We all have personal standards and professional standards. In most cases, we’ve written our professional standards down for our team to see. Our personal standards are lived out each day and have usually been influenced by our parents, siblings, coaches, teachers, friends, co-workers, and faith leaders. At some point, it becomes obvious to the exceptional leader that his or her personal standards influence and shape our professional standards. Otherwise, we become hypocrites.
Our standards help define our character. If we hold players to a higher standard than they see in us, we lose the respect of the team. We may dole out knowledge and plan to succeed, but it will not reach the depths it takes to be an impactful leader.
John Maxwell calls this “taking the high road.” The high road is the path less traveled. Maxwell says when leaders take the high road, they become instruments of grace to others and recipients of grace. The high road requires thinking and acting in ways that are not natural or common. We’ve all observed this from elite coaches. Coaches with high standards take the high road and make excellence their goal.
Listed below are John Maxwell’s standards of accomplishing the high road of leadership:
- Care more than others think is wise
- Risk more than others think is safe
- Dream more than others think is practical
- Expect more than others think is possible
- Work more than others think is necessary
When we conduct ourselves according to our highest standards, we accomplish more, handle criticism better, and at the end of a practice, a game, or the workday, we can rest in knowing that we have given our best. After all, isn’t that what competitive coaches demand from their players?
Possessing high standards doesn’t mean that you are perfect; it just means that you are striving for excellence in yourself and your players.
You may not think that being a role model is part of coaching, but players are usually more observant than we think. Coaches are role models whether they want to be or not.
We should always be the coach that we would have wanted to play for: knowledgeable, fair, competitive, and caring.
In the Apostle Paul’s letter to his protégé, Titus, he offered this advice: “…encourage the young men to be self-controlled. In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned…” (Titus 2:6-8a)
Earlier I mentioned that our standards define our character. High standards are not achieved by making drastic changes overnight. They are developed by taking small steps daily. If we set high standards for our team, it’s only natural that the team would expect high standards from their coach.
When I think of men with high personal standards, I don’t think of perfect men. I see men who wanted to do the right thing and made a habit of doing it.
My high school coach, Kaye Don VanMeter, was knowledgeable and good at teaching skills, but his number one attribute was his strength of character. He didn’t make speeches or talk about character. In fact, he was a quiet man. But when he did speak, everyone listened. His steadfastness and consistency were attributes that made an impact on me.
It’s not enough to say that character matters—you’ve got to recognize it when it shows up.
When setting standards for your team, we all know they may never reach the standard we set, but the higher we set the standards (within reason), the closer they will come to reaching them. This is true for on-the-field execution as well as character.
One year I wanted to improve our fielding percentage from the previous year. Even though we spent a lot of time on fielding mechanics and hit thousands of fungos, we still found ourselves well below our standards. Upon further study, I realized that many of our errors the previous year were throwing errors. During fall practice, I decided that instead of allowing players to throw on their own after stretching, all the coaches on the staff would be present.
My solution sounds a little harsh for today’s “standards,” but I told the team that for every ball that hit the ground during throwing drills, we would run a lap around the field for time. The first day we challenged them, there were 16 missed throws or dropped balls. That’s a lot of laps! The following day, there were only eleven. The last day of fall practice we had only one. Our fielding percentage improved drastically the following spring. Setting high standards and having accountability for mistakes are key.
“There are no big things, only a logical accumulation of little things done at a very high standard of performance.” — John Wooden