How Coaching High Schoolers Has Helped Me Lead a Company

In October of 2020, the company I had been working for the previous 18 months made the decision that I was the best candidate to lead the company moving forward. On that day in October, I was named President of DVC Rental Store.

While proud of the accomplishment being named the leader of a multi-million dollar company, it obviously came with some angst. There were now over a dozen people relying on my leadership to guide them and protect their livelihood. On top of that, we were a travel company in the middle of a pandemic.

Having never led a company before, I leaned into where I’ve grown to be extremely comfortable: coaching high school basketball.

It sounds kind of like a silly correlation on the surface. High school boys and professionals in the workplace are in entirely different places in their lives and their goals are vastly different.

However, what I quickly learned is that leadership is leadership. Many of the leadership skills I acquired while coaching high school basketball for six years have come into play. In what ways has coaching helped me in this new role as president? Keep reading. 🙂

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Connecting With People

When I first got into coaching at the age of 23, I really had no idea what I was doing. I played varsity basketball through high school, but that was really my only qualification for the role. I came into the job basically deciding it’s ‘my way or the highway’ and that I was going to be a hardass with my players. I didn’t care if my players hated me, I wasn’t there to make friends.

Thankfully, as I progressed in my coaching role, I realized how important connections were. Players weren’t going to respect my guidance if I just came in there guns ablazing and made no effort to connect with them. Looking back, it’s no surprise that my worst season I ever had as a coach was my first year. Not because I didn’t know X’s and O’s, but because I didn’t really understand how important connecting with my players was to help get the best out of them.

As the President of my company, my main focus is on my people. I want to be there for them, not only professionally, but also personally. I want to know what they need from me to get their best each day. If I came to work each day and had a standoffish or pompous attitude, I’d lose my team in the sense of having their trust, and may quite literally lose them to other companies.

I often relate this part of the job back to a book I read before my wife and I got married, The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman. In this book, Chapman essentially describes five different ways people like to be loved, and that you should know your spouse’s ‘love language’ and try to speak their love language, not yours.

Obviously I’m not trying to speak my employees’ love languages, but I try to lead them the way they want to be lead. One person may prefer one method of feedback, while another may prefer something completely different. It’s basically conforming my leadership on an individual level.

For instance, when I was coaching, I knew the kids whose rear-ends I could get into a little bit and they’d respond positively. But I also knew the other kids where that type of feedback would completely shut them down.

I don’t claim to be perfect with connections, but I do make a conscious effort each day to ensure my employees know I’m there for them and have an open door policy when they need to talk, just as I had with my players when I coached.

Communication

Going hand-in-hand with my last point of being able to connect with both my players and my employees, a big part of that comes down to communication. Communication is so vital as a leader.

When changes are coming down the pike, I have to be able to effectively communicate these to several different departments to ensure that we’re all aligned. Notice I said effectively communicate.

Because communication is important, but how I communicate is just as important. Like I said, I came into coaching thinking I wanted to be a hardass. This involved yelling and essentially a negative tone to everything I communicated. That grew tired on my players, I’m sure.

Just as if I am communicating new policies or procedures to my team and was nonchalant about how I communicate them, they be nonchalant about how they implement them. However, if I stress their importance and exude a positive tone as I communicate them, it gets my team excited about the forthcoming changes and how important they are to ensuring the changes happen effectively.

Meshing Personalities

No two people are the same. What one person likes, another may dislike. When I was coaching, I had alphas, betas, trouble-makers, guys that gave me no issues, guys that didn’t like to communicate, guys that never wanted to be quiet. You get the picture. But what I had to figure out as a coach was how to mesh all kinds of different personalities and create a positive culture that kids wanted to be a part of.

It’s probably the hardest aspect of coaching, in my opinion, but the most critical. A positive team culture is absolutely critical to success, whether on the basketball court or in business.

And learning how to mesh all of those different personalities as a coach is one of the most vital skills I learned. In the workplace, things are no different. Different departments have to work closely together, I have teams of seven or eight people that are working with the same customers. If there isn’t strong synergy, my company will quite literally fail.

Personal and Team Goals

As the leader of the company, I’m obviously concerned with how the company performs as a whole. However, I’m conscious that this is my employees’ livelihoods and they have personal goals in mind, too.

Luckily, this is something I dealt with all of the time in coaching basketball. As the coach, I wanted the team to win. However, I had players that were trying to get scholarships to play at the collegiate level. I knew how important that was for them, and I wanted them to achieve those same goals. But I couldn’t allow them to put those goals over the overall team goal and negatively impact the team.

Just like I can’t let one of my employees only be concerned with their individual commission while the company, as a whole, suffers because of those actions.

My job is to build trust with my employees that I have their best interests in mind when I make decisions. A rising tide lifts all boats, but talk is cheap. I have to show them with my actions that I mean that.

Empathy

This is probably my most vital skill that I possess, but it was certainly a learned skill and something I make a conscious effort to be aware of not only at work or coaching, but in my day-to-day life.

em·​pa·​thy | \ ˈem-pə-thē  \

1: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner

When I was coaching, I had kids come to me with situations that I could not even fathom. They’re also young men that are 15-18 years old, so they’re also dealing with navigating many other things outside of sports.

This isn’t to say that I was always feeling sorry for people and taking it easy on them. Moreso, it was just being able to put myself in my players’ shoes (especially since I know EXACTLY what it’s like to be a 15-18 year old boy) and have empathy for the situations they were dealing with, both on and off the court.

It’s the same thing with my team that I lead. I have empathy for situations that they’re dealing with. Perhaps I have a situation where I have two employees that are gunning for the same promotion, I’ll have empathy for the one that doesn’t get it. That doesn’t mean I will stop holding them accountable to their role with the company. But it just means that I do understand that it’s not a fun situation to go through and work to build that employee back up.

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When I was a 23-year-old getting into coaching basketball, I did it because I loved basketball. When I left coaching after the 2019 season, I was so sad. But I wasn’t sad because I was leaving the game I loved, I was sad because I was going to miss the people aspect of it. I was going to miss building the relationships with my players, watching them grow as players and young men, and maintaining those relationships even as they graduated.

Little did I know, within a year of leaving the coaching post, I’d have an entirely different team to lead, but so much of it aligns with what I learned through coaching.

Interested in chatting with me about leadership? Coaching? Or just want to shoot the breeze? Shoot me an email at [email protected] or follow me on Twitter, @CoachAdragna