Waimea

This is a draft of a new article my friend Heather Pieper-Olson and I are working on for the Gallup StrengthsQuest e-newsletter - any thoughts or comments are greatly appreciated. JVD

We will never coach the same way again. After a combined 20+ years of coaching, the way we motivate players, work with our co-coaches, and ultimately field a team has changed forever. Why? Blame it on the Gallup StrengthsFinder psychometric assessment tool.

Last year, all of the coaches at the Junior Olympic Volleyball Club Minnesota Select, took the StrengthsFinder assessment. Minnesota Select Volleyball Club is a competitive youth sports whose teams participate in national competitions sanctioned by USA Volleyball, the national governing body of the sport of volleyball in the United States. There are over 150 girls from age 11 to 18 who play for Minnesota Select. USA Volleyball divides Junior Olympic teams into seven age groups from 18-and-Under to 12-and-Under. Players who turn 18 by September of a given year will compete as an 18-and-Under during that season. Players can play in an older age group, but never in a younger age group. Minnesota Select typically has two teams at each age level (e.g., 17-1, 17-2, 18-1, 18-2).

After only its third season in existence, Minnesota Select is one of the most successful Junior Olympic programs in Minnesota. In the past three years, Minnesota Select has sent 41 players unto to collegiate volleyball programs. Of those players, 4 went to NCAA Division I programs and 16 went to NCAA Division II programs.

Joseph Dworak, also a Minnesota Select coach, took the 30 of us through the results together. Though each coach had his or her own unique set of strengths themes, as a group we are dominant in Competition, Command, Maximizer, Relator, and Achiever. The StrengthsFinder identified our commonalities and differences, and it was easy to see how a group of very different coaches, with unique approaches and skill sets, had built successful coaching careers around their strengths. The process helped us build and refine our talents as individual volleyball coaches and as a coaching staff throughout the remainder of the season.

After the coaches went through the process of discovering our Strengths, Heather Pieper-Olson and her assistant coaches decided to take their team through the process as well. Pieper-Olson is the head coach of the top team in the 17-and-Under age group at Minnesota Select, known as the 17-1’s team. Dworak led all ten of the 15-17 year-old young women from the 17-1’s team through the StrengthsFinder process. The team spent two sessions with Dworak and their coaches finding out about their individual strengths, and how their unique personalities worked and, sometimes, did not work well together. During the first session, the power of the StrengthsFinder assessment was obvious when a player dominant in Competition was caught frantically searching through the StrengthsFinder theme definitions for Woo while Dworak was explaining a theme possessed by a teammate. Their head coach, Heather Pieper-Olson, asked her if she was looking to see if Woo was a “better� strengths theme than the five her results had shown. Though surprised by the directness of the question, the Competition-dominant player sheepishly smiled and admitted that she was doing exactly that! Leave it to a player strong in Competition to compare her own strengths themes with those of her teammates.

The 17-1’s players said they learned a lot from the StrengthsFinder experience – and not just information that is of value to them on the court. Society seems to want us all to default to conformity. Homogeneity is pushed upon us from the outside. Dave Matthews rebelled against this concept in his song, “Typical Situation� where he sarcastically asked the question, “Why are you different? Why are you that way? If you don’t get in line, we’ll lock you away.� We are all unique. Whether we are coaches, educators, or scientists we all go about doing those jobs in our own unique way. Why does society want us to do it the same way? This was the struggle facing the 17-1’s team prior to undergoing the StrengthsFinder assessment. Many of the players did not really understand that their teammates were approaching volleyball, school, and their family and friends very differently then they were. Because they were all friends, came from similar backgrounds, and seemed to have similar goals, they assumed that they all had similar perspectives on the world and how to approach it. They learned that leaders do not all share the same strengths themes, which allowed them to redefine their understanding of what leadership looks like.

Additionally, the 17-1’s team used the StrengthsFinder strengths discovery process to their competitive advantage by creating a common positive language to improve team chemistry. Since team chemistry is an essential component of any team sport, teammates must resolve conflict effectively and efficiently. Throughout the remainder of their season the 17-1’s team committed to using the increased awareness of their strengths to communicate more effectively on and off the court.

Their commitment to positive team chemistry paid off. During the 2005-6 season, the 17-1’s team competed in 3 national qualifier tournaments and finished 9th, 3rd, and 5th, respectively in those tournaments. They won the North Central Regional Qualifying tournament as well. At the United States Junior Olympic Volleyball National Tournament, the team was seeded 9th – ranking the MN Select 17-1’s team in the top 40 of the 124 teams who qualified for the USJO National Championships. All of these accomplishments are more impressive when taking into account that the 17-1’s team was struggling with team chemistry at the beginning of the season.

Coaches who know their strengths are more self-aware and are more likely to lead their teams in a way that works from who they truly are as a coach and a leader. But coaches who also know about their players’ strengths have great insight into how to effectively manage and motivate each individual player. Why waste time asking people to be more competitive when they are dominant in Empathy and Restorative? Why spend loads of time trying to make players strong in Adaptability more focused? Furthermore, as a tool to help resolve the conflicts that are inevitable on any team of adolescents, the common positive language created by StrengthsFinder is invaluable.