SEASON 2 - LEAD
LESSONS
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the Student Athlete Leadership Program, please watch this brief introduction video.
As part of the LEAD experience, coaches receive a 10-month follow-up curriculum for athletes and coaches to use on a monthly basis throughout the next school year. This includes ten 10-12 minute video lessons, which are complemented by workbooks that dive deep into the monthly topic. The monthly LEAD Curriculum is designed to help student-athletes retain what they learned during the LEAD event, as well as to challenge them to take their servant leadership experience even further.
HOW TO WIN & HOW TO LOSE
Whether you win or lose is less important than what you do in the aftermath. How well your team plays the game determines whether you win or lose, but how well you accept and respond to a win or loss determines whether you will be successful in future games and in life.
Remember this: winning well makes you better at losing, and losing well makes you better at winning. In fact, you need the same three elements to win well that you need to lose well: humility, integrity, and perspective.
HOW TO WEEKEND
You look forward to the weekend as a break from the daily grind. It’s a chance to put your feet up and experience the Lion King’s Hakuna Matata mindset of no rules, no responsibilities, and no worries. Right?
Well, sort of. Rest and relaxation are an important part of the weekend, so you can recharge for the next week. But, it’s only one step in the process to have a truly great weekend. Timon and Pumba might have been able to have an endless summer break, but you’ve got goals and standards that need to be upheld regardless of the day of the week.
HOW TO FAMILY
Leadership centers on FAMILY: Forget About Me, I Love You. The best leaders recognize that FAMILY is a verb. You family when you give a teammate a ride home after practice. You family when you take the words off the locker room wall and put them into practice in your daily life. But make no mistake, living for FAMILY is not easy.
Living for FAMILY is not easy. Neither is being a leader. To be the best leader you can be, take the words off the walls and use them to guide you in daily life.
HOW TO SELF TALK
No matter who you are, the words you use matter. Your words can move others to tears or inspire them to set a personal record. Your words can encourage a teammate to keep pushing through hardship, or help them walk away from a harmful situation. Words can have power on a grand scale— think speeches, books, ground-breaking papers— and words can have an impact on what you want to have for lunch.
This is even more true as a leader— how we talk to ourselves about the situations in and around us shape how we will lead, and the experience of those we lead. A leader needs to understand how to self-talk positively, and accurately, so that they can lead positively and accurately.
HOW TO SAY THANK YOU
There are few things better to hear than a genuine, heartfelt thank you. Not only does it benefit the other person by making them feel good and encouraging them to continue being awesome, but it also helps you to cultivate gratitude. Studies have shown numerous benefits to being grateful, including improved sleep, closer relationships, and less chance of getting sick.
So, gratitude is clearly worthwhile for everyone, but how do you express gratitude beyond saying the words “thank you”? It depends on who you are thanking and for what. Let’s look at ways to say thank you to coaches, encouragers, challengers, teammates, and grace givers.
HOW TO WEDNESDAY
There are few things better to hear than a genuine, heartfelt thank you. Not only does it benefit the other person by making them feel good and encouraging them to continue being awesome, but it also helps you to cultivate gratitude. Studies have shown numerous benefits to being grateful, including improved sleep, closer relationships, and less chance of getting sick.
So, gratitude is clearly worthwhile for everyone, but how do you express gratitude beyond saying the words “thank you”? It depends on who you are thanking and for what. Let’s look at ways to say thank you to coaches, encouragers, challengers, teammates, and grace givers.
HOW TO GROW
“In this world you’re either growing or you’re dying, so get in motion and grow.” Lou Holtz
Think about a plant. If it stops growing and regenerating, it dies. The same is true for your body. Your cells are constantly renewing; for example, skin cells are constantly dying and falling off while new ones are growing to replace them.
In the same way, your mind and leadership need to keep growing and renewing. Otherwise, you’ll stagnate and begin to lose your edge as a leader.
Of course, the threat of stagnation isn’t the only reason to continuously seek growth opportunities. As time passes, you’ll move on to higher and higher levels of leadership, and each new level will require new skills and knowledge to succeed. To stay at the top of your game, you’re going to have to constantly grow into each new role.
HOW TO CRISIS
Everyone is in one of three places: about to be in a crisis, in a crisis, or coming out of a crisis. Struggle, adversity, crisis. They’re all synonyms for the same thing: tough times.
As a team leader, you may encounter crises such as a teammate losing a family member, losing a teammate to an accident, or storms that damage your community. These are all situations that you’d rather not deal with, but the thing about tough times is that they will come whether you want the responsibility of handling them or not. There’s no escaping tough times; they are simply part of life.
The good news is that you are preparing for leadership during times of crisis by leading in sports. Athletics teach you to deal with unexpected circumstances and obstacles every time you meet an opponent on the field. Athletics teaches you to keep pushing when things are hard every time you try to set a new PR. Athletics teach you to look out for your teammates every time you sweat alongside them.
All of these skills are essential to a leader during times of crisis.
HOW TO BUILD CONFIDENCE
A leader needs to be the right size for his team. Sometimes that means turning the swagger up to eleven and the willingness to pass the ball down to a five, such as when you’re being trusted with the game-winning point. Sometimes that means turning the swagger down to a three and the humility up to an eleven, such as when you need to trust someone else with the game-winning point.
You don’t have to be the biggest and the baddest all the time just because you’re a leader. When your team needs you to be that, be as big and bad as you can manage, but when they need you to be small and humble, be that instead.
HOW TO DO WHAT YOU DON'T WANT TO
As leaders, you have responsibilities that will need to be handled even when you don’t feel like it. The people who follow you will not care that you don’t want to do it; they only care if they can trust you to take care of business. You wanted to be a leader, so “I don’t want to” isn’t a valid excuse for any leadership task that comes your way.
Meet COACH MACKEY
Stephen Mackey, CEO & Founder
Stephen Mackey is a player development coach, keynote speaker, Wall Street Journal best-selling author, and founder of 2Words Character Development, one of the top Leadership and character curriculums in the country. Building on the Six Pillars of a Championship Character – Toughness, Integrity, Belief, Excellence, Effort, and Service – Mackey equips teams and organizations to elevate their performance by building a culture of character.
Patrick Jones - Course author
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