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WEEK Ability vs Dependability 07 CONTENT OVERVIEW C COACHES CAPTAINS ATHLETES FAMILY Celebrate Demonstrate your Become someone Hold your kids dependability commitment to you would and yourself whenever accountability. depend on. accountable to you see it. the family. ABILITY VS. DEPENDABILITY Think about the person you count on most in the world, such as your parent, your sibling, a friend, an older neighbor, and so on. What about them makes you comfortable relying on them? It could be that they always listen when you need it. It could be that they’ve never failed to help you procure something you need. It could be that they always show up when they say they will. The key can probably be boiled down to: They always do what they say they are going to do. That is the core of dependability. A dependable person will do whatever is required to get the job done. It doesn’t matter if there is a sacrifce of time or resources or mental energy required. They said they would do it, so you know that it will be done. Everybody wants to be the big, noticeable talent on the court. You want to be recognized for your abilities because society tells you that’s what counts. But, dependability is far more vital to success than mere talent. If your teammates and coach can’t depend on you to be there when you’re needed most, it doesn’t matter how much talent or ability you have. You have to be trustworthy before you will be trusted with the moments that matter. Being dependable means keeping your word, which is simple, but not always easy. It’s simple because it’s black and white that “I said I would do X, so I’m going to do X.” But often, your promises will require more effort and sacrifce than you anticipated. It’s easy to say “Well, I said I would stay late after practice, but now my friends want me to get tacos.” Regardless of the external factors, you have to stick to your commitments if you want to be viewed as trustworthy and dependable. 2Words Character Development • Season 3 • Week 7 WEEK Ability vs Dependability FOR COACHES ABILITY VS. DEPENDABILITY: FOR COACHES 07Ability is in your face, easy to see, and quantifable. We can easily see when an athlete is able to run, throw, shoot, or kick the way that we want. Their numbers speak for themselves. Unfortunately, numbers don’t tell us much about how dependable the student is. More important than students’ ability is their dependability. Can we depend on them to be on time for practice? Can we depend on them to keep up their grades so they can continue playing? Can we depend on them to help their teammates? We can help our athletes become more dependable through teaching, modeling, and celebrating: • Teach. Sports focus a lot on results, and we don’t want our athletes to leave this program with the idea that all that matters is their ability to score points. A compass is dependable because it always points the way north. Teach them to use their internal compass to help them be dependable, too. Their internal compass will always point to what they said they would do, and that’s the direction we want them to go in. • Model. We have to be able to model the desired behavior before any teaching on the matter will sink in. Say we offer to the students that they can call us anytime if they need help. That’s a great gesture saying “you can depend on me.” But, it’s worthless if we never actually pick up the phone. Instead of showing how dependable and trustworthy we are, it shows that we don’t practice what we preach. • Celebrate. What gets rewarded gets repeated. All of our teaching and modeling will be wasted without additional reinforcement, such as praise for keeping their word and being awarded additional responsibilities or prizes after showing they are reliable. THIS WEEK, BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR: QUOTES OF THE DAY: 1. Opportunities to TEACH dependability. Dependability is keeping your word even if it’s hard MONDAY: or inconvenient. If an athlete signed up for extra “Ability is important in our quest for weight room time, hold them accountable for actually success, but dependability is critical.” showing up and giving their best effort. If they Zig Ziglar wanted to stay after practice to do extra laps, hold TUESDAY: them accountable for doing so and cleaning up after ”Without dependability one’s ability may be themselves. a liability instead of an asset.” 2. Opportunities to MODEL dependability. If there’s Woodrow Wilson a practice scheduled at a weird time, we have to be WEDNESDAY: there right on time, if not early. If it’s hot out and we’re “Being trustworthy requires doing the asking them to run bleachers, we have to be right right thing, and doing things right.” there in the sun with them, not standing in the shade. Don Peppers THURSDAY: 3. Opportunities to CELEBRATE dependability. “The most important ability you can ever Celebrate times when athletes do what they say have is dependability.” Coach Mackey they will do and are present for their teammates. If someone is always lifting up their team with their words and showing up to practice early for additional FRIDAY: warm up time, celebrate that. If they wanted that extra “If you say you’re going to do something, weight room or pool time and gave their best effort in do it. If you start something, fnish it.” the process, celebrate that, too. Epictetus 2Words Character Development • Season 3 • Week 7 WEEK Ability vs Dependability FOR CAPTAINS 07ABILITY VS. DEPENDABILITY: FOR CAPTAINS A leader’s authority comes from the people he or she leads. You can try wielding authority as a magic wand to make people do what you want, but your teammates aren’t going to do anything just because you said so. Instead of fostering trust and respect—which are essential to all C relationships—you’ll end up nurturing distrust and disrespect. To be a good leader for your team and in future roles, you need to be accountable, coachable, and approachable. Be Accountable. Good leaders make themselves accountable to their followers and follow through on their actions. For example, if you set up an additional practice to help the team work on timing for passes, you have to show up and put in the effort seen at a normal practice or game. If you don’t show up ready to put in the work, that tells your teammates that you talk a big game, but you aren’t actually interested in following through and helping the team succeed. Be Coachable. Being a leader doesn’t mean being infallible. You won’t always make the right choices and /// CAPTAINS’ LOG /// sometimes there won’t be a “right” answer. Everyone “LEADERS ALWAYS LEAD” stumbles sometimes, and it’s not always possible to see the mistake and consequences without outside Why is accountability valuable for good assistance from a coach or teammate. The important leadership? How is this demonstrated in thing is to accept your mistakes and be willing to ask daily interactions between leaders and for and receive help. followers? Be Approachable. To be truly accountable to your Explain accountability as if you were team, your teammates have to be able to talk to you talking to a younger student from the jr. when your actions or decisions aren’t meshing with high or elementary school. the team values. When you stumble, your team will be there to help you right yourself, but only if they know Did you aspire to your current leadership you aren’t going to bite their head off for bringing it position due to a desire for authority or up. If you aren’t approachable or tend to cast blame accountability or something else? Explain. on circumstances rather than your own actions, those behaviors damage your authority as a leader. Why is it important to be approachable for your teammates? Are you approachable? Give examples of how you do (or could) demonstrate your approachability. Think of an authority fgure (could be a teacher, coach, political fgure, etc.). From where does that person derive their authority? What does that tell you about them? 2Words Character Development • Season 3 • Week 7 WEEK Ability vs Dependability FOR ATHLETES 07ABILITY VS. DEPENDABILITY: FOR ATHLETES If you were hanging over the side of a cliff by a rope, who would you want holding onto the other end keeping you from tumbling to your death? That’s a question Fresno State’s football coach Jeff Tedford has asked his athletes as a thought exercise in dependability. The question basically asks: Who do you think is the most dependable person on your team? Dependability isn’t about strength. Of course, you’d want someone strong who could hold you up and hopefully pull you back to the top of the cliff. But, physical strength isn’t the only factor at play. What about endurance? What about putting others before themselves? What about the commitment to never give up or surrender to fatigue? What about the ability to mentally cope with the responsibility of holding another person’s life literally in your hands? Alright, maybe that’s getting a little melodramatic for the terms a high school sport, but the main point stands. Whether or not you feel you can depend on another person is based on more than a person’s physical strength.

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