On Point

A Coach's Game Plan for Life, Leadership, and Performing with Grace Under Fire

Pam Borton

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781683500209
• eBook ISBN: 9781683500223
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Management

On Point gives you a seat on the bench with one of the nation's top women's basketball coaches. Distilling a 27-year coaching career into crucial lessons, On Point drives home the essence of effective leadership under pressure, stress and times of chaos. On Point delivers the practical knowledge and skills leaders need to achieve success in life and business, using stories from business, the courts, locker rooms, and press conferences. From leading a Big 10 basketball program to coaching high-performing teams in business, leader-focused chapters provide a holistic view of attributes crucial for On Point leadership.

On Point leaders will learn to:

• Master the Front Court – establish the fundamentals that set leaders on the path to winning
• Build A Strong Bench – develop a team with the right attitude, skills, and strength
• Dominate At Center Court – integrate the core values of On Point leadership
• Leverage the Locker Room – influence and motivate individual success
• Defend Your Back Court – finish strong in your life and your work

PART ONE

GRACE UNDER FIRE

“Life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we react to it.”
–Charles R. Swindoll–

You can’t truly know how you will handle adversity, chaos, or extreme situations until you actually stare them in the face. Nothing will ever prepare you for the worst of these situations. Taking a class, listening to a podcast, reading a best-selling book, or attending a seminar—none of these will prepare you adequately. You have to go through the storm to really know what I’m talking about.

A PERFECT STORM

My 27-year basketball coaching career, and 12-year tenure at the University of Minnesota, gave me valuable, leadership-affirming storms to weather and fires to extinguish. In the 2005-2006 season, a firestorm engulfed me. I learned a key ON POINT lesson: to conduct yourself with grace under fire, you must brave the heat and dance among the flames.

The 2005-2006 Minnesota Gopher women’s basketball team wasn’t only one of the deepest and most talented—it was also one of the most unsuccessful—“teams” I ever coached. Conditions began to unravel early in the season and it only got worse as the season unfolded. First, the team was spoiled. Two of the world’s best players, Gophers in 2004-2005, had graduated or exhausted their eligibility. The returning players, the fans, and the coaching staff were accustomed to putting All-Americans on the floor, and we would have none this season. We were spoiled by talent and the expectations it brought.

The remaining players were not used to taking on roles of higher responsibility, greater consistency, more production, and deeper accountability for keeping the program at a national level. After reaching three consecutive NCAA Tournament Sweet 16s and a Final Four, there was an elite level of expectation. It was now someone else’s turn to take on a bigger role, to step up, to be a leader, to be put in pressure situations, and to make plays. My coaches and I had to learn a different way to coach, motivate, and win without All-Americans. We had to learn to grind it out, to rely on many and not just one or two players, and to figure out ways to win without elite star performers. Unfortunately, these conditions created a “you-know-what” storm we were unprepared to manage.

From February on, our team was failing and falling fast—on and off the court. As a head coach, I look back and know that I made mistakes. There was a lack of discipline expected off the court from players and ineffective communication and accountability from my captains and players. I focused too much on what had worked in the past, which seemed natural, but it wasn’t working with this team.

This team was unique, like every team is each year. They were struggling and frustrated, and no one in our program was used to losing after three years of 25+ wins and deep runs into the NCAA Tournament. I was focused on the vision and the execution as the leader, but did not have the buy-in from my players, team, and all of my staff. Without buy-in, getting everyone believing and heading in the same direction, we all ended up with different agendas.

Our loss to the University of Washington in the first round of the NCAA Tournament ended the season. After the sudden and unexpected loss, I sat dejectedly and angrily in the press conference in front of dozens of cameras. A reporter asked me a very sensitive question about our star player, whom I had pulled from the game and benched in the second half. She wasn’t performing up to the level our team needed and I gave a couple other players in her position those minutes. We were losing and I felt I needed to try something different.

The reporter’s question inflamed my passions and the entire year’s frustration boiled to the surface. In response to the question, I said too much about this player. I threw her under the bus. I did not think before I spoke because I was angry and I hated to lose. I should have re-directed the question, which is what I usually did. What I should have said was that I needed to evaluate not just this game, but also the last two months of the season. My response was unacceptable from a program of our stature and demonstrated an uncharacteristic lack of leadership. It was a harsh leadership lesson forged in the inferno of competitive disappointment … and it was just the beginning.

As I left the press conference, thoughts of what I would change if I had a “do-over” rushed through my mind. But before I could start rebuilding my approach to a successful team, the other shoe dropped. A couple of weeks after the season ended, five players left the program and I fired an assistant coach. This was the perfect storm; the situation gained momentum like a snowball rolling downhill that couldn’t be stopped. One at a time, players came to my office and quit the team. Over and over, they walked in and out until five players left within 10 days. It was a nightmare. On top of this, six players—my leaders—were graduating, making a total of 11 players who would not be returning to the program.

The media made me out to be a monster, building a case that there was something wrong with the program. Our firestorm became national news in the women’s college basketball world. No one ever knew the real reasons why each player had left the program. Of course I knew, and my administrators and campus leadership knew, the whole story behind each departure, but that was all confidential information. When you are dealing with 18- to 22-year-old young adults who experienced a trying season full of drama, decisions often are made purely on emotion. For some, it was easier to run away from challenging times and issues than to stay and work through them. But, while we may try to run away from our problems, they follow us wherever we go.

I could write a separate book on the 2005-2006 season called “The Perfect Storm” (with title royalties to the best-seller by Sebastian Junger) but I will do my best to summarize the key lessons here. There was much I can’t share, but some information is public knowledge. Two of the players left because they were academically ineligible to return to school. Another player exited because she was abused growing up and needed to move closer to family to help her deal with this pain. The fourth player departed to return home after experiencing a significant personal health situation the year before. The fifth player stayed in school but abandoned her playing career because she got caught up in this storm. Today, publicly, I continue to choose to take the high road and to protect each one of the players who left the program.

Ultimately, as a leader, navigating the storm was my responsibility and there were many things I should have, could have, and wish I had done differently. I thought winning would solve and hide all the problems. It didn’t—and it made matters worse when we started losing. Entering the NCAA Tournament, I focused on making a run to another Sweet 16 or Final Four, expecting that to erase the season’s challenges. Unfortunately, reality intervened and the unproductive conditions swirling around the team resulted in a “one and done” NCAA Tournament.

With much support from my mentors, family, and friends, I took the bullets and daggers that I faced (and read about for a long time) with grace. I refocused my efforts outside of myself to where it should be: on my players. Keeping my job was far down the list. My priority was to protect the players who left the program, for their own personal reasons and challenges, and to support the players who remained. As I accepted the public media and private emotional burden for the departed players, many said I was crazy. But they were just kids and I chose to honor my obligation as a leader to protect them. Like most parents of college kids, I’m sure many of their parents didn’t have the full story. They needed support, and I was in the position to provide it.

Fighting through the 2005-2006 “perfect storm” while demonstrating grace under fire was one of the most difficult times I endured as a coach. It paid off in the long run; the experience and lessons steeled me to any future adversity, personally and professionally. Weathering the storm gave me resilience to face the toughest of situations with resolve, belief, confidence, and courage head on. It taught me whom to trust, and I learned how important it is to surround myself with the right people. I became a better coach and a more resilient leader.

THE RESILIENT LEADER

Resiliency is a critical need in leadership in the business world, in athletics, and in our personal lives. Many times in college athletics, a head coach feels like their primary function is to put out fires every day. Leaders in business feel the same way and they wonder: When is it going to stop? When will I get to my list, when will things go as planned? Will there ever be a time when someone tells me I am on the right path, that I have done a good job? In our personal lives, a trying marriage, financial challenges, or health issues in our families challenge us to be resilient.

The ON POINT leader must face these challenges and circumstances, building resilience on top of a foundation of confidence and courage. Through the toughest of times, when you are challenged to exercise grace under fire, you are going to need a heavy dose of both on your leadership journey.

Our daily lives are hectic and we often think that the unexpected happens to someone else far, far away. Have you ever considered what might happen if you had to face the unexpected? I experienced numerous “unexpecteds” during my coaching tenure. The most important lesson I learned was to maintain grace while under fire by the media, boosters and donors, fans, and many others, while in a high-profile position. My everyday performance (good or bad) was public knowledge in the media, on television, on the radio, and in every social media outlet. I chose to take the high road, took responsibility, handled the unexpected with grace, and it paid off tenfold.

The first “unexpected” test surfaced immediately upon my May 2002 appointment as head coach at the University of Minnesota. I arrived to lead a program and athletic department under NCAA investigation for many recruiting violations. When I walked through the door, the department was without an athletic director; a week later, the University’s president and the chief of staff who hired me departed for the University of Texas.

At the age of 36, my big opportunity looked less than ideal. Yes, I was taking over a Big Ten basketball program, but it was a program with undisclosed NCAA violations, no athletic director, and a president who bolted for another institution. Still, I felt ready and was enthusiastic for the challenge. Maybe I had too much confidence, courage, and resilience, or maybe I was naïve. The task at hand instantly became more difficult than what I had signed up for … was I prepared for this? Knowing what I do now, I don’t think anyone could prepare him or herself fully for something like this, at any age. I would have to rely on my confidence and courage, and trust that the greater the risk, the greater the reward. And, whatever the outcome, building resiliency would be part of the reward.

From this less-than-auspicious start, resiliency became a hallmark of my career at the University of Minnesota, from beginning to end. In life and work, there will be many times of adversity, trials and tribulations, and fires that leaders face every day and there is only one option that ends well—to learn to have grace when the worst is staring you down. If you choose to blame others, to not take responsibility, and to not take the high road to protect your people and institution, it will ALWAYS come back to haunt you.

LEADING WITH GRACE

The ability to reflect on and to transfer my basketball coaching experience is a key reason my clients hire me as their executive coach. My experience in athletics, similar to those of leaders in business and the community, exposed me to the rhythms of success as well as the searing lessons of failure. Every high-level leader faces daily situations when individuals, teams, and performance break down—when taking the high road and displaying grace while under fire may be the difference between winning and losing.

To be an ON POINT leader, you must surround yourself with thought leaders and support from those who have real experience and who have been in the trenches. Those who have “been there” know the loneliness a leader feels and know, in the long run, that staying the course pays off.

A number of my clients have encountered the unexpected and are learning to leverage their experience with positivity and grace while they continue to put out fires. It is daunting to understand and to accept the responsibility when you agree to sit in that leadership chair. All eyes are on you, and the buck starts and stops with you. Some professionals wilt under the pressure, and some choose not to accept the mantle of leadership in the first place.

It is powerful to face the unexpected, to take action, and to come out on the other side (often not unscathed!). These experiences build and build, layer upon layer, and you become resilient in managing chaos and converting adversity into opportunity. You learn to become a proactive and purposeful leader, better prepared for the next unexpected moment that you will face. As unexpected moments arrive, they will look a bit different each time, but the scars you earn and knowledge you gain will ready you for a new battle.

The 2013-2014 season was my last year coaching at the University of Minnesota, and presented a culminating opportunity for re...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• PART 1—MASTER THE FRONT COURT
• PART 2—BUILD YOUR BENCH
• PART 3—DOMINATE THE CENTER COURT
• PART 4—LEVERAGE THE LOCKER ROOM
• PART 5—DEFEND THE BACKCOURT
• About the Author
• Acknowledgments
• Are You ON POINT?