A Special Interview: January 2025
Next week, LBC alumni and friends will go to XFinity Center to hear from some of your colleagues about how sports serves as a leadership incubator, and of course to watch your team play its best against #1 UCLA. Go Terps! Let’s hear more about what makes you such an effective leader and coach.
Tell us about a time that you noticed experience on the court translate to leadership off of the court?
I can think of so many examples of how the experiences our players get in competition transfer to other areas of their lives. Some of the most direct are those that have gone into coaching. They’re now sharing what they learned with young people. I even had a former player pull me aside one time and apologize to me for being difficult. Now that she’s coaching, it’s given her not only perspective on the players she’s working with, but also on herself.
Every day, our players have to show up and perform. They have to meet standards and be held accountable. They have to deliver under pressure. All those things translate to life. We now have at least three former players that are practicing doctors. I know the mental fortitude they built while playing helped them get through everything it takes to make it in that profession.
One personal example I can think of is how in 2010, when our son Tyler was diagnosed with leukemia at 2.5 years old, a group of players from our 2006 National Championship team formed a foundation to raise money to fight leukemia.
What strategies have you seen successfully build confidence and leadership skills for the student athletes you coach?
We’ve taken a lot of approaches to helping our young people build their confidence and leadership skills. One of the things that really helped me have success was positive reinforcement. I didn’t always have the most talented players, so I had to get the players to really believe in themselves and what they were capable of doing. I had to get the sum of their efforts to sometimes be better than it probably should have been.
I had a variety of experiences with the coaches I played or worked for, and the ones that were the most negative really taught me that I never wanted to be like that. So, I’ve really built my career on getting players to believe in themselves. I try to surround myself with assistants that think similarly. Over the years, we’ve done team building exercises, we’ve worked with a sports psych and I’ll do things like create a video of players at their best. I’ll sit and watch it with them, going over it to make sure it sinks in. Even with some of the teams I coached that didn’t have the greatest seasons, I’d find ways to get small wins within a game that we might have lost. Examples would be – let’s win this quarter or let’s win this four minutes.
How can leaders in the community support and encourage student athletes?
One of the best ways leaders in the community can support athletes is pretty simple – be present. Show up and let them see your support at our games. We’ve maintained one of the nation’s most consistently successful basketball programs for over twenty years now. That’s really hard to do. Let them know you appreciate it.
If you have a situation at work, where some of our players can get real world experience, that might be a great way to support them. Trying things is the only way we can learn what we want to do. Let us know about that. These days, those types of opportunities where players are getting paid to do it are what’s driving a lot of college sports. That’s why certain players go to certain schools. It’s not just about books and basketball anymore.
What life experience has most shaped who you are as a leader?
The life experience that has shaped me the most is the family that raised me. I have four sisters and a brother. We didn’t have much, but my parents worked really hard to put food on the table for us and give us a place to live. That living and working example my parents set is really what stuck with me. It drives me and it keeps me humble. We were just a simple family in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, but all those days together instilled the right values in me.
In your opinion, what personal trait is most important to being a good leader and why?
There are so many traits needed by successful leaders. I don’t know that there is one path that every successful leader takes. In my career, I’ve worked incredibly hard to surround myself with great people. That’s been really important to me at every stop I’ve made. When you do that, not only does it make the job more enjoyable, but it makes everyone look good. I think my staff will tell you that nobody outworks me. I’ve never thought that since I’m the boss, I can do less and put more on them. When you lose your work ethic, you set yourself up for defeat. I lead as much by example as I do by my words.
I’m a highly organized person. It helps everything run more efficiently and it’s considerate to my staff. They know what to expect and what we’re doing on a given day. When we practice, every minute is planned. Sure, the unexpected comes along and we have to adjust on the fly, but by being organized, it makes you a boss who’s more considerate of the people that work for you. They all have lives and can’t just sit around waiting to learn what’s next.
As a leader, you also have to be decisive. I take input from the people around me and consider it, but I need to make decisions or we get left behind. When you continually put off decisions, they pile up and you keep people in limbo.