KELVIN SAMPSON: "LET'S GO HIT THE ROCK"

If you follow, read and study Tim Elmore (and you should), you know the importance of visuals in making emotional connections with those you lead.  In a story that ran a few months ago in the Houston Chronicle by Joseph Duarte, I loved what Kelvin Sampson had created to get his message across at the University of Houston:

From Duarte's article: 

A rock is the first thing visitors see upon entering the player's lounge inside the Guy V. Lewis Development Facility.

It's kept in a case with a sledgehammer leaning against it, a symbol of what Kelvin Sampson has based the revival of the University of Houston men's basketball program.

Sampson often ends every staff meeting with the saying, "Let's go hit the rock."

"It ain't going to break today," Sampson, the Cougars' 62-year-old coach, continues. "We don't know how many times we are going to have to hit it, but I just know it's going to crack."

"He's said it for four years," says Kellen Sampson, an assistant coach on his dad's staff. "Our whole culture has been based on hitting that rock."