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My dad owns and operates a construction business that specializes in remodeling. I spent most of my high school and college years working for him and I quickly learned the importance of a strong foundation for building. I can say my background in construction has greatly shaped how I coach the teams and the athletes I work with one on one. I still understand the importance of building on top of a strong foundation. In today’s resource I'd like to challenge you to consider the foundation you are building your program and your athletes off of.

If you are a coach who is trying to rebuild the culture of your program, a young coach trying to establish the culture of your program, or maybe you’ve been doing this coaching thing for a long time and you just feel like something is missing in your program, I want to share with you the power and importance of character based goal setting.

Before we get into the heart of today’s resource, I need to share a couple of key concepts with you first.

THE ROLE OF GOALS

When I work with teams or athletes one-on-one it is common to talk about their goals for the upcoming season. I always begin any goal setting session with a conversation about the role of goals.

The purpose of goals SHOULD NOT be to serve as a measurement of success or failure.

The purpose of goals SHOULD be to serve as a target that points our habits and behaviors in the right direction. We need to know where we are going, so we can determine what we will do to get there!

If we use goals to point the habits in behaviors in the right direction, then we can ask questions like: “How would a state champion/championship team handle this situation?”

THE TRAP OF PERFORMANCE OR RESULTS BASED GOALS

The challenge I’ve found with most performance or results based goals is that, for most teams and athletes, they don’t change behavior. More times than not, they may actually be the thing that is holding a team or athlete back instead of propelling them forward.

Let me explain what I mean by this. Maybe your team has set a goal in the past of winning your conference, qualifying for state, or maybe even winning a state title. How many times have you seen your team stop chasing that goal once THEY determined that goal wasn’t possible any more? I dealt with that too often in my early years as a coach. We are all fired up and “hungry” to chase our goals, then we dealt with adversity, which dented our belief in self, and the next thing you know we were further from our goal then when we started because we lost belief!

In individual sports or even an athlete chasing their own statistics, this image is a hard reality. The better you get, the harder it is to beat your best “number.” If you are determining your success as an athlete on whether or not you set a new PR, if that is your goal, the odds of that get harder and harder as you get better and better.

This is why I believe the performance or results based goals can actually hold back the long-term development of your program or an individual athlete. If the results get to a point in the season where the team or athlete does not believe they are achievable, and maybe realistically they really aren’t, the process we need the team or athlete to continue to follow for the long-term growth of the program or their development will be stopped or significantly slowed. When we only get an athlete or group of athletes for 4 years, this can be a problem.

It is important that we recognize this important fact…we ultimately don’t control the performance or results. If we did, we’d all be world-champion record holders. Many coaches like to believe that they have some sort of control over results. I believed that for along time in my early years of coaching. If I could just micromanage this area or that area, then we’d achieve the results we were seeking. I eventually learned that just created a lot of wasted time in my life.

Now does this mean that I think that performance or results based goals are a bad thing? No! But I do think they require a level of maturity and self-discipline to be a true driving force for a team or individual athlete. I think for most teams and athletes, performance and results based goals should be the starting point for a deeper conversation about the mindset and behaviors that create an environment for those goals to be achieved. This is where Character Based Goal Setting comes into play.

A CASE FOR CHARACTER BASED GOAL SETTING

The team at What Drives Winning (www.whatdriveswinning.com), who has had a huge influence on what we do at FREE2COMPETE describes what they call the CPR Model.

CHARACTER drives the PROCESS which leads to RESULTS.

This quote makes the case for character based goal setting. If character comes first in the equation, then we need to put it first so that the things that come second can flourish. When we put results first, we often lose the process and character when the result no longer seems achievable. This is the point I made earlier in this resource.

CHARACTER is the foundation! Lay a strong one coach!

WARNING!

Before we get into this process of character based goal setting, just know to do this well requires time. I typically do this process over two or three sessions, as you’ll see explained below. In a team setting, I start with the leaders of the team and depending on the size of the group each session can take up to an hour. With an individual athlete each session typically takes about 30 minutes.

The best things in life take time. If your goal setting process takes 10 minutes, I bet you typically fall into the trap of performance/results based goals I described above.

CHARACTER BASED GOAL SETTING

Let me walk you through the conversation I would have with a team or individual athlete if we were discussing goals. I will give an actual example in both a team and individual setting later in this resource.

NOTE: Coach, this conversation is a place for you to ask questions and take notes. This is not the time or place to interject your thoughts or opinions. I would recommend circling back to this conversation later if there is something you need to communicate to your team or athletes about their goal. If you want the truthful answers, you need to close your mouth, open your ears, ask good follow-up questions with the motive of understanding, take great notes, and summarize what you hear by using the phrase “What I hear you saying is _____________. Am I understanding that correctly?” Let your team/athlete drive and be the focus of this conversation.

1. What is your goal for the upcoming season? The answer is always a performance or results based goal. Nothing wrong with that at all, it is the perfect place to start this conversation.

2. And what else? I’ve found that often times teams/athletes are reluctant to share what they really want to go after during a season, so you have to keep asking the question. I’ll repeat this question, until they have nothing to add. If I sense there is something that isn’t being said, but I feel there is a bigger goal out there, then I’ll ask the question “What is the goal you are too scared to share right now?” Once we have everything out, we move on.

3. Why is this goal important to you? You need to understand if this is a goal driven by them or they are just saying what they think you as a coach want to hear. Ask this for each goal they mentioned above. Just like before it would be wise to ask “And what else?” as they process through why the goal is important to them.

4. What will you need to sacrifice to accomplish this goal? The truth is, chasing hard things will require us to give something up. For some athletes, it is a sacrifice in social time, the opportunity to work and earn some money, a change in their fueling habits, etc. Ask this for each goal they mentioned above.

5. Look at the list of character skills below. Which two or three skills from each list (Performance and Relational) do you think would most help you accomplish your goal? Now it is time for us to shift the conversation towards the mindset and behaviors they need to live out to create an environment that opens the door for their goals to be achieved.

6. How will that skill help you? You want to understand what they might feel like they are lacking in pursuit of their goal. The answer to this question can give you a lot of information.

   1. NOTE: This conversation can be a lot for teams and athletes. Question #6 is a good stopping point if you want to split this into multiple sessions, which I would highly recommend. If you do, I would encourage you to end this session by asking them to think about question #7 and be prepared to discuss it at the next goal setting session.

7. What would it look like, sound like, feel like for you/us to live each of those skills out in your/our sport this season? This is where we give the character skills actions and behaviors! In a team setting, we need to make sure EVERYONE in the room knows what we mean living this skill out looks and feels like. Give examples as much as possible. You can get specific to different areas. What does this look like in the weight room, in the classroom, in practice, outside of practice, in competition, etc.

8. How do you want me as your coach and/or our coaching staff to hold you accountable to these actions and behaviors? Don’t skip this question! You need to have a conversation about accountability, because living these actions and behaviors is going to be hard! Good notes on how they want you to do this will help you take away the idea that you are just “getting on them” or “being tough on them.” No, I’m doing exactly what you asked me to do to help you achieve YOUR goals! Good notes on why this goal is important to them will be helpful in moments of accountability as well. A simple phrase of “When we talked through YOUR goals, this is why YOU wanted to chase it…” is a helpful motivator.

Now the hardest part in all of this is as the season rolls along, we as coaches, have to make sure we keep these character based goals in the forefront of our communication with our team or athlete. If they are doing the right things and the results aren’t coming, double down on the praise and encouragement. Keep them focused on the character that drives the process. Also, if the results we want are coming our way but the process is slipping, lets make sure we don’t let the results distract us from the “first things”…the character that drives the process.

Let me give you a couple of short examples of what this looks like in practice by sharing a couple of stories. One from a team that I work with and one from an individual athlete that I work with. I won’t go through every question, but will focus on how we used the character skills to set actionable goals.

EXAMPLE - Team Setting

This team is a group of ladies who is currently working towards the performance based goal of qualifying for finals at their national competition. As I worked with them throughout the summer, we had the character based goal setting conversation. Through that process they settled on the following words: RESILIENT from the performance list and PATIENT from the relationship list. Now, let me share a little background on each word.

They chose RESILIENT from the performance list because in past seasons results in competitions throughout the season that weren’t what they wanted rocked their confidence as a team and individuals. Even though they still qualified for nationals, they didn’t perform at the level they were capable of because of their shaken confidence. The definition of the word RESILIENT from the list is bouncing back from setbacks. This is exactly what they needed to live out.

They chose PATIENT from the performance list because this year’s team make-up has a lot of freshmen and newcomers. These senior leaders knew it was going to take time to get these new ladies up to the level they need to be for the team to reach its goals. The definition of the word PATIENT from the list is tolerating delay or struggle. Look at how this word also connects to RESILIENT. The youth of this team is naturally going to create some setbacks, so patience will actually help them be resilient and resilience will actually help them be patient.

We talked about what it would look like for their team and ALL individuals on it to actually live out these character skills. Each session I meet with them, we circle back to these character skills. This team is staying focused on the character that drives the process that leads to results!

EXAMPLE - Individual Athlete

I worked with a young lady whose performance goal was to be an individual state champion and help her team win their first state championship. Now this story has an interesting twist that highlights the importance of Character Based goals.

She chose DISCIPLINED from the performance list because she knew there were areas in her life (sleep, limiting cell phone use, fueling, etc.) that she was going to have to be better in to put herself in a position to win an individual state championship.

She chose ENCOURAGING from the relationship list because she was the senior leader on the team and her team was trying to beat a team that just seemed to have their number.

Now we started this conversation a month before the season started. She had a great list of actionable behaviors and was doing a great job living the out. Then a couple of weeks into the season she found out she was hurt and most likely going to miss most of her season. If she did things right, she would be back in time to help her team in the post-season. Was she crushed? Absolutely!

If we had just based our work on performance based goals, I’m not sure how she would have worked through that time. Her injury was a major blow to her individual and team goal of winning state. Thankfully, we put “first things first” and these character skills didn’t change, but they actually became even more important in this situation.

The definition of the word DISCIPLINED is self-regulating. This is exactly what she needed to be in this moment of adversity because most of her rehab and training was done away from the team and the eyes of her coach. We changed what living this character skill out looked like and she went right back to work, the process didn’t suffer.

The definition of the word ENCOURAGING is giving confidence and support. As competitions started she struggled with feeling like she wasn’t contributing to the team. We talked about how her being ENCOURAGING is exactly how she was going to contribute to the team and she put a plan in place of how she could give confidence and support to her teammates while they were racing without her. We changed what living this character skill out looked like and she went right back to work, the process didn’t suffer.

Fast forward a few months and while she did not win an individual state title, her team was successful in winning their first state title and she was able to get back to competing to contribute to that.

CHARACTER drives the PROCESS that leads to RESULTS!

CHARACTER is the foundation! Lay a strong one coach!

SCHEDULE US FOR THIS SUMMER!

Are you interested in having us work through activities like this or even more with your team, athletic department, group of students or school? Respond to this email to set up a ZOOM meeting where we can find out what you are looking for and discuss how FREE2COMPETE can serve your students, coaches, and/or parents.

FLASHBACK…Check out the resource that kicked it all off on January 1st, 2024!