Serve, Coach, Lead Newsletter #1: Welcome!

By: Harrison Stevens

What does it mean to serve, coach, and lead those entrusted to your care?

Today we will dive into each of these words, and I will offer a few notes on what they mean to me. We will discuss how having a quality understanding of these words can help us understand the responsibility of influence.

Serve:

Servant leadership is a term that gets used frequently in society today. It is easy to talk about being a servant leader, but what does it look like to actually live it out each day?

When I think of a servant leader, I picture someone that puts the needs of their organization and people ahead of their own. They have the mindset to do what is necessary for the program to prosper, regardless of their personal feelings towards a given task.

Being a servant leader means that no task is beneath you. Picking up trash, putting away and organizing equipment, and cleaning out sheds/closets are all things that no one inherently wants to do. These acts often go unrecognized and unrewarded as well. However, servant leaders understand how a clean facility, organized equipment, and pride in what they have are a demonstration the culture in their program.

This philosophy is often referred to as sweeping the shed. Be the person in your organization (regardless of your role) that shows others how to take care of the small things. Small things add up to the big things.

Everything matters!

Coach:

One of Merriam-Webster's definitions of the word coach is, "one who instructs or trains, especially: one who instructs players in the fundamentals of a sport and directs team strategy"

While these definitions are correct, in my opinion being a coach goes so much further than this. We must realize that we are not only coaching young people in a particular sport, we are coaching them in life.

The people that we influence will take the lessons that we teach them far beyond their playing years are over. Strive to coach for the "40 after 4". In other words, remember that while most coaches will only directly work with a player for the four years between freshman and senior year, your impact will resonate through the next forty years of their life as they become spouses, parents, and contributing members of society.

Chances are, every team that you coach has a future coach on it. Be the person that helps them realize the positive impact that they can have on others through sports!

Lead:

Leadership has nothing to do with titles. The title of "coach" does not mean that you are a leader. I will get into this more at another time, but here is what leaders do:

1. They work extremely hard to become the best that they can be. They prepare better than anyone else to prepare for their opportunity to perform.

2. When their time comes to perform, they execute. They find success because of the work and preparation that they put in weeks, months, and years in advance.

3. They bring others with them. "Leading by example" is simply doing number one and two without bringing anyone with them. This is not conducive for building a strong program. Leaders must involve others in their training so that their teammates are ready to perform when their number is called.

What does this look like as a coach? I have yet to get a hit or throw a single pitch for any baseball team that I have coached. However, we can all prepare, execute, and bring our people with us when it is time to get to work.

As mentioned above, showing rather than telling people what to do makes everyone feel valued within the organization. You will find that the people that you teach will turn around and teach new members of your team how to do things correctly year after year.

I am so excited to start this journey towards effective leadership with all of you. I believe that building a community of lifelong learners will help us all become the people of influence that we strive to be.

I would love for this newsletter to be an interactive experience for each of us. Please share any comments, questions, or feedback that you may have about the newsletter. You can reply directly, or simply email me at harrison.stevens3@gmail.com. Also, if you know of anyone that would benefit from these emails, please send them this link to sign up.

Every Serve, Coach, Lead newsletter will be available on my website, which can be found here

Thank you so much for your support, and I look forward to connecting with you all next week!

God Bless