Ep 164 Your Staff Is Not Aligned Yet, and Your Players Already Know It

https://teachhoops.com/

Coaches spend October on the players. Conditioning, open gyms, skill work, the schedule, the gear order. Then they walk into November assuming the three or four adults on the bench are on the same page. In this episode Coach Collins argues that assumption is where a lot of seasons quietly go wrong, and that staff alignment is something you have to build on purpose before the first practice.

The test he offers is simple. Could each of your assistants, tonight, tell you the same three things your program is about? If the answer is no, your players already know it. Kids figure out staff division about nine days into a season.

The episode walks through how that division shows up in a gym. A player told to help down by one coach and stay home by another, so he stands still. A kid you just corrected hard, quietly told by an assistant not to worry about you because you are in a mood. A parent who calls a specific assistant because everybody in town knows which coach is the soft landing. None of that is a loyalty problem. Most assistants are good people trying to help. It is an alignment problem, and alignment does not happen by accident.

Coach Collins then lays out the preseason staff meeting he wants every head coach to run. Two hours, no phones, somewhere that is not the gym. It starts with a question rather than a speech: what are we actually about this year? He is candid that he got this wrong for years by walking in and announcing the vision, which is not alignment, it is a memo. People do not defend a plan they had no hand in building.

The meeting produces three specific things. Three non negotiables chosen together, not twelve, because assistants who helped pick them will enforce them when the head coach is not looking. A real job for every coach, not a title, because an assistant with no ownership becomes a spectator and eventually a critic. And a stated rule for how to disagree with the head coach, because if you never tell a coach how to push back on you, he will do it sideways, to a parent or a player or in the parking lot. The episode adds one more step most head coaches skip: ask each assistant what he wants out of this season for himself, because developing a future head coach and developing a lifelong assistant are not the same job.

The takeaway is uncomfortable and clarifying at the same time. Your team will never be more unified than your staff is, so build the bench before you build the roster.
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