The principle of the Golden Circle and the Law of Diffusion of Innovation relates very well to the coaching profession, not just that of volleyball. But since this site is about volleyball, that’s where the focus will be.

I’ll use an example of a coach taking over a perennial losing team. The new coach must do their best to sell to their players Why the new coach is involved, Why the players should be involved, and How they will help the team get better and become respectable again. This must happen first, the coach is the innovator. They will have some early adopters, some early majority, some late majority, and some laggers when it come to their philosophy and coaching style.

But a good leader will keep going, when the early adopter players start getting visibly better to the others, the early majority kids will join in and see exactly What the new coach is doing differently. This will continue until the coach has a large “market share” of the team believing in their ideas, and the improved program. They may even have some laggers, but some of those laggers may lack the passion to be on the team and are probably a big reason why the team lost every year in the first place. A good suggestion would be to get rid of them and find kids that want to be involved in such a good program.

Having a good program is a great reason why some teams are just better every year than others. A good program is built with a positive culture, respect for their teammates and coaches as well as the game. They know why they are on the team and they want to do well. While a bad team lacks consistency, has negative feelings, and the players lack respect for the game. Sometimes participating in the sport just to get a varsity letter. They’ve lost the answer to “Why?”, if they ever had it at all.

Stanford Mens Volleyball coach, John Kosty, took over a program that was one of the worst in the MPSF and in 4 years he turned the program around and won a national championship. How did he do it? I bet he started by sitting all the players down and giving them one of the best “Why” speeches in sports, but no one heard it, but the Stanford players and coaches. Those players bought into Coach Kosty’s philosophy and he was able to persuade great talent to attend Stanford when they still weren’t a very good team. It was revealed by Canyon Ceman, a former Stanford standout, that John Kosty and Al Roderigues were able to involve Stanford alumni. They brought the big name players in to explain to the current players “why” they should play hard for the school, the team, and themselves. The “why” in this case helped Stanford become a family and gave them purpose beyond winning games. Anyone familiar with Stanford this year also knows that losing a member of the coaching staff during the season really brings good teams together to play for a purpose too. The ultimate “why” if you will.

The same principles can be used for college coaches in recruiting. Sell the “Why?” before the “How?” and “What?” and you might be surprised. I’m not telling college coaches that what they do currently is wrong, because I honestly don’t know the first thing about the difficult challenge of recruiting players out of high school and balancing scholarships. But the numbers and principles make a lot of sense and could be used by leaders at all levels of sport and life. I highly recommend them.

Influencing people and creating believers in our philosophies are huge parts of coaching. Without the ability to do either, we are sure to fail. Try making your program a culture of want and you might succeed like Apple has. BWSHGWWJ3CZ4