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A Field Guide to Building Winning Teams and Winning Season
The framework and ideas you'll learn about in this Program come from my own intense study and introspection on coaching. My own journey began in a big way a few years into my time as a head coach in college hockey when I had a startling realization: I didn't like the way I was coaching or how we were playing. It's not that we were doing poorly. We weren't. We'd been winning lots of games. We just weren't playing the game I loved and it didn't make sense to me that I was trying to coach one way when I believed something completely different.
So I set about making significant and sweeping changes to everything I thought about and did as a coach: my philosophy and point of view on how we would play the game, how we would prepare and practice, how we would recruit players, and ultimately how I would prepare myself and the other coaches.
My single most important realization was that I had been ignoring one of the most empowering opportunities and challenges that a head coach has: To set a tone, to create an environment, to build a team from the heart and soul out. I found I had not been focusing on how much influence I had on the environment that the team worked within, how our players felt about themselves, and how they behaved and played because of both those factors. I was setting the tone alright, but not the tone that I really wanted.
Two quotes capture what I came to understand about leadership and what being a head coach is all about.
If you treat an individual as if he were what he ought to be and could be he will become what he ought to be and could be.
(Goethe)
The most important function of education at any level is to develop the personality of the individual and the significance of his life to himself and to others.
(Grayson Kirk)
This is a program that teaches first and foremost that you need to love if you want to be a good coach. You have to love the game, love the idea of team, love the idea of helping people "be the best version of themselves that they can be," and ultimately love yourself.
This is not a program for cynics. If you think being a good coach is just about strategy, or motivation, or getting after people, you won't like what I have to say. If you like the idea of bringing your love and passion to work, and becoming the best version of you that you can be, then you will find that Coaching Magic and the principles of The Hoffberg Coaching Diamond will work very well for you and your quest.
Purpose of this Program
Think about the word "Coach" for a minute. It's a job description, an attitude, and a set of skills. And while it's a job description that is generally associated with athletes and athletics, it's an idea or ideal that has increasingly caught the attention of people in business.
A lot of what gets passed off as coaching isn't. This is true in business, in athletics and anywhere else where the term is used to imply authority without responsibility, strategy without understanding, and winning without creating structure and learning.
Coaching Magic is a journey into a holistic view of coaching and the possibilities it opens up for high performance and personal growth on the part of the coach and the team members. It's based on framework I created called "The Coaching Diamond" which is drawn from a lifetime of playing and coaching by someone who has been there as one of the winningest coaches in college hockey history and a former national champion team captain and perennial all star.
Program Outcome
These materials will introduce you to a simple but powerful framework for thinking about and organizing coaching activities called "The Coaching Diamond." Here are the elements.
The Coach . . . and his or her passion for the game, personal commitment, integrity, and preparation, and love for the players
Players . . . and their enrollment in the vision, engagement in the program, commitment to growth and excellence, and commitment to team and team members
System . . . the driving idea and framework designed to produce excellence and success
Learning . . . the ability to build skill and competency, adapt to changing conditions and circumstances, and to build and maintain flexibility within the context of the system
You'll have the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of The Hoffberg Coaching Diamond, evaluate yourself and your team on the key principles, and begin the process of creating team magic and integrity, the center and circumference for team success.
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