Prepared for Victory: My Key Takeaways on Achieving Long-Term Success as a Basketball Coach

Ready to Win: What I Learned About Preparing for Sustained Success as a Basketball Coach

ACHIEVING sustained success hinges on consistent and well-conceived preparation. If you fail to work hard and think hard during preparation, no amount of talent or performance under pressure is going to save you.

This is something so simple and easy to understand, yet it’s a shortcoming I see over and over in sports, business, and life.

I was the head coach of the University of Kentucky women’s basketball team for 13 seasons. It was a terrific ride that included three visits to the Elite 8 of the NCAA tournament, a Southeastern Conference (SEC) championship, and three SEC Coach of the Year awards. Preparation was key to our success.

To give a very basic example of the importance of preparation in basketball, let’s say it’s nearing the end of a college basketball season, and a team is gearing up to play a tough conference game. The coach has watched enough video to design a game plan that exploits the weakness of the opponent. The plan will rely on lots of full-court press and pressure defense. The coach has correctly identified the perfect plan in terms of strategy — the upcoming opponent is definitely weak in handling pressure for a full game.

However, there’s a big problem. The coach’s own team isn’t physically capable of sustaining the strategy. Compared to the rest of the world, the athletes are no doubt in good physical shape. But they aren’t in good enough shape to apply the relentless pressure that would likely win the game.

How many businesses struggle with this same concept? Let’s say you’re a leader in a company that relies on a complex sales process with a long cycle. What your team is doing right now to make initial contact with prospects will directly impact whether you’ll meet your sales goal several months from now. You may already be losing that “game” right now, and nothing your team does later can make up for it.

There’s another huge problem for leaders who fail to get their teams ready to win: they’re guaranteed to lose the confidence of their team. People don’t like to lose, but even worse is feeling like you’re in a no-win position. If you don’t get your team ready to succeed, confidence erodes. Eventually, if it happens enough times, you’ll be a leader in name only (and maybe not even in name if you lose your position because of it).

As a leader, you show your team exactly how much you care about them when you place a premium on preparation and accountability. Great leaders are honest enough to consistently hold people accountable for the process and habits of preparation.

At a high-level, the journey to great preparation is broken into two parts. The first part is about the mindset you need — the “thinking filters” that go into your pursuit of success. The second part involves consistently applying a framework of constant preparation.

Creating a habit of mind that prepares you for success involves:

1. Evaluating your definition of success. Get clear on what success means to you. Hazy visions and unclear expectations will crush any belief in sustained success. The best place to start is honestly recognizing the unique set of gifts you have as a person. When you recognize and acknowledge your gifts, you can then take the next step and identify where you can best use those gifts to contribute your very best to the world. Ask yourself: What value can you bring, and does it fill you with satisfaction to deliver that value to others?

2. Testing your definition of success against reality. Visions of pie-in-the-sky success aren’t a way of “being positive;” they’re just being unrealistic. If a small e-commerce site CEO says, “In two years, we’re going to exceed Amazon in sales,” no one will want to climb aboard. For any vision of success, large or small, ask yourself a simple question: Do I really believe this is an attainable goal?

3. Deciding to believe in yourself. I think that many people underestimate the role of committing to a decision to believe in themselves. Belief in yourself is about understanding that you have the necessary skills, talent, and developmental abilities to enjoy consistent and long-term accomplishments. To decide this is to say, “Yes, I’m taking responsibility for this belief and affirming that it’s true.”

Additionally, applying a framework of constant preparation involves:

1. Getting crystal clear on your goals. Once again, you want to be realistic when you set your goals. Determine if your goal can be measured and what those measurements should be. Think of a clear goal as a lens that helps you see better what’s a useless diversion versus a positive pursuit. Such clarity enables you to say “no” to distractions and “yes” to worthy activities. Also important is creating specific subgoals that will comprise the steps leading to the achievement of your goals.

2. Create a strategy for how you’ll prepare to meet those goals. Essentially, a strategy has to come from your strengths and core competencies; it shouldn’t go against your identity or values. Ask yourself: What are my core competencies, and how can I use them to create the right strategy? For example, I sincerely like connecting with people. So, with any preparation strategy, I ask myself, “Will this task help me build a personal connection?” Once you begin implementing your strategy, make sure to evaluate it regularly and objectively.

3. Execute the details of the strategy with maximum effort and accountability. Five key areas that will guide you in executing a powerhouse preparation plan include: Prioritization, Timelines, Responsibility and Accountability, Resources, and Curiosity. Make decisions on what tasks have the highest priority. Decide how best to spend your time. Put in place accountability parameters. Maximize your resources. And be open to what you could explore further.

Once you’ve developed the mindset and defined the framework for a powerful preparation regimen, you’re ready to execute your preparation blueprint that will lead to sustained success.

Matthew Mitchell is a Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-selling author, speaker, three-time SEC Coach of the Year, and the winningest head coach in the history of the University of Kentucky women’s basketball program. Through Mitchell’s focus on the fundamentals, he led the program to new heights ― seven seasons of winning 25 games or more and UK’s first SEC Championship in 30 years. Mitchell’s new book, Ready to Win: How Great Leaders Succeed Through Preparation (Winning Tools, November 19, 2024) — already a USA Today bestseller — shares proven principles that lead to resilience, preparation, and growth. Learn more at www.coachmatthewmitchell.com

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:08 PM

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