Expect Victory

A Leadership Model for Winning Hockey Games

By Dr. Rob Barnhill


All athletic organizations are comprised of human beings. These are individuals that bring varying degrees of talent, enthusiasm, and commitment to the team. A challenge for coaches and managers is to create a culture of motivation and evaluation that promotes, supports, encourages, and rewards victory. The objective of this model is to gradually move team members along a continuum from the basic want for success to development of a work ethic and finally a sincere expectation of victory. When I speak of victory I refer to excellence in all areas of team function to encompass coaches, managers, players and parents. The foundation and framework of this leadership model can be applied to any organization but this article will focus on challenges for hockey teams.

Want

Everyone involved in the hockey program will have wants and needs. To want is a normal human function. We all want to feel good about ourselves, be loved, have fun, enjoy our time on the ice, and win hockey games. These desires are important to acknowledge but I would like to focus on the basic want to succeed. Most people want to be successful. They think about it, talk about it, even dream about it, but few will experience sustained excellence.  To want is an easy activity that does not require significant personal investment or execution.

Wanting is primarily a mental activity engaged by people as they process thoughts about their own lives. To want is a conditional byproduct of individual situations. All players want to score more, make and receive better passes, stop more shots, fore and back check better, and win more games. If you were to ask members of your hockey team if they wanted to win how many would raise their hand in the affirmative? Everyone wants to win. However, to simply want alone is not enough. Coaches must plan and encourage players and their parents to look beyond the emotional desire of wanting to succeed. Coaches must have formal and informal practice plans that account for supervised on ice time as well as unsupervised individual time.  Parents must encourage and allow players this time for informal work on the fundamentals of the game. These activities when prescribed, encouraged, and evaluated will begin to strengthen and enhance the individuals willingness to work towards hockey success not merely wanting it.


Work

In your hockey program you will find that you have people who want to win and are willing to work to achieve success on the ice. There will be coaches and players that are willing to work extremely hard, satisfying every request while paying attention to the small details required of successful people. The challenge is to go beyond drill completion and extra work sessions in the name of extra work.  Coaching demands must change while goals and objectives are continually shifted to represent the increase in loft of expectations. All quantifiable measures and success indicators must be shifted, evaluated, and the results communicated to the staff, players, and parents.

These environmental changes will have an effect on the team as players and coaches find themselves in uncomfortable situations whereby success becomes more difficult to achieve.  When you begin to practice with a purpose each drill becomes a source of immediate feedback that affords players with the opportunity to gauge their effort and success levels. Passes must be handled tape to tape, shots must be on net, rebounds must be controlled, and etc. As the skill level and competencies elevate to obtain the newly adjusted expectations the process will have the desired effect.

When the current goals are no longer challenging enough then they are again realigned and the process repeats itself. You will have ups and downs during your season but to consistently achieve success requires a significant commitment and constant elevation of expectation.  This means off ice conditioning and stick skill development, strength and flexibility training, extra time on the ice, and focus during practice and games.  The more members of your team you can lead to know achievement as their baseline expectation rather than the simple task of practice completion then you are moving closer to making excellence a reality.

Expect Victory

To truly enjoy prolonged repeated success it is critical to expect success. It is not enough to want to win or be willing to work towards winning rather it must become a purposeful, intentional, and sincere expectation.  If one expects to win, then all functions and processes become singularly focused to that end.  The coaching challenge is to: 1). cultivate growth and maturity in individuals to go beyond simply wanting success; 2). development of a willingness to work hard to achieve success; and 3). establishing victory as an everyday every way expectation.  This final step in the ever evolving and changing leadership model is the most difficult.

Win

As hockey coaches you are blessed with team members that are competitive and hard working.  To elevate the skill level of your team it requires a change in the environmental culture and climate of the organization.  Changing expectation is more than lip service or coach speak and requires a deep seeded philosophical belief that each member of the team truly expects victory.  These leadership steps can be implemented in such a manner as to promote healthy activity, fun, and skill mastery.

More from Dr. Barnhill here.

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