Practical strategies for student-athlete leadership development
One of the many challenging aspects that take place at small colleges across the country is the development of student-athlete leadership. Where I work at Southern Maine Community College (SMCC), we typically have our student-athletes for two years and, in some instances, only one season.
Alumni have that direct experience within your programs to pull from and then relate to your current student-athlete leaders.
The traditional model of developing student-athlete leaders focuses on peer mentorship. In those models, freshmen and sophomores observe juniors and seniors who hold leadership qualities. Over time, they develop the same qualities and begin to take over as leaders themselves — a cycle that continues indefinitely.
How do you develop those qualities and skills when that timeline is shorter?This is such a challenging aspect when you have predominantly part-time staff. I’ve found that several tactics have worked well in trying to replace that void of multiple years of upperclassmen knowledge throughout the years. Providing deliberate methods of engagement to build those experiences is crucially important to develop these outcomes.
Internal efforts
One of the most productive activities I’ve used to develop and enhance leadership skills among our student-athletes is an annual, ongoing student-leaders breakfast. During these meetings, I usually take the opportunity to conduct such activities that include team updates and athletic department updates, then I try to utilize this time to offer leadership enhancement. I typically would try to share supportive articles or video clips that hit a particular topic we are working on.
A particular exercise that worked well was the discussion over “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” workbook by Patrick Lencioni. After reading, student-athlete leaders would identify any of those factors on their teams. They would then share with the group and their peers would provide feedback on how to address those specific issues to promote better team cohesiveness.
Another positive exercise I’ve used is asking student-athlete leaders to create their core standards and then asking them to list what they think are the team’s core standards. Once they’ve listed both, ask them to compare and contrast the differences. Typically, I find the exercise pushes student-athlete leaders to work on being an example-setter while also looking at when or how to communicate areas of conforming to meet the greater team goals.
We usually begin by reviewing “Controlling the Controllable” by Juan Pablo Favero of San Diego State University, originally published in the NSCAA Soccer Journal. This article allows student-athlete leaders to think about their actions first and then see how to apply that to both personal core standards and, later, team concepts.
External efforts
Certainly, resources always play a role in any efforts you can make toward leadership enhancement training.
In the larger university setting, money is made available to bring in outside people to provide programming in this area. Some wonderful individuals do excellent work with student-athlete leaders. Typically, at most small college athletic programs, this resource is limited at best. This doesn’t mean that you still cannot provide this resource. I often find the same message I’m sending is heard better from someone else’s voice.
I’ve often seen success from our alumni coming back to assist with that message of student-athlete leadership development. This certainly is dictated and works well once you have some longevity in your position. Alumni have that direct experience within your programs to pull from and then relate to your current student-athlete leaders.
An advantage of being in a small college athletic setting is to utilize those very intimate and personal experiences shared with your alumni and then have them share this with the program. This can have such a powerful impact on current student-athlete leaders. It can in some ways serve as that upperclassman influence that takes place at larger institutions.
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