I came across a quick video with Daniel Slatton, former Professional, World Cup and Olympic soccer player, where she talks about having team standards versus rules. As Duke and Olympic Basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski said, “Standards are not rules issued by the boss; they are a collective identity. Remember, standards are the things that you do all the time and the things for which you hold one another accountable.”
There are definite “rules” we have to enforce that are given to us by the school district, state governing body, etc. We have to enforce those but, once kids have cleared that bar, the difference between maintaining standards and enforcing team rules can be striking. Maintaining high standards rather than enforcing rules allows us to focus on the behaviors that we want rather than pointing out those we don’t want. I think this is very helpful in situations where an athlete may not have the same frame of reference as you and I (especially with kids unfamiliar with the unwritten rules of the middle class, see Ruby K. Payne’s A Framework for Understanding Poverty for more info).
An example that I used in my programs going back to a particularly difficult group of wrestlers I had was that, “The behavior we expect in our program is the same that we expect in the classroom. If you wouldn’t do/say that in my classroom, I don’t want to see/hear it in the wrestling room.” After instituting this “standard,” I instantly saw a drop in the number of behavior incidents that I had to deal with and when I did have to correct behavior, the kids better understood why I was upset with them.
In our athletic department, we want every team to have a set of principles in place that serve as the foundation for our programs. Standards should be the principles of your program in action. If culture is belief, behavior and experience, then your principles are the stated beliefs of your program and the standards are the behaviors you want to see in your program and from your athletes.
Two great resources on how to use standards to further develop your program is Jeff Janssen’s book How to Build and Sustain a Championship Culture and Brian Cain’s MVP Process. In Janssen’s book, he dedicates Chapter 7 in the book to the topic of developing standards of behaviors. Here is a quick excerpt from his book that can be found on his blog:
Emanating from your Core Values are your program’s Standards of Behavior. These Standards revolve around the specific actions expected of each team member in a variety of contexts. The Standards of Behavior, in essence, are the daily choices and actions that either maximize (support) or minimize (undermine) the chances of your Vision becoming a reality – and your Values being practiced and upheld.
To have a Championship Culture, your Standards of Behavior must be set at a very high level. Rather than complaining about these high Standards or looking to subvert them, your coaches, captains, and team members should fully embrace them because they are necessary for high-level success. The high Standards are seen as an edge and as important differentiators in outworking, out-training, and out-competing your opponents.
Duke men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski says it best when he talks about the importance of establishing and embracing standards in a program. “A major part of becoming a team is the establishment and collective acceptance of your standards, based on your team’s makeup and centered on your unique goal. Once a group of individuals formulates and agrees to their standards, they become united, single-minded in purpose.”
Brian Cain’s MVP process concludes with coaches/athletes identifying what living one’s core principles looks like in 3-4 key areas of life. I have used Cain’s MVP process in my own program and highly recommend going through all of his 12 Pillars of Peak Performance. Here is an example of what we used while I was the head football coach at Redmond High School.
Hope this helps. As always, be sure to post to our Facebook page or tweet at me @nathanstanley on Twitter.
