By Laura Smith
Laura Smith is an Assistant Editor at Coaching Management. She can be reached at: ls@MomentumMedia.com.
Coaching Management, 14.2, February 2006, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/cm/cm1402/coachinthemirror.htm
In his 33 years as a baseball coach, one game sticks in Eric Kibler’s mind as the moment his coaching philosophy was born. The moment isn’t one of glory or triumph—in fact, it’s an experience he’d probably rather forget. But instead of forgetting it, he filed it away to help him recall what makes him a coach and shapes his approach to mentoring his Horizon Hills (Ariz.) High School team.
“I was a very young coach, and I humiliated a kid in front of his teammates,” Kibler says. “He made a mistake, and I shouted at him out on the field. That might not sound like a big deal, but I knew as soon as the words were out of my mouth that it was wrong. I felt terrible. After the game, I apologized to him and to the entire team. I told them that wasn’t the way a coach should ever act, it wasn’t right, and it wouldn’t happen again. And it hasn’t—I have never done that since.”
That experience helped Kibler define two things about his coaching philosophy. “First, I believe in using the game to build kids up,” he says. “I don’t allow any coach in my program to take away a kid’s dignity, because my biggest goal is for players to leave my program feeling confident. The second is that I will always evaluate my own performance and be willing to say I’m sorry when I make a mistake. Those are two big elements of my coaching philosophy, and they were formed from that experience.”
What’s your coaching philosophy? Whether you think about it daily, analyze it once a season, or rarely reflect on it at all, it’s the framework on which your performance is built. Coaches who take the time to clarify and refine their philosophies are rewarded with a roadmap for better decision-making and a deeper, more meaningful experience for themselves and their athletes.
Here, we ask veteran coaches in three different sports at three different levels of competition to talk about their coaching philosophies. They discuss what their philosophies are, describe how they evolved, and recall the experiences that formed their beliefs.
The Mental Game
Named Coach of the Year in 2005 by both the High School Baseball Coaches Association and the American Baseball Coaches Association, Kibler says the cornerstone of his philosophy is a focus on the process. “We don’t talk about winning a lot,” he says. “We even keep goal setting to a minimum, because if that’s overemphasized, it can lead to a focus on the outcome. Winning is important—don’t get me wrong—but I believe in working hard and allowing the results to take care of themselves.”
Kibler believes in preparing his team well and then allowing them to make most of the decisions in games. “I tell them that practices belong to the coaches, and games belong to the players,” he says. “I make a few decisions during games, but for the most part, this is their chance to show how well they’ve prepared.”
Focusing on the mental game is another key aspect of Kibler’s coaching philosophy, and the first requirement of the mental game is that it has to be fun. “My players are under a lot of stress in their lives already—there are grades, parents, girlfriends, getting into college,” Kibler says. “The first thing I tell them is that baseball is not supposed to be another source of stress, and if it is, we’re doing something wrong. We’re going to play hard, but we’re going to play relaxed.”
That approach opens the door to another staple of Kibler’s approach: teaching players to take risks. “Baseball is a game of failure, so you’re never going to play well when you’re afraid to fail,” he says. “I teach my players that if they aren’t making mistakes, they’re not taking risks. If you can get players to think, ‘Coach believes in me, so I’m going to take a risk,’ you will see performances you’d never see otherwise.
“The mental aspect of my coaching has grown over the years to the point that I give it just as much thought as I do the Xs and Os,” he says. “I’ve learned that confidence, desire, and a willingness to take risks can take a team places no one thought they could go.”
That approach proved itself for Kibler in 2005, when his team unseated defending Arizona 5A state champion Hamilton High School for Kibler’s third state title in four appearances in the final. By Kibler’s own evaluation, the team was not his most physically talented, but their desire and mental toughness filled the gaps.
Providing plenty of positive feedback is another way Kibler adds to his players’ confidence. “I make sure to praise the kids whose contributions might go unnoticed,” he says. “If a player lays down a good bunt or someone on the bench steals a sign, I point out in front of the team that those are the things that turn the tide in a game. After every game, whether we won big or stunk the place up, I leave them on a positive note.”
Responsibility to team also permeates Kibler’s philosophy. “One of our mottoes is, ‘We’re here to pick each other up, not to show each other up,’” he says. “I stress to my guys that not everybody is going to play a good game every game. It’s their job to say to a teammate who just struck out, ‘It’s okay. You’ve done it for us in the past, so I’ll get it done today.’ That extends to life off the field, too.”
Kibler presents team rules with the same team-focused approach. “My rule is, ‘If you do anything that takes away from the reputation of this team, it’s a violation of some sort,’” he says. “Having them first think of how their choices will affect the team is a simple way of doing things.
“Kids need to know that their coach will enforce his rules,” he adds. “Many of them have people in their lives who have a lot of rules but don’t enforce any of them. My philosophy is to have few rules and enforce them all.”
Working with parents is a plank of Kibler’s platform that has evolved markedly over the years. Early in his career, he had an open-door policy at all times and attempted to solve parent problems as they arose. “I had people calling my house at all hours, showing up on my doorstep, or cornering me after church on Sunday,” he says. “Now I take a much more proactive approach with parents. I have a contract listing 22 items that they and their sons need to sign. It tells them exactly what I will and will not negotiate and spells out the proper times and ways to communicate with me.
“We won’t talk about playing time,” Kibler continues, “and we don’t have discussions with parents before or after games—I ask them to make appointments. But I am always available to discuss any issue affecting their kid’s well-being—depression, social difficulties, problems at home. If they want to talk about anything like that, I’ll sit down right away and say, ‘How can I help?’”
Kibler says the roots of his philosophy go back to his childhood in a small farming community, where he watched his father coach baseball and wanted to be like him someday. “He was a humble, disciplined man,” he says. “He didn’t say a lot, but he was always prepared and he always made sure his players had fun. I learned from him what hard work is and that it brings rewards like nothing else. I grew up in a small community where everyone helped everyone else, and my goal has been to create that same kind of connected community on my team here in the middle of Phoenix. I think we’re succeeding at that.”
Watching other coaches has also helped Kibler define his philosophy. “Gordie Gillespie, John Wooden—I’ve studied their philosophies and gone to hear them speak,” he says. “I analyze how they coach and I think, ‘If I can get anywhere close to that, that’s the right way to do it.’”
For Kibler, evaluating his coaching philosophy is an ongoing effort. “I assess it after every season, but really, I’m always tweaking it,” he says. “I take issues that arise as an opportunity to refine my philosophy. For example, with steroids being such a big topic in the professional ranks, I’ve done a lot of thinking about my philosophy on talking to my players about that. I’ve decided to focus on the message, ‘Integrity is everything.’
“I’m constantly learning and evaluating myself,” he adds. “And the final part of my philosophy is that the day I can’t say I’m doing that—and walking through the gates ready to put in 100 percent—I’ll turn in my keys. That is what I expect from my players, so that is what I expect from myself.”
Focusing on the Journey
Mark Guthrie, Head Coach of Men’s Indoor and Outdoor Track and Field at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, has used a coaching philosophy with three basic principles to guide 19 teams to NCAA Division III titles. The first principle is that the experience belongs to his student-athletes. “I had my time, and this is their time,” Guthrie says. “So I let them tell me what they want to accomplish. I allow the student-athletes to set their own individual and team goals, and my role is to help them reach those goals.”
Guthrie starts each season by asking his team to set a goal for the season. “Not surprisingly, they always come back with, ‘To win the national championship,’” he says. “Everything is geared toward winning the title, from how I plan practices to how I approach meets. If they told me one year their goal was to win a conference title, I’d base everything on that instead.”
Second, Guthrie believes in regularly putting his student-athletes into challenging competitive situations—even if they feel they’re in over their heads. “We’re a D-III school, but we run at Wisconsin, Minnesota, Purdue, the Drake Relays, and the Kansas Relays,” he says. “I believe in taking my athletes where they are going to see fantastic talent. It gives them confidence when they get to the most critical situation we face—our national meet.”
A team focus is the third hallmark of Guthrie’s philosophy. “I talk to my athletes a lot about how every member of the team, whether they score points or not, contributes to the final result,” he says.
Guthrie says that watching other coaches—both those he respects and those he doesn’t—has helped him refine his philosophy. “I remember early in my career watching a coach chew out a kid who had screwed up in a meet,” he says. “I knew right then that wasn’t going to be part of my philosophy. Some coaches say, ‘You have to tear kids down to build them back up,’ but I don’t believe that. When an athlete screws up, they know it, and the last thing they need is to be torn down. I tell them, ‘Tomorrow is another day. Let’s start over from here and do what we need to do.’”
Guthrie also believes in testing his beliefs by watching how they stand up in tough situations. “Going into the D-III indoor championships two years ago, one of my athletes was the top thrower in D-III history in the 35-pound weight, and we were counting on him for 10 points toward the title,” he says. “Instead, he fouled three times. It was a big blow, but I followed my philosophy. I told him, ‘The sun is still coming up tomorrow and even though this is pretty important to us, it’s not the end of the world.’ Then at the outdoor nationals, he threw a lifetime personal record and won the hammer. If I had jumped down his throat at the indoor nationals and told him he had let us down, I’m not sure he would have had the confidence to put it behind him. So I believe my philosophy served me well, and it goes back to when I saw that one coach early in my career do just the opposite.
“The longer you coach, the more your philosophy evolves,” he continues. “You see what works and build on it, and you see what doesn’t work and change it. It’s a slow process. I think it takes at least a decade before you have a fairly solid philosophy. And even after that, good coaches never stop looking for ways to adapt.”
Guthrie sets aside a special time after each season ends to evaluate his philosophy. “I go out on my boat alone and just cruise and think about what happened during the season. Are my core beliefs and my approach working? If the answer is no, I start breaking down what isn’t working and figure out how to change it.
“The toughest time to evaluate your philosophy is when you’re succeeding,” he continues. “After a losing season, it’s easy to look back and try to figure out what went wrong. But it’s just as important to go back after a great season and ask, ‘Did we do everything we could or is there a better way to do it?’”
Over the years, Guthrie says his philosophy has evolved to be much less about wins and losses and much more about the process. “I’ve come to realize that it’s all about the journey, and I’ve developed a little tradition to communicate that to my athletes,” he says. “I make sure we are always the last ones to leave a competition. We wait, and after all the other teams have left, we just stand there for a minute and look around so they don’t forget the experience. The medals will tarnish and the ribbons will fade, but the memories are what will carry them for the rest of their lives. I tell my athletes, ‘Just stand here a minute and soak it in so you’ll always remember what you’ve been through and what you’re a part of.’”
Three Little Words
University of Idaho Head Women’s Basketball Coach Mike Divilbiss has a philosophy that’s distilled down into three words: hard, smart, together. Divilbiss freely admits the words are borrowed from legendary coach Dean Smith, but he has put his own stamp on the phrase that has come to stand for a very specific way of doing things.
On the basketball court, “play hard” translates to putting in maximum effort every day. Playing smart reminds his players to take care of the little things: boxing out for rebounds, making the sure pass, reading defenses properly. And playing together means an athlete understands teamwork—she knows when to pass the ball and when to take it to the basket.
However, “hard, smart, together” extends beyond the basketball court. “It applies to every facet of their lives, and of my life too, because I also ask it of myself,” Divilbiss says. “I expect them to play ‘hard, smart, and together’ in the classroom and socially as well. I expect them to extend maximum effort in their schoolwork and to ‘play together’ by helping each other make good decisions in social situations.
“I don’t believe you can be one person in one part of your life and a different person in another part of your life,” he continues. “So my players can’t tell me they’re going to be a mess academically and then become disciplined and accountable on the court. My philosophy is that we have to build quality people who are ready to make good decisions and give maximum effort on and off the basketball court. ‘Hard, smart, together’ has become shorthand for that.”
Divilbiss says he still puts time into thinking and reading about coaching philosophies. “I spend a lot of time listening to other coaches, too,” he continues. “I go to clinics now not so much to learn about basketball, but to hear coaches talk about why they do what they do.”
Divilbiss also looks at pivotal experiences in his coaching career as opportunities to define his philosophy. One came when his Lewis-Clark State College team, 26 and 0 and ranked number one in the country, lost in the conference finals on a half-court shot at the buzzer. “I didn’t get down on the kids, but I didn’t lead,” he says. “I lost my perspective and I was making it all about the scoreboard. Ever since, I’ve wished I could have that moment in the locker room back. But evaluating that experience helped me return to who I am and what I believe in.”
Moving from Lewis-Clark to the NCAA Division I University of Idaho provided Divilbiss another opportunity to analyze his core beliefs. He had built the LC State program into an NAIA contender, winning 33 games in his last season and taking his team to the Final Four. In his first two years at Idaho, his team won 11 and 10 games. “Coming off a season with 33 wins, that was a soul-searching time for me,” says Divilbiss, now in his fifth season at Idaho, with a contract extension through 2010. “I asked myself, ‘What are you doing here? Who are you? What’s important to you?’ I ended up completely re-examining my coaching philosophy and really asking myself, ‘Why coach basketball in the first place? What’s so important to me about it?’”
Divilbiss’s soul searching resulted in a personal philosophy statement that’s published on Idaho’s athletics Web site. In place of the usual collection of stats and accolades, the coach’s bio describes how he molds a basketball team into a family and teaches players to handle successes and failures in life.
“In the end, I came back to the fact that winning wasn’t the most important thing to me and that success was about much more than the scoreboard,” he says. “Changing jobs ended up providing me with the chance to truly define my coaching philosophy.”
Along with pivotal moments, Divilbiss uses his daily experiences and interactions to refine his coaching philosophy. “I continually ask myself, ‘What does this team need from me?’ I also ask my captains that question and listen carefully to their answers. If I’m constantly adjusting my approach to give them more of what they need, I know I am working from a sound philosophy.
“There’s really no time when I’m not evaluating my philosophy,” he adds. “It’s synonymous with who I am as a person, and that’s something I think about every day.”
Sidebar: Making A Statement
By Dr. Dennis Docheff
Dennis Docheff, EdD, is a Professor in the Department of Health and Human Performance at Central Missouri State University and a former football, basketball, and track and field coach.
Along with figuring out your coaching philosophy, consider writing a personal philosophy statement. Developing a concise, written description of your philosophy will allow you to think about what is important to you and communicate that to others. When there’s a decision to be made, your philosophy statement will serve as a personal guide to steer you in the right direction. Here is a way to break the task down into a six-step process.
Write a list. The first step is to create a list of everything important to you in life—everything. If family is important to you, list it. If having time to exercise is a priority, list it. How about your professionalism? Winning? Salary? Try to include everything that may impact your daily behavior.
Prioritize your list. Next, prioritize each item on the list: 1 = very important, 2 = somewhat important, and 3 = moderately important. Here’s an example:
Family: 1
Winning games: 1
Influencing students: 1
Championship titles: 2
Success of athletes: 2
Lifelong learning: 1
Friends: 3
There is no right or wrong in this process. The items listed and the numbers next to them should reflect your true feelings.
Create the statement. Look at all the #1 items and write a paragraph or more that links them together. If some of the #1 items do not seem to fit what you want to say, it’s okay to leave them out. And you may decide to “upgrade” a few #2 items because they help to define what you are truly about. Elab-o-r-ate and add text to bring out what really inspires you on a daily basis.
The following is an example of the opening of a philosophy statement: “I love to learn, and learning inspires me to teach others. Through coaching, I hope to positively influence today’s youth, so they might be good citizens tomorrow. Patience, kindness, and love direct my interactions with athletes. Although I like to win, it is imperative that I do so in a fair and just manner. I believe in doing what’s right.”
Publish it. When people think of publishing, they typically think of books or magazines. But coaches have many avenues to publish their philosophy statement. The simplest way is to place it in a frame and hang it on the office wall or post it in the locker room where athletes can read it. Other ideas include: placing it on a Web site; printing it on 3x5 cards you hand out to athletes; and including it in a preseason packet for athletes and parents.
Put it into practice. The most important part of the process is putting the philosophy into action. Try setting one or two monthly goals that are directly related to your philosophy and check your work at the end of each month. Another idea is to create a term “report card,” either on your own or with a mentor to gauge progress toward your larger goals. Or keep a journal, where you write about your daily activities, then reflect on how well your behavior matches your philosophy.
Review it. As people grow and mature, things that were once important in their lives may change and thus their philosophy may change, too. Even if the philosophy statement remains the same from year to year, reviewing the document will refresh your perspective.
Certainly, trying to live out a public philosophy puts pressure on a coach. It takes courage to tell people, “This is what I’m about. Please hold me accountable.” However, writing and reviewing your philosophy will help you coach in a manner that truly represents who you are. And the longer you use it, the more likely you will be to reach your goals.