When we sat down to talk leadership with the University of Dayton’s winningest softball coach of all time, Head Coach, Cara Clark-LaPlaca; and Executive Director of the University’s renowned Center for Leadership, Brent Kondritz Ph.D., a three-dimensional perspective on leadership emerged.
Coach Cara and Brent have proven to create a highly effective teaching dynamic for developing the leadership capabilities of the student-athletes in Coach Cara’s program. As she highlighted,
“I think it’s a great partnership, we each bring something to the relationship and every situation. It’s been so beneficial to be able to work in collaboration. If I were to just teach leadership on my own, it would not have the same value. I think our shared experience is what makes it so effective.”
Agreeing whole heartedly, Brent added,
“When the opportunity to work with Cara and her team came up, I jumped on it, because first of all I thought it would be really cool and then once I started working with her, I saw the impact that it was making and the positive feedback she was giving.”
The University of Dayton’s Center for Leadership was established in 1999 through a collaboration between corporations located in the Dayton area. Today, it is recognized as a valuable leadership training body within the Dayton region, serving the leadership development needs of both the university and business community. Demonstrating the Center’s tagline, ‘the best leaders never stop learning’, more than 50 companies including manufacturers, retailers, technology leaders, health care agencies, and non-for-profits send their leaders to the Center for its world-class programs. Brent highlighted that more than 7,000 individuals go through approximately 225+ leadership development training programs each year.
Since joining the Center in 2010 as Assistant Director, Brent has drawn on his extensive experience in Corporate Training and Development, Human Resources, Sales, Strategy, and Operations to design and deliver leadership training at all levels.
Effective leadership drives results in corporate and sporting spaces alike, but knowing what it looks like and how to develop it is half the challenge. Something which Coach Cara shared she faced early into her coaching career,
“Early in my career I found it frustrating that in my view, we didn’t have good leaders. And then it occurred to me that it was my fault, I had just expected people to be good leaders. I realized that it was actually my job to train them to do what I am expecting them to do.”
Now into her 16th season as Head Coach of the Softball program, Coach Cara has built a hard-working, successful culture of excellence; and her emphasis on leadership enhancement, mental skills training, and team chemistry have elevated her most recent teams to even greater heights. She serves on the National Fastpitch Coaches Association (NFCA) top 25 Committee, and as UD’s all-time winningest softball coach, she finished the 2023 season with 380 wins with the team and 512 career wins as a head coach.
Perhaps adding a unique perspective to her coaching role, Cara earned her undergraduate degree in psychology from Clarke University, her Master of Education in Counseling from Western Illinois University, and previously held a position as an in-house counsellor during her earlier coaching career prior to joining UD. Cara shared that this experience as a counsellor in the broader community and on campus has given her powerful insights and ability to build relationships and create connections with both her student-athletes and staff.
This level of experience, self-awareness, and comfort working with diverse people has created space for this collaborative partnership to grow, and an outstanding example set for Coach Cara’s student-athletes to follow.
Underpinning their collaborative leadership development program, is a foundation for developing self-awareness in order to better understand and lead others. This is achieved through every student-athlete in the softball program completing an Athlete Assessments AthleteDISC Profile. Following many years using DISC in the business world in the 2000’s and seeing the power and benefits of it, Brent was introduced to Athlete Assessments’ DISC Profiles while analyzing resources for his Ph.D. dissertation on ‘The Leadership Perceptions of Collegiate Student-Athletes and Their Coaches’.
As the first and only DISC Profiling tools available globally that has been customized to sport, Brent shared,
“What I love about CoachDISC and AthleteDISC is that they are already in sport-speak. We don’t have to figure out how to utilize some of the concepts to make it fit, it already fits!”
Following this, Brent became a certified Athlete Assessments DISC Consultant, and later introduced Coach Cara to the behavioral tool when they first started working together.
Reflecting on their use of the tool, Coach Cara shared,
“Their DISC Profile gives them insight into themselves and then as they progress in their college career, who they are in the group becomes more important and DISC helps them understand how they can make the most of the inner relationships and interplay in the group.”
She continued,
“We use a variety of resources that evolve each year from readings to speakers, things the student-athletes connect with, but I’ve found that the DISC is really centering and something consistent.”
The individual DISC Profile reports detail the way an athlete’s behavioral preferences influence how they practice and compete, their pace, communication style, and the way they build relationships with the people around them.
Cara’s program has structured leadership development pathways for student-athletes throughout their entire collegiate experience, from their first season through to senior. Each year, onboarding Freshman completed their own AthleteDISC Profile coupled with a DISC debrief session, before joining the rest of the team to understanding their new dynamic and roles within the team.
While the partnership originated with Brent using his DISC accreditation to facilitate the DISC components of the program, as a true testament to their effective collaboration he shared how it has evolved over time,
“Cara knows DISC just as well as me, if not better, and I think that’s what’s caused DISC Profiling to be grounded in the softball program. I think the sustainability around DISC falls on her and her coaches, because it’s really up to them to keep it alive. If you don’t have the behaviors and the actions behind the support, you’re not going to get traction.”
He continued, “One of the values that I really look at when we’re working with a coach or leadership group, is the investment that that leader puts into their people. Cara takes a very holistic approach to the young women she works with. It’s super cool to see. They are so fortunate to have her as their coach.”
Cara explained that one of the critical factors influencing her decision to go with DISC Profiling for the leadership program, was that it’s assessment and subsequent profile focuses on behavior as opposed to personality. The primary difference being that behavior is flexible, while personality is fixed; and unlike many personality profiles that are rigid in their results, DISC is measuring degrees of behavior and ultimately puts the emphasis on adaptability as a performance factor.
Elaborating Brent shared,
“I love a behavioral assessment. It’s very hard to tell someone, ‘Hey, I need you to take your high-energy self and reign it in’, because saying that would be offensive! But if you can have a conversation about what behavior is going to get the best result, then that’s helpful.”
Cara added,
“I’m naturally a sceptic and curious in the same way, so you’ve got to prove to me that something is real. My background in counseling and psychology means data and using proven methods, so knowing that Athlete Assessments’ DISC Profiles are backed by research, statistics and validity is really important. Our players have responded really well to the program, and I have seen favorable growth in our culture, but the validity is why I have so much confidence in the program.”
Skill Transferability is a high priority at UD, with Brent noting that he tells student-athletes,
“DISC is not just going to help you with your sport, it’s going to help with the relationship you have whether it’s your parents, your siblings, how you interact and engage in class projects, or your profession.
I think the lightbulb goes on then the longer they are with us, the lightbulb becomes brighter.”
After 16 consistently successful and ever improving seasons at UD, Coach Cara demonstrates the performance benefit of investing time into developing your athletes and emphasizing non-technical factors like leadership. But beyond the scoreboard results, it’s the development of athletes as people first, coupled with role modeling the way that productive partnerships can develop fuller perspectives and deliver greater results, that truly makes Coach Cara and Brent’s program of championship standard.
To conclude Cara shared,
“Developing, educating, and enhancing emerging leaders is something I’m investing a lot more time into during this phase of my career. And it’s paying off.”
We are so grateful to Coach Cara and Brent for sharing their insights into how they work together to grow the leadership base within the University of Dayton Softball Program.
Where to from here?
Just like the University of Dayton Center for Leadership, here at Athlete Assessments we too believe the best leaders never stop learning. If like Brent, you’re a leadership professional working in sport and looking to expand your tool kit, Athlete Assessments’ Consultant DISC Accreditation Program puts the expertise in your hands. With dedicated one-on-one training tailored to your experience and intended use of the assessments, we encourage you to contact us to find out more.
Maybe you’re a coach whose program doesn’t have access to someone like Brent internally, so whether you’re experienced like Coach Cara, or just starting out, we have tailored Team Programs to support you in taking your team to the next level.
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