Target the Leadership Skills Your Athletes Need
Realizing a return on investment for your leadership development efforts requires a strategic approach. In athletics, especially, it’s essential to pinpoint the specific outcomes you want to achieve.
This article delves into the process of defining effective leadership learning objectives in order to see return on investment for your leadership development program. Read on to discover practical strategies, informed by engagement with coaches, student-athletes, and alumni, for creating a customized leadership curriculum that fosters success both on and off the field.
Begin with the End in Mind to Maximize Return on Investment for Your Leadership Development Program
Skill development typically begins with a clearly defined outcome (the specific application of a skill in context). The process for developing that skill starts with foundational elements and builds toward more complex, situational applications. For example, scheme “installs” begin with an outline of the scheme, which the student-athlete learns in a series of progressive steps. Leader development is no different; it’s therefore helpful to begin with the end state you’re trying to achieve. What do you need student-athlete leaders to actually do?
This can be a challenging question. We all recognize leadership when we see it but we rarely have to articulate the component skills. A development program can’t be effectively implemented, however, without a clearly-defined learning objective. As in a classroom, a curriculum flows from learning objectives. This article shares a path to defining your own leadership learning objectives.
Ground Your Learning Objectives in Validated Research
Leadership is a wide and well-researched field of study, and many scholars have focused their efforts on distilling these diverse ideas and theories into leadership competencies that an “effective leader” might possess. While much of the literature focuses on the military or business, these research-backed leadership competencies provide valuable conceptual frameworks for collegiate athletics, too.
For instance, early leadership research emphasized task and relationship-based categories of behavior such as “initiating structure” and “consideration.” These categories speak to standards and accountability, such as setting expectations clearly and enforcing appropriate repercussions for rule violations.
These categories also suggest what makes team members feel included and cared for, traits like asking questions and being approachable.[1]
Other competencies that can easily apply to a sports context include change-oriented behaviors (think motivation, and turning teams around). Here, behaviors like adequately articulating a vision or inspiring others to follow that vision are how effective leaders change a team, getting it out of its status quo. [2]
These three categories of leader behaviors – task, relationship, and change-based – can be a useful way to start thinking about the types of behaviors to develop on your teams. For example, logistics, rules, player roles, and overall team organization (all of which fall under initiating structure), are daily considerations for any coach or team captain.
How effective a leader is can be directly connected to how well one communicates and enforces these standards. And, when it comes to training, these behaviors can be measured and developed in captains and other teammates, especially if something like accountability is a prioritized team value.
But where to start? What leadership outcomes do you want? Are they the “right” outcomes? Below are four ways we like to answer these questions, and next time we will help you think about how to reverse engineer these desired outcomes into a leadership curriculum for your student-athletes.
Engage Your Coaches and Student-Athlete Facing Staff
Anyone who works directly with student-athletes will be able to tell you what the best athlete leaders do, and where your athletes may be falling short. One of the most effective strategies for gathering this data is to meet with each coaching staff, as well as other student-facing staff, and ask “If I observed your practice, what would show me you had the leaders you actually need? What would the leaders be doing?” Because leadership is a practice, it is helpful to picture what it actually looks like when it’s happening. It is often easier to describe leadership in tangible actions rather than name big picture concepts.
Solicit the Student-Athlete Voice
While it’s true that many student-athlete leaders “don’t know what they don’t know,” a quick survey can still provide valuable information. Good insight will be gained by asking “where do you need more support?” and “what leadership skills do you want to further develop?” It is amazing how aware they are, and they’ll appreciate you asking questions and being approachable to input and ideas.
Get Some Alumni Perspective
Alumni (particularly recent alumni) can provide valuable insight about how well-prepared they felt transitioning to professional life, and where they could have used more development. Consider surveying this group, asking what leadership skills they learned while competing that they’ve already used in their professional life, as well as what skills they wish they would have spent more time developing while on campus. This may identify some gaps and opportunities, which can then be cross-referenced with feedback received from coaches and the academic competencies. Considering that alumni are often the source of much investment in athletics departments, they will be especially valuable in ensuring a return on investment for your leadership development.
Identify Themes and Start Small
It will quickly become apparent that there are countless skills and competencies which could be the focus of a leader development program. There is no need to try to address them all! Aggregate all of the data and identify themes, much like the early organizational scholars did. Of course, you don’t have to connect your own themes to the formal research themes – we just provide those as a starting point grounded in research.
From those themes, look for the concepts that – if more fully developed – would make all teams better in the short-term, and better position student-athletes for professional success in the long-term. For instance, if a team is on a good trajectory and the goal is to maintain, change-oriented leader behaviors may be less valuable to emphasize than relationship-oriented behaviors.
Focus on one or two themes to start, design your curriculum, implement a pilot, test the concepts, and then iterate as appropriate. It is better to start small and do it well than to try to address all things at once and risk diluting the impact. If early value is created for student-athletes and coaches, buy-in will follow and easily present future opportunities to scale the effort.
One Size Does Not Fit All
It’s important to remember that the focus of your program should reflect the particular needs and application of leadership on your campus. Each campus has a unique climate and culture, and leadership is not “one size fits all.” While the skills themselves may be universal, the application and emphasis of those skills is not. Build a program that uniquely reflects the needs your coaches, staff, student-athletes, and alumni have identified.
Create A Curriculum
Where next? Working backwards from the desired ends will help you determine what’s necessary to develop effective leaders. If you’re looking for inspiration, check out our free curriculum design, or reach out to us about how to get started with a custom curriculum development strategy.
For more insights on return on investment for leadership development programs, be sure to check out our recommended resources, especially Leadership Reckoning by Thomas Kolditz, Libby Gill, and Ryan Brown,
A version of this article can be found in our Leadership White Paper Series.
[1] Fleishman, E. A. (1953). The description of supervisory behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 37(1); Halpin, A. W., & Winer, B. J. (1957). A factorial study of the leader behavior descriptions. Leader behavior: Its description and measurement, 39-51; Yukl, G., Gordon, A., & Taber, T. (2002). A hierarchical taxonomy of leadership behavior: Integrating a half century of behavior research. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 9(1), 15-32.
[2] Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Moorman, R. H., & Fetter, R. (1990). Transformational leader behaviors and their effects on followers’ trust in leader, satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behaviors. The Leadership Quarterly, 1(2), 107-142; Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (1995). The leadership challenge: How to keep getting extraordinary things done in organizations. California: Jossey Bass.
