Bruce Brown presents seven practical behaviors for team leaders: be the first to encourage and last to discourage, build mental toughness through consistent positivity, share your passion openly, learn from wins and losses equally, drop the idea of bad days, and design programs that let athletes lead themselves.
7 Ways to Lead Your Team is a very fun presentation for us to give at Proactive Coaching. It's working with team leaders, not necessarily always captains, but team leaders, people that want to make a difference on their team. And so many times we leave leadership to chance or we just have it as a title. We need to really put a job description with it. In this presentation, we give 7 components, 7 areas that athletes, that leaders, that kids can look at and say, "I can do that," and help your team grow and get better through your leadership and ownership in the program. One of those things that we look at is you need to be the first to encourage and the last to discourage. That's something that's so important in leadership. People that are following you do not want to look at somebody who's discouraged all the time, that has their head down, that sulks, that pouts, that gets angry, that makes excuses. They want to look at somebody that encourages them every step of the way. Encourages them by having mental toughness, which we refer to as staying positive, enthusiastic, no matter what. Yeah. Another way I look at it is being able to share your passion. People need to see that you're having fun, that you're engaged, that you love what you're doing, you're committed to what you're doing. It's also that you have perspective. Perspective is just the ability to take a look at a loss and get over it, the ability to take a win, celebrate it, and then move on and get better from it. We need to do that in all things that we do. See, being the first to encourage doesn't mean that you won't have sad, disappointing days. But as athletes and as leaders, you can never have a bad day. Bad days, let's reserve for real bad situations. People who are having family situations, tragedy, crisis, whatever that might be. No, no, there's no bad days in athletics. Can be sad, can be disappointing, but let's make it encouraging. Encouraging them each and every day by having the mental toughness to move forward, by showing that you're the person they can look to in a time of toughness on your team. When they look at you, they know that the direction is moving forward. 7 Ways to Lead Your Team, presentation to encourage, to instill, and to also provide a design for your athletes to get better and lead their own team when they go through the trials of a season. Thank you.
