David F. Salter

Moronic Little League and high school coaches have used the phrase, ‘you throw like a girl,’ for decades.

Now, the phrase, ‘you coach like a girl,’ certainly has taken on some emphasis since Natalie Randolph was named head football coach at Calvin Coolidge High School in Washington, D.C.

While many will judge Randolph according to how many games her team wins and loses, high school athletics also include other indicators of success. Randolph will only be successful if she truly coaches like a girl.

Successful female leaders conduct their business in a different way than do male leaders. Not better, not worse. Different. Natalie has to be careful not to attempt to coach like someone she’s not.

I was privileged to interview legendary University of Texas women’s basketball coach Jody Conradt for Final Four Leadership. The quintessential southern lady bristled when I asked her about the difference between female leaders and male leaders.

Conradt explained that what often happens to a female when she earns a leadership role, be it in the boardroom, the courtroom or the operating room, the female believes that she has to assimilate the mannerisms of her male counterparts. This often causes the female leader to move away from her strengths in a subconscious attempt to pacify the men in her company. This defeats the purpose of hiring the female in the first place.

Authenticity, then, is the most important characteristic to which Randolph can adhere. She needs to be the same person on the football field as she is in the classroom. She can’t treat her students one way from 8:00 – 3:00, and then pretend to be Nick Saban from 4:00 – 6:00 and on Friday nights.

People in general, and kids more astutely, can detect a phony from a mile away. If Randolph doesn’t stay true to herself, it will undermine her ability to lead those young men. Randolph’s knowledge of intricate offensive schemes and defensive deception won’t matter at all if the boys believe she’s a faker.

Having coached girls’ youth sports for 13 years, I’ve discovered that your players don’t really care how much you know unless they know how much you care.

Another intangible that Randolph needs is an awesome ‘buddy system.’ One female fault my research uncovered is that when women do achieve the corner office, they often forget to share their experiences with their female colleagues who are still working their way up the ladder.

Randolph needs successful female leaders, like Maryland basketball coach Brenda Frese, as well as successful businesswomen, lawyers, doctors, etc. to reach out and let Randolph know they’re happy to be a sounding board or an outlet to vent frustrations.

Finally, Randolph needs to assemble a strong group of assistant coaches. She needs to be comfortable with the fact that she can’t do it all and she can’t know it all. She needs to assemble a staff that compliments her strengths and fills in the gaps.

Randolph has demonstrated she’s got what it takes to get the job. She just needs her players to know that if she tells them, ‘you throw like a girl,’ that might not necessarily be a bad thing.

David F. Salter is the author of Final Four Leadership: 5 Secrets Successful Female Leaders Use and You Should Too. www.davidfsalter.com

Even though the Nebraska women’s basketball team saw their unbeaten streak demolished Saturday in the semifinals of the Big 12 post-season tournament, the Lady Huskers success this season is directly attributable to chemistry. No, not the kind students might think of, in the classroom with Bunsen burners flaming and odd combinations of liquids boiling in glass beakers.

The chemistry I’m talking about, as discussed in Final Four Leadership, is the type of intangible connections made between people in a department, on a team or in a group of friends that allows that group of people to transcend the expectations and goals outsiders might place on that group.

Head coach Connie Yori has been on campus since 2002-2003, and last year’s 15-16 record was the only losing season in her tenure in Lincoln. Part of that outcome was the fact that 2010 Big 12 Player of the Year Kelsey Griffin missed the entire season with an injury. But this year’s 30-1 team, that should earn a #1 seed in the upcoming NCAA tournament, is more about the whole group than it is about one player. Everyone on the team has a role, and Yori uses her bench liberally. Everyone on the team understands that she has an important job to do to help the team, and nobody cares who gets the credit, especially Griffin who not only leads the team in scoring but also in offensive fouls taken on defense.

The best way to sum this up is by showing a couple of comments opposing coaches have made of the Huskers.

“I lover her team,” said Oklahoma State coach Kurt Budke. Notice he didn’t say I love Kelsey Griffin.

Oklahoma coach Sherri Coale, herself a Final Four coach, said it with a little more thought. “You watch them (on film) be good together, and it ceases to be about those individual players, who are so very good in their own right. It becomes about how good they are together. And I think that’s been their magic.”

I’m attaching here an Mp3 of an interview I did this week on Dresser After Dark, which is syndicated on Lifetime radio. Enjoy. David Salter

Brittney Griner is a freshman phenom on the Baylor University women’s basketball team. Unfortunately, she made a critical mistake Wednesday night when she lost her cool and punched an opposing Texas Tech player, breaking that player’s nose.

Having spent some time, in person, with Griner’s coach, Kim Mulkey, when I interviewed her for my book Final Four Leadership, I expected the punishment to be quick and severe. It was quick, but certainly not the punishment I was expecting. Griner was suspended for one game, the regular season finale against Texas, by the university, and one additional game as mandated by NCAA rules. A two-game suspension doesn’t send the type of message that needs to be sent in this instance. Baylor is nationally ranked, and most likely gets a berth in the NCAA tournament regardless of what happens to them in the Big 12 tournament this week.

For so long now, women in sports, and I would say women in every professional pursuit, want to be compared to men in a favorable way – equal pay for equal work, an equal amount of seats at the boardroom table, equal representation in management, and the list could go on.

In September, in the first game of the college football season, a player from the University of Oregon cold-cocked an opposing player from Boise State during post-game handshakes. That player was suspended for the remainder of the season, only to be made eligible to participate in the team’s bowl game. Considering that while the football season is long in terms of months, they only play 11 games, that was a pretty stiff sentence. In college basketball, teams can play close to 30 games depending upon post-season success. Again, a two-game suspension for Griner’s action hardly seems to match the incident.

As I have over the past couple seasons, I’ve watched the teams of the coaches that I interviewed for the book whenever they are on my television. I’ve seen Baylor play several times, and Griner exhibits the type of behavior that I wouldn’t want to see my own daughter demonstrate on the court. She hovers over opponents when they’re on the floor in a taunting manner, she thumps her chest enough to cause damage to herself, and she is more demonstrative than I thought Mulkey would allow a player to be. I don’t know Brittney Griner and have never spent any time with her. I don’t know what kind of kid she is. I only know what I see on the television screen. Some athletes are different personalities on and off the court, so if Mulkey says, as she did in her statement regarding the punishment, that Griner is a great kid, then I’ll have to take her word for it. Griner’s actions, however, depict a different scenario.

One of the more difficult characteristics of leadership is the ability to make difficult decisions under tough circumstances. I think a stiffer penalty was due in this case in order to send the message to this young lady that she needs to elevate her behavior to match the class that her coach has spent so much time developing in her program. It also would send the message that actions have consequences.

On a side note, I had the great opportunity to be a guest, along with my family, of coach Sylvia Hatchell in Chapel Hill a couple of Sundays ago when the Tar Heels hosted the NC State Wolfpack in a Pink Zone game. The Pink Zone games happened during the month of February, and it’s the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association’s way of elevating awareness for the Kay Yow/WBCA Cancer Fund. It was especially gratifying, since a portion of the proceeds from my book are being donated to the Yow Fund, and it was also pretty cool being a halftime guest with Brad Heller on the Tar Heels Sports Network. I’m going to try to link the interview here. Tar Heels Sports Network interview

There’s no way to state this delicately. Micro-managers suck. It’s one of the many drawbacks to people in positions of authority. It completely undermines any attempt at successful leadership.

Micro-managers create a stifling work environment. What’s the primary characteristic of a micro-manager? She wants to be in control of everything – down to how many paperclips were used last month by the organization and how many times someone went to the restroom and why.

This appetite for control puts colleagues in a pinch because they are frequently spending valuable time developing plans or strategies as well as compiling monthly progress reports. I wouldn’t ever argue that outcomes assessment is not necessary and a structure to guide someone in their path to achieving a task has its merit. The question is, to what degree? Micro-managers shackle their employees and colleagues with strategies and reports to the extent that it’s completely counterproductive because it wastes valuable time. And why do micro-managers request all of these plans and reports? Because they don’t know everything about everything, BUT they want you and everyone else on the team to THINK that they know everything about everything. And if they don’t, at least, have all pertinent information at their fingertips, they feel powerless.

Micro managing creates a negative environment as well for a couple of reasons. One, it proves that the boss has an insatiable need for control. Second, it demonstrates that the boss doesn’t trust the people on staff to perform the tasks at hand with the talent and skill that they brought to the position. Third, it shows a lack of recognition that most humans think and work differently than the person in the cubicle next to her. If you want a bunch of clones working for you, how do you expect to come up with creative solutions to the challenges your company faces?

Finally, the negative environment is punctuated by the regular “beat down.” By exercising this maniacal control, the micro-manager holds his employees strictly to the plans that have been developed. If the task is not carried out or accomplished in the precise manner it was recorded in “the plan,” you can count on being chastised for not completed your assigned tasks.

One of the things that I discovered from the successful female leaders featured in Final Four Leadership is that they hire good people and they trust those people to perform at a high level. They ask for input and feedback, and while they readily acknowledge that they might not always implement that input and feedback, it often informs their decision making process, and they want to hear that contribution on a consistent basis. They also bring people to their team who might not necessarily think and work the same as others on the team, but their core values are solid and the variety of thought makes a positive contribution to the team’s success.

Being a micro-manager is prohibitive to good leadership, and it prevents your colleagues from producing their best work.

Leadership does not have a political stripe, not is its success restricted or dictated by gender. But in the recent, annual publication of “America’s Best Leaders,” U.S. News & World Report has gotten it wrong. I’m going to use this publication for several forthcoming posts, because I find the U.S. News piece interesting, to say the least. In the first article in this issue, reporter Ken Walsh does a sit-down interview with Presiden Obama and the topic of discussion is crisis leadership.

The entire problem with Walsh’s article is that he relies upon opinions from David Axelrod, who’s a senior adviser and a long-time Obama friend, as well as the interview with the President himself. What’s wrong with this approach? It’s pretty simple, but of course Axelrod and Obama are going to speak glowingly about the President’s leadership qualities. They need to. They have to. But what I would’ve preferred Walsh do in this article would be to remove himself from the Oval Office when writing this story because it’s certainly tainted his piece.

If he would’ve written this story from an objective distance, he would see what many Americans now know, and many are coming to see. President Obama lacks the basic fundamentals for presidential leadership. Which goes back to a thought I had in a previous post. Mainly, that Americans have forgotten what good leaders are made of.

The three fundamental areas where the President has failed from a leadership standpoint are: trust, accountability, and authenticity. There are other leadership shortcomings in our President, but these three strike me as the most essential. Because if you don’t begin with these three, you can’t progress to higher level, despite glowing commentary from Axelrod or well-thought out rhetoric by President Obama.

The President has demonstrated that he can’t be trusted because he’s violated a number of his campaign promises. Have presidents past gone against things they’ve promised in their campaign? Absolutely. You can’t tell the people you’re going to do one thing and then either do another, or completely ignore what it was you told the people you were going to do. Second, this administration has a penchant for blaming other people for their shortcomings. I wrote about the blame game in a recent post as well, and I don’t want to rehash that entire piece. But if you can’t accept accountability for the outcomes of your actions, you can’t be an effective leader. Finally, President Obabma, like almost every politician in the world, fails the authenticity test. In other words, his persona changes based on the environment he is in. He’s a fake, and most people, regardless of intelligence or any other factor, can detect a phony from a mile away.

We’ll look at this U.S. News stuff some more.

I’ll admit it right from the start. I’ve played the blame game. I’m not proud of it. It sets the wrong tone for my daughters and for others surrounding me. I regret it as soon as the denial leaves my mouth…but it happens anyway. More often than I’d like for it to happen.

One of the foundational principles that the successful female leaders I interviewed adhere to on a consistent basis is accountability. That is, no matter what happens, no matter the outcome, the head coach is accountable for her program, her staff and her players. Regardless of the scenario, the head coach is responsible for what happens. If a player gets into some trouble off the court, the coach steps in to try to help remedy the situation. Regardless of the fact that a coach or a boss in any business, cannot be responsible for their employees or colleagues 24/7. If the team endures a season less successful than anticipated, or less successful than the standards that are expected of that program, the coach accepts responsibility for that outcome.

When the University of Tennessee Lady Vols failed to advance to the Sweet 16 in the NCAA tournament last year for the first time in the history of the tournament, head coach Pat Summitt didn’t blame the players, didn’t blame her colleagues, the team trainer, or the fans. She essentially said she would work to rectify the situation. Now, some would think it crazy that a college coach whose team won more than 20 games and made it to the NCAA tournament would not be satisfied with those results. But you’re talking about Tennessee, the best program in the history of women’s college athletics. When you begin your preseason practices with the goal of WINNING the national championship, anything less than that is difficult to accept for those involved in that program. Players don’t go to Tennessee to be mediocre.

Which leads to the question, why do people fail to take accountability for their department, for their program, for their own actions? It might be considered “old school” but it seems pretty simple…Do what you say you’re going to do. If you can’t, don’t blame other people or entities. Just work harder to fix what you can and perform better the next time.

One of the reasons people fail to be accountable is that we often operate out of fear. We live in a business climate that is essentially win-at-all-costs. So if you don’t win, what happens? Usually, you’re fired. Bosses that are punitive, rather than collaborative and contemplative, produce employees who fear failure and, consequently, don’t want to accept accountability when things don’t unfold as planned.

The one big problem with a punitive mindset is that it prevents your colleagues from performing to the best of their ability. If employees, colleagues, players, or children are constantly operating under a premise of fear, then they are going to play it safe. They’re not going to push the proverbial envelope, because if they do and fail, somebody’s got to take the fall. That’s hardly the recipe for encouraging initiative, innovation, and creativity. CEOs, directors, bosses, coaches, teachers, et al, who, on the other hand, do not punish when the ultimate prize is not achieved, inevitably earn a greater return.

Notre Dame women’s basketball coach Muffet McGraw said that one of the things she absolutely loves is when her assistant coaches demonstrate accountability to one another. It fosters greater cooperation and trust between colleagues, a greater cohesion to the work effort, and, in the end it filters down to the team. McGraw said one of the things that she and her staff discuss with the players is the concept of accountability. However, she cautions that most often, people will not volunteer to be accountable. It has to be encouraged, and, in the case of McGraw and her staff, practiced and modeled.

Successful female leaders crave loyalty like cereal needs milk. Male leaders not so much. Men used to desire loyalty, but now (and this is painting with a broad brush) they figure they’ll just get rid of you and replace you with someone else. No big deal.

The interesting point with successful female leaders, however, is their requirement of loyalty is not that of undying commitment that consistently showers confirmation on the leader of the group. Successful female leaders want loyalty that is based upon perspective, input and feedback, and, when necessary, a contrary point of view to that of the boss. They want to have colleagues who are loyal to the vision, but not necessarily married to the manner in which the mission is achieved. In other words, they agree with the boss that, yes, they want to have the top sales volume in the company at the completion of the strategic plan. Yes, they want to win a national championship; yes, they want all of their students to graduate with honors and be fully employed or enrolled in graduate school within six months of earning their degree.

How do you accomplish those goals? A good leader puts the ultimate goal out there, establishes a timeline, but then allows everyone on the team make a contribution to the effort. Everyone doesn’t have to work and think in the same exact manner in order for the goal to be achieved.

Similarly, the leader of the group doesn’t want colleagues who are ‘yes’ people. Insecure leaders will seek out those types of subordinates. Good leaders will identify colleagues who will be truthful, thoughtful, respectful and dedicated, but not placaters.

When I questioned Texas women’s assistant basketball coach Gale Valley why she’s worked so long for head coach Gail Goestenkors, she basically said that Goestenkors gives her colleagues ownership, both in their day-to-day tasks as well as in the program as a whole. She also said that Goestenkors hires people who have the same core beliefs and principals, but they don’t all think alike and work alike.

When I asked Coquese Washington, the head women’s basketball coach at Penn State what she appreciated from working with Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw for eight years, Washington feels the most significant impact McGraw makes on her assistants is that she always listens to their input, whether it’s in game-planning for an opponent or during a timeout in the middle of a game. Now, Washington said that McGraw doesn’t always utilize the recommendations of her assistants. But the fact that McGraw honestly listens to and, on occasion, implements those ideas made a significant impression on Washington and on how she leads her program now in State College.

Loyalty, also, is not a one-way street. A good leader needs to be loyal to her or his colleagues. Good leaders don’t throw their colleagues under the proverbial bus when things go wrong. A good leader sticks up for colleagues when they’re mistreated. A good leader takes the blame for the team when the goal is not met. As a leader, when your colleagues know in their heart that you have their backs, the dividends it pays are enormous.

Loyalty and leadership should go hand in hand, but good leaders won’t exploit the leadership label. Loyalty between a good leader and colleagues is a lot like a good friendship. A good friend is with you and for you all the time, but when you mess up, or you disagree, the friend lets you know.

At the team’s media day last Thursday, University of Connecticut women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma wondered aloud from where his team was going to get its on-court leadership this season. While junior Maya Moore has been the best player on the team since she signed on with the Huskies, veteran players have filled the role of team leader. Most recently, point guard Renee Montgomery was that leader. She’s just completed her first season with the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx. There are three players vying to take Montgomery’s position on the court, but that doesn’t mean that any of those three can fill her leadership role. In fact, one thing you can’t force upon an individual, either on the court or in the boardroom is the responsibility of being the leader of the group.

It could very well be that one of the three players competing for the bulk of Montgomery’s minutes on the court will have the aptitude and the attitude to be a leader. However, just because the point guard, many times, is the on-court leader of the team, it can’t be assumed that this will be the case.

This happens in any endeavor, and that’s why I always tell people (when they question my passion for sports) that athletics is a microcosm of life. My research indicates that young women, in particular, do not like to have the title “leader” thrust upon them. Young women want to be liked by everyone in the group, whether it’s an athletic team, a corporate department or a classroom full of students. Young ladies prefer to be liked as opposed to being the queen bee. This desire to be friends with everyone gives young women the perception that they can’t be a leader, too. Which tells me that they’re viewing leadership as a negative thing. Maybe that’s because everyone they’ve encountered in their young lives who’s been in a leadership role has led in negative ways. Maybe it’s because they believe that in order to be a leader, you have to tell your friends things they might not want to hear, and the fact that someone is termed the leader means that everyone else is following, which, in itself can have negative connotations.

Sometimes there is an expectation that the most talented person on the team, in the boardroom or in the classroom should be the leader. But talent and leadership don’t always go together. Sometimes, but not always. In athletics, all-star caliber players sometimes try to be coaches when they retire from the field or court. Historically, the best players, in almost every sport, have been the worst head coaches. I know there’s some people who’ve studied and reported on this phenomenon, but that’s not the point of this post.

The bottom line is, leaders are partly made and are partly born. You can’t make somebody be the leader because you want them to be so. Coach Auriemma, at the media day last week, shows why he’s guided the Huskies to six national titles. He concluded his leadership thought by surmising that the team’s leader will emerge at some point in the season, and he doesn’t now profess to know who she is or when she’ll step forward.

One of the things that I learned when I was writing about these awesome female leaders in Final Four Leadership, is that each of them is always on the lookout for ways in which they can contribute to their profession. It might be sitting on a committee, it might be conducting a clinic to show others how they do what they do, or it might be a simple hand-written note to a new colleague who’s risen in the ranks and has assumed a position of leadership.

In the interest of giving back, I was searching for a way to say ‘thank you’ to the eight coaches and their colleagues who gave so much of their time to me to get the book written. Over the past three years, cancer has had a big impact on my life and on my family and on my friends. My wife is a cancer survivor, my sister is a cancer survivor…each of my three daughters has had to watch a classmate bury a parent who’s died from cancer in the past three years. And right now we’ve got a close friend who’s been battling both breast and ovarian cancer during this past year. She’s had surgeries and treatments and she was able to get back into the classroom this fall (she’s a high school teacher) and she’s been very inspirational to me. So with that as a backdrop, and having difficulty coming up with a way to give back, when Kay Yow, the long-time coach at North Carolina State, passed away from breast cancer last winter, the light bulb went off in my head. When I finished writing Final Four Leadership, I contacted the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association and signed a licensing agreement with the Kay Yow/WBCA Cancer Fund. It is affiliated with The V Foundation (after Jim Valvano) and it provides research grants specifically to those scientists and doctors searching for cures for women’s cancers. I’ve got a crazy number in my head that I’d like to donate to the Yow Fund, but I’m going to have to sell a lot of books. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

So, one of the smaller lessons I learned from these successful female leaders is to find a way to give back. Writing this book was a team effort, so this is my way of recognizing everyone who had a part in this coming together.

One of the primary theories proven in Final Four Leadership is that it takes a different skill set to lead a group of men as opposed to leading a group of women. That’s not a bad thing nor a good thing, it just is what it is. The successful female leaders profiled in the book have developed a number of strategies that help them relate to and motivate the individuals under their guidance. The good thing is that these strategies apply to either gender.
When the term, Personal Touch, is tossed on the table of a leadership discussion, the first thought that bangs into your brain is “touchy-feely.” Which leads one to think that you’re ’soft’ in your leadership style. Soft, obviously, is not used here as a term of admiration.
When I talk about personal touch, however, I’m not talking about creating a personal relationship with those whom you lead (although that can happen). I’m talking about making a personal connection. There’s a difference.
Individuals will come to your team, your department, your company from different backgrounds, different social circumstances, different levels of education, with different personalities and different agendas.
Likewise, each of these individuals has a different measurement of success, a different way in which they like to be recognized and certainly a different manner in which they are motivated.
One size does not fit all. Male leaders sometimes have a difficult time grasping this concept. I’m reminded of a scene at a freshmen girl’s basketball game a few years ago. The coach was a male, and during timeouts he would yell at and chastise these 14-15 year old girls. You could see that the players tuned him out as soon as his voice began to rise. A colleague said to him, “you can’t yell at girls the same way you yell at boys.” The response from the moronic coach was, “why not?”

Retired Hall of Fame women’s coach, Jody Conradt, said, “Because you are dealing with people, you can’t have a cookie cutter approach. You have to constantly find ways to not just relate to people, but to understand whatever it is that is motivating them. There are certain things that everybody has to be treated the same, abiding by team rules and things like that. But everybody communicates differently, everybody accepts criticism differently and everybody needs praise to a different level. I think the real secret…trying to figure out what everybody needs, what motivates them, what brings out the best in them, and trying to do that.”

Invest the time in making personal connections with your co-workers. Add it to your leadership tool box and watch performance improve.

Leadership thought for the week: Don’t hold grudges, just move on.”