. “If you are unwavering once the rules are set, you won’t have to enforce them as often,” she says. “Be strong and uncompromising and you will find that you have few repeat offenders.”
Read more about Don Yaeger: http://www.donyaeger.com
