Mamba Mentality Coaching: Part II
Kobe Bryant saw two things as most important for maximizing player development: empathy and compassion.
Read Mamba Mentality Coaching: Part I.
Basketball has changed a lot since its inception. Analytics and load management were not introduced by Dr. Naismith. Seven-foot centers are now expected to shoot three-pointers. Positionless basketball is the new paradigm. The shoes are dramatically different-even when they’re not real. From the coach’s challenge to replay officiating, to the size of salaries to player influence-everything has evolved. Where is the next, next level? Years ago, legendary pro golfer Bobby Jones described it:
“Competitive golf is played mainly on a five-and-a-half-inch course…the space between your ears.”
The body’s greatest limit is the mind, and a mind that thinks with limits governs a life of limitations. Access to the mind, to explore and harness the potential of the body, requires communication, internally with self and externally with others. The space between an athlete’s ears must be better communicated with by the most crucial person speaking to fill it: the coach. A coach must go beyond the throat-straining calling of plays, the scolding of mistakes, and the repetitive use of cliches.
The path to that final coaching frontier, the mind of the competitive athlete, was discovered by Kobe Bryant as being the most important advice he would give to his younger self. It is the dual attribute of empathy and compassion. Following it means crossing a terrain of varied experiences and shared vulnerabilities, to reach the next level of excellence for everyone. Coaches who grasp this will be able to create a high-performance culture, because how a coach communicates can dramatically impact that player’s sense of self.
Mamba Mentality Coaching speaks directly to the most fundamental aspect of leadership: character. Character is the composition of qualities and traits that make people who they are: what they believe, what they say and what they do. Leadership development is character development, and developing character is not unlike developing bodies, skills and performance mentality.
Culture is co-created by individuals working together. Consequently, the character of the individuals who work in any organization determines the character of the culture. One of the greatest coaches, NFL legend Tony Dungy, lays out a blueprint for how coaches can set a foundation that prioritizes the culture of a team, and thus the character of the individual players. He describes it as the SOUL approach in his book Quiet Strength:
Selflessness: Committing to putting group interest before self-interest.
Ownership: Having accountability for personal conduct.
Unity: Establishing and maintaining unwavering solidarity.
Larger purpose: Knowing the shared aspiration is the ultimate objective.
Listening to the Global Leadership Podcast, I assessed his SOUL model for compatibility with viewpoints I have proposed in my NBA Culture series. Subsequently, I have developed a model with more next-step application, a four-step blueprint for Mamba Mentality Coaching.
Step One: Redefine your M.O.
Dungy’s SOUL approach begins with the fundamental question, “What’s the most important thing for our group?” Mamba Mentality Coaching pivots from group-intent to coach-intent focus:
“What is the most important aim of your job, your main objective?”
The simple answer: “To coach”. I have been given that answer from many coaches. Hearing it reminds of a scene from the film, The Untouchables. Two officers enter a police academy to select a cadet for special duty. When the first candidate is presented, Malone asks, “Why do you want to join the force?” The cadet responds, “To protect and serve…”. Malone interrupts him, “Please don’t search for the yearbook answer, huh? Just tell me what you’re thinking.”
Coaching involves instructing, encouraging, correcting-all aspects of communication. The Mamba Mentality Coaching approach, based on the empathy-compassion attribute valued by Kobe Bryant, deems how a coach communicates with players is as important, if not more, than what is being communicated.
Consider this: Every player is somebody’s loved one. Personalize it. If your loved one is drafted by a team, how do you want them to be treated? Do you want them to be regarded as a whole person and not just for their utility? With Mamba Mentality Coaching, answering questions like these incorporates the complete humanity of players into your main objective. This means elevating your communication from basic transaction to conscientious consideration. Empathy and compassion facilitate this.
Step Two: Personal development is player development.
There is a reason that “There is no ‘I’ in team.” has been said by nearly every coach. It is a cautionary maxim about advancing individual interest above team interest. Ego pursues attention and praise. This is a self-obsessed ambition that resents self-sacrifice, as a threat to self-importance. Every coach addresses this because every team is made up of a group of individuals.
A key to achieving this is convincing players of the ephemeral nature of their profession. The average WNBA career is 5 years, which compares to the average NBA career of 4.5 years. A career-ending injury, exposure of shortcomings, or a waning commitment to the demands of being a professional athlete can make it even shorter. Some players cherish the importance of having an incredible opportunity with the buzzer-beater urgency required to capitalize on it. Others benefit from coaching to accelerate their character development and maturity, and enable them to see their personal growth through the lens of urgent contribution to team success.
Through Mamba Mentality Coaching, the main objective of coaching seeks the development of a “growth mindset”. Professor Carol Dweck has wrote Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Her research shows that people can “grow their brains”, to increase their intellectual abilities, accelerate their rate of achievement and outperform those who have a fixed mindset. Translation: strategies for developing a growth mindset can fast-track maturation.
A mind that thinks with limits governs a life of limitations. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If coaches have a limited (fixed) perception of the person who is the player, they will have a limited (fixed) opinion about that player’s potential for growth, and their interaction with that player will be limited (fixed). When players feel limited, they feel reduced. To guide players in their growth, coaches need to think more of them as whole people. This is astutely encapsulated in the words of the legendary coach, Pat Summit:
“They don’t care how much you know, unless they know how much you care.”
Developing a growth mindset cannot be reduced to repetition of specific messages. Many professional athletes have told me that a monotonous, hyperbolized chorus of “Try harder!” and “Do more!” is meaningless, when what to try and how to do it are not clear. A character-driven leader takes responsibility for the success of others. If a player is struggling to adjust, it is incumbent on the coach to dig deep and find a new way to describe and instruct. This is more constructive than punitive scolding and penalizing demotions.
Just as coaches have different styles of coaching, players have different styles of comprehending. When players are valued for being people and not reduced to being pieces, coaches will consider varied approaches to optimize the way each player processes. Then the player can be guided towards achieving the ultimate shared goal of winning. Empathy and compassion recognize this.
Step Three: Put worth in your words.
Words are the parents of thoughts. Thoughts are the parents of actions. Every thought you have begins as a word. Every action you do begins as a thought.
If you think and speak with success words, you will foster succeeding actions. If you think and speak with failure words, you will foster failing actions. Success is value-adding; worth more. Failure is value-subtracting; worth less.
Our words, thoughts and actions impact the words, thoughts and actions of others. For coaches, this means that what you think, say and do can either lead your players to have actions for success or for failure. What you think. What you say. What you do. New words generate new thoughts. New thoughts produce new actions. Success in life begins with success in the mind.
When Coach Dungy talked about his SOUL approach, something he said struck me to the core:
“We often get placed in roles we don’t envision.”
For role players, who were previously principal players, this can be a reality shift so profound that they lose sight of their talents, abilities and even their sense of self-worth.
Every coach knows that role players are necessary. Nonetheless, the very term “role player” is inherently diminishing, which can lead to a diminished person and a diminished career-failure. For this reason, coaches must use terminology that is intentionally enhancing in significance, to accredit worth to the person a player is. Here is an example.
The stat sheet charts five main actions of performance: points, rebounds, assists, blocks and steals. Either action can be THE action that wins a game, even a championship. The chase-down block LeBron James made against Andre Iguodala, in Game 7 of the 2016 Championship, was as if not more important than any point he scored in the game. That was a vital play, critical to the Cleveland Cavaliers winning their first NBA title.
Any player can be THE player to do the one thing to win a game. If coaches value role players as being vital and critical, why not designate them as such? Being called a “vital player” or a “critical player” enhances a player’s feeling and belief, in being central to the team’s success. It also impacts how other players view the value-added significance of their teammates. Also, by giving non-scoring actions the same relevance and importance as scoring, vital/critical players will have their contributions weighted as being equally additive to the success of the team. “Vital” and “critical” are words that confer worth. Empathy and compassion know this.
Step Four: Trust is a must.
The strongest cement of any relationship is trust. No attribute ranks higher for character. Without it, integrity, reliability and respectability have no foundation to be secured upon; and without it, communication will crack, connections will crumble and goals will collapse to ruin. Appreciation for this should never be trivialized, and the greatest appreciation for it comes from having a mindful understanding of the word “trust”. Here is my definition:
Trust is a condition of confidence that your vulnerabilities will not be exploited.
Anyone who would expose, take advantage of, leverage against, trade on or prey upon your weaknesses, liabilities, problems or misfortunes is someone you cannot place confidence in to protect, preserve and promote your well-being. The two players I had dinner with expressed this about the way their role demotions happened, following their injuries.
When players no longer trust their coaches and their team franchises, they are at risk of a negative attitude or worse still, broken. Likewise, when distrust contaminates the entire culture of a locker room and a franchise, resentment will dictate the team’s character, defeatism will direct its conduct and failure will be its only outcome.
Coaches can prevent this from happening by acting with full-disclosure communication, a mindful awareness of others and answerable accountability. These actions will advance your main objective with trust; make it integral to player development; and have it weight your words with worth. To effect this, the fundamental basis of all relationships, and an essential awareness of why people communicate needs to be understood.
Two primary motivations initiate and establish all relationships: 1. Need 2. Desire. You need a plumber. You desire your life partner. Two primary intentions are why people communicate: 1. To transmit emotion. 2. To transfer information. Need reduces the importance of an individual to function. Desire elevates the importance of an individual with value. The transmission of emotion conveys the context of what we communicate, and what we socially invest in other people. The transference of information relays the content of intelligence, and the matter of intentions.
When coaches elevate the importance of the person, they will maximize the development of the player; and when they communicate with value-adding intention, players will invest more of themselves into how they are being coached. Empathy and compassion trust this.
Read Mamba Mentality Coaching: Part I
Read more about Alicia’s work with championship teams at ubicastrategy.com.
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