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Founder of Athlete Assessments, Bo Hanson, sits down with Mississippi State Volleyball Head Coach, Julie Darty Dennis, and Director of Student-Athlete Leadership Development at the University of Michigan, Brian Townsend, to get the ‘how-to’ from the experts in athlete leadership.
Melissa Phillips, Head Coach of the London City Lionesses on understanding yourself as a coach to provide the foundation for athlete self-awareness, and how she uses DISC to enhance team and individual performance through purposeful recruitment and positioning.
In any industry, recruiting the right person to join your team is a challenging task, but when done right can be extremely rewarding. We spoke to a panel of head coaches who are experts in recruiting assistant coaches for their own programs. Think of this as the how-to for recruiting the right assistant coach, the effects it has on team culture, and why it’s part of a head coach’s role to get it right.
There’s no question that every individual has to be at their best in high performance sport, but, if that is our only focus, we’re missing a critical ingredient essential for creating a successful team, and so the concept of being the best athlete for the team emerges.
Creating and maintaining an effective team culture is critical to sustained success. So, if we define culture simply as ‘the way we behave around here’, we need to determine what is acceptable and what is not? But then as a coach, how do you sustain a culture or how do you deal with an athlete who acts in a way that opposes the culture you want?
Trust can be built through developing an understanding of one another and their position within the team. When we talk about team roles, we look at both technical and non-technical roles as being equally critical to a team’s success. While technical roles are the position an athlete plays on the field, non-technical roles refer to how the athletes make (or don’t make) a contribution to the team beyond their technical position.
The skill of decision making is closely linked to problem solving. For some athletes, making the right decisions at the right time is a well-developed skill, whilst other athletes find this process more challenging. Like any critical skill, the key to developing an individual’s decision making is to practice. So, where should an athlete practice their decision making? The answer is in training.
Captain or leadership group, how can you determine what the right structure for your team is? Who should be appointed as the leader and, what exactly does the person in the leadership role do? These were some of the critical leadership questions we unpacked in our recent open webinar, ‘Choosing Captains and Leadership Development Within Your Team’.
Going beyond what’s expected of you, is a part of what we value at Athlete Assessments. So, when it was suggested we do an aerial yoga class as our team building activity, we all jumped at the idea of getting out of our comfort zones (no pun intended…).
Darren’s contribution to Western Australia’s basketball program reflects his approach to developing and supporting athletes as they ‘form’. He explains that essentially his role is “to help athletes understand themselves, their teammates, coaches, and managers, so they can be more effective with their communications and be able to better adapt to situations.”
At Athlete Assessments, we’re here to provide you with excellence in service and to help you be your best. If there is anything we can assist you with, please Contact Us.
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Bo Hanson’s career within the sport and the business sector spans over 25 years, delivering leadership, management, and coach development. In addition to his own athletic career comprising of four Olympic appearances and including three Olympic medals, Bo has worked for many years with coaches and athletes from over 40 different sports across the globe. Bo was also the winner of the Australian Institute of Training and Development (AITD) 2023 Award for L&D Professional of the Year, for his dedication to L&D and transformational work across various industries.
After a successful career in sport including four Olympics and three Olympic Medals, Bo co-founded and developed Athlete Assessments in 2007. Bo now focuses on working with clients to achieve their own success on and off ‘the field’ and has attained an unmatched track-record in doing exactly this.
