MOMENTUM: If you combine all the elements as you cycle through the GET MOR3EE formula, then you will begin to build momentum with individual players and ultimately with your team.
THE GET MOR3EE CYCLE OF SUSTAINABLE GROWTH AND EMPOWERMENT
Diagram 2: The GET MOR3EE Formula Cycle
GET MOR3EE is a formula for creating sustainable growth in the people you are leading. As you cycle through all the elements in the GET MOR3EE formula you begin to build momentum. Imagine that each time you reach empowerment, motivation leaps forward, and the cycle turns a little bit faster. As you coach your players through each turn, the ability, attitude, and confidence of the individual grows. The growth may seem small at first—almost invisible in the beginning. But as a coach, you continue encouraging the growth of your players’ talents and budding potential. Eventually, almost out of nowhere, breakthrough occurs. The consistent application and alignment of these elements in the personal development of your players result in the exponential growth of their talents and potential. You will see a higher rate of growth than what naturally would have occurred. When a team of players are all experiencing breakthrough, then you have built massive momentum. Positive momentum is a coach’s best friend.
WHAT ARE THE QUALITIES OF A GET MOR3EE COACH?
A GET MOR3EE coach:
• is highly people-oriented and highly results-oriented.7
• is a give-more coach. A GET MOR3EE coach loves to win.
• is a championship coach. A GET MOR3EE coach is a coach who cares.
• seeks knowledge. A GET MOR3EE coach pursues excellence.
• is an enlarger. A GET MOR3EE coach is a maximizer.
• is inspirational. A GET MOR3EE coach is an instiller.
• is a leader. A GET MOR3EE coach is a planner.
• is visionary. A GET MOR3EE coach is a problem solver.
• sees things as they are, while maintaining unwavering faith that they will succeed.
The next chapters discuss each property of the GET MOR3EE formula, detailing the principles, providing examples, and sharing stories to help you make the connection to why each of these properties is vital to applying the formula effectively. “Motivation” and “Encouragement” are the longest chapters because your vision for your team and how you fuel your team are extremely important. The ownership chapter sets up the R3 motivational properties. I divide responsibility, respect, and rewards into three separate chapters to focus in on each property with you and give them their due, but these should really be thought of as R3 and multiplied together. Empowerment of our people is the product we are seeking with the GET MOR3EE formula.
CHAPTER 3
MOTIVATION
You have to recognize where you are but not lose the vision of where you want to go.
We start with motivation.
When you think of the role of a coach, what is one of the first things that should be in any coach’s job description? What is one of the top qualities? The ability to motivate. “Influence” is another term we often hear. I’ve heard leadership guru John Maxwell make this statement: “Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less.”8 Influence is the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something. To affect the character … the development … the behavior.
So, it seems that a coach’s capacity to motivate someone is of utmost importance to his or her effectiveness as a leader and a coach. Earlier, I shared the Alpine Institute study that found that only 36 percent of coaches have effective motivational technique training. If you are going to be truly effective at any level of coaching, then increasing your capacity to positively motivate people is an imperative skill for succeeding with your players and teams. If we understand that one of our primary roles is that of a motivator, then to be effective as a coach, leader, and motivator we need to get to know people and understand what motivates them.
We seek to inspire people through motivation, which I liken to breathing life into another. To motivate is to provide someone with a motive for doing something or to stimulate a person’s interest or enthusiasm for doing something.
“The secret of weariness and nervous disease in the natural world is a lack of a dominating interest.” (Oswald Chambers)9
The primary role of any coach is to grab the players’ interest and motivate them. I think the preceding quote illustrates this principle perfectly. Can you create an environment that can dominate a player’s interest? The coach has one of the best platforms to seize a player’s undivided attention. When your players are with you at training or games, they enter a world free of the distractions of cell phones, television, and other devices. There may not be another human being in this person’s life who commands as much quality, focused, undistracted, and undivided time as the coach.
But isn’t it the coach’s primary role, you say, to teach the game? To show the player how to properly shoot a free throw or the proper technique for holding a tennis racquet? Isn’t it his or her ability to draw up Xs and Os and create suffocating defensive schemes? To teach tactics and formations?
Renowned sports psychologist Bob Rotella shared this thought in the book Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect: “The more I coached, the more convinced I became that the Xs and Os that obsessed many coaches were rather less important than the attitudes and confidence they instilled in their players.”10
I’ve observed many great coaches with limited understanding of the game they were coaching turn their teams into winners and get more out of their teams than the person who played for 15 years, because they understood how to motivate their players. The players already knew how to play the game or would discover how to do it better than the coach could teach them, but the coach provided the environment for the players to play, compete, and discover their ability to win. The coach saw the embers glowing, gave them some oxygen, and then stoked the flame—and then the players threw gasoline on it. So we start with motivation.
I share this quote of mine with you in a few different chapters throughout the book because I believe it speaks so loudly. It also is relevant to every property of the GET MOR3EE formula:
Power comes from the vision, not the volume. How much you say and how loud you say it will never be as inspiring as what you say. How much you say and how loud you say it will never be as inspiring as the vision you cast.
A compelling vision calls out much louder than you can ever speak. When you are able to communicate a clear and compelling vision, people rise up on their own to follow it. They are self-motivated by the mission to invest their time, expertise, and energy towards the cause. The motivation is no longer about you and the length of your conversation or volume of your speech but about the vision you have for them. You can make mistakes and be wrong on occasion, as we eventually will be, and it won’t matter, because your players are focused no longer on you but on the vision you have for their lives. They become committed to it, and thus to you and the team. They give more and risk more than you can ever ask of them because they are empowered by the rewards of the vision. They let you lead them. They follow you because you gave them the power to see and believe in the vision you set before them.
I’ve known a good friend of mine for almost a quarter century, since our days at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Our wives use to work together, we were business partners at one time, and now we both coach for The King’s Academy High School in West Palm Beach, Florida.